The Ohio Dairy Abuse

I'm sure some of you have seen the latest dairy cow abuse video. If you haven't, I don't recommend it. It's not pleasant to say the least. I finally watched it and it made me want to cry.

First, the abuse is horrific. It's sadistic and serves absolutely no purpose other than to smear the dairy industry and make good controversy. I don't know a single dairy farmer that would knowingly allow that type of abuse to happen on his farm, much less contribute to it. I honestly believe that the abuse did happen, but that it was staged and not ongoing abuse. My reasons are this: the cows were clean, healthy, and well fed. Like any being, human or otherwise, enough abuse will cause you to lose hope and stop struggling. Those cows still fought and I was hoping one of them would kick the a-hole in the head. Abused animals are lame. Lame animals don't eat. Those cows were pretty healthy looking.

Second, if an engineer built a building that wasn't structurally sound, he'd be out of a job. If a teacher taught all lies, they'd eventually be found out and fired. The same is true with a dairy. Unfortunately, it may take time to uncover the abuse, but it would be uncovered and the workers would be fired. If an owner treated his cows like that, they wouldn't produce very well and he'd be losing money. It just doesn't make sense to work that way.

There has also been a lot of blame placed on the camera man and here's why. He sat by for weeks without a single word of "why are you doing that?" Some say it was so that the world is aware of how dairy cows are treated. I know animal abusers exist. I don't need to watch it. I know children are abused, but if someone filmed that for weeks they'd be charged as an accomplice.

We as a society are so much more interested in the horrors and the controversy. We want to point fingers and place blame and say "see, you're worse than I am!" Our dairy industry isn't perfect. There are bad dairy farmers that manage to scrape by. There are also bad teachers (we can all think of some) that are still teaching. It happens. It's not right, and just like in education, it's hard to find a way to weed out the bad from the good.

There isn't a single decent dairy farmer out there that would watch that video and think treating animals like that is ok. I realize that I'm preaching to the choir but my hope is that the few people that read my blog that don't have a connection to agriculture have enough common sense to know that our products come from a safe environment. Our cows and calves are fed before my own children are. I've said it before, but dairy farming is so much more than a career. It's a way of life. I'm proud to be a dairy farmer and I'm proud that my children are dairy kids.

I'm just so tired of these videos. It's not like we're big oil and are getting rich anyway. They can handle a little bad publicity, we can't. If the video wasn't upsetting enough, the comments made it even worse. The general public is VERY poorly educated on where our food comes from and how. Do people honestly think we could treat our animals like that and that they would still produce a decent amount of milk. Let's use a little bit of common sense, people.