Intensive dairy farming – What is it?
Over the last fifty years, dairy farming has become more intensive to increase the amount of milk produced by each cow. Around 22 litres per day is typical in the UK. If she were producing just enough to feed her calf, this would be approximately four litres a day.
Intensive dairy farming - the reality
Unnatural zero grazing
Access to grazing pastures provides the natural food of ruminant animals such as cows but in American-style, high-yield systems, grazing plays a very limited part in their diet, with the cows allowed out only in the short period between lactations and their next pregnancies.
Male dairy calf waste
High-yielding cows produce calves which are generally less suited to beef production. In the UK, some 80,000 of these are shot at birth every year.
In commercial farming, nearly all calves are taken away from their mother shortly after birth. This causes severe distress to both the cow and the calf. This has long-term effects on the calf’s physical and social development.
Intensive dairy farming – The welfare problems
Given a natural healthy life, cows can live for twenty years or more. High-yielding dairy cows will last for only around a quarter of that time. They are usually culled after three lactations because of health problems such as infertility, mastitis or chronic lameness.
Lameness, mastitis and infertility
The higher the milk yield cows are pushed to produce, the higher the risk of lameness. Higher milk yield also has a known genetic correlation with the incidence of mastitis – a painful and prevalent udder condition.
Infertility among high-yielding dairy cows is increasing, resulting in early culling. It has been linked to stress, poor body condition and the demands of high milk production on the cows’ general health.
Housing
Cows kept indoors have less opportunity to perform important natural behaviours and to exercise. Poor ventilation and high humidity increase the risk and spread of infection. These factors are likely to have an adverse effect on their health.
Hard concrete flooring can cause foot damage and is more painful for lame cows to stand and walk on. Zero-grazing systems have been linked to increased lameness.
Diet
Cattle are adapted to high fibre diets based on foods such as grass. High-yielding cows have to be fed a more concentrated diet with additional cereal which can lead to digestive problems such as acidity in the part of the stomach, known as the ‘rumen’. This can lead to acidosis and painful lameness from laminitis.
The thin end of the wedge
In addition to animal welfare concerns, factory farming raises serious environmental concerns. Both the excessive amount of fertilisers used to produce the animal feed on which large-scale industrial farms depend and the vast quantities of animal waste which these farms generate are potential sources of soil, air and water pollution.
Factory farming also poses a very real threat to rural life and the livelihoods of dairy farmers in the UK who face a serious risk of forced closure as a result of such large-scale developments. Small-scale producers may be unable to compete with pricing and supply in an already struggling market. Opening one 8,000 cow unit ultimately could mean closing down 100 farms with around 70 cows.
Buying higher welfare
Compassion believes dairy production must have a balance which provides a good free-range life for cows and a decent living for dairy farmers. Consumers should look for organic milk, cheese and butter and ask their supermarkets not to stock dairy products from cows prevented from grazing.