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neshura@bookwormstory.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Yes but actually no.

Thanks to industrial grade food production meat cows and dairy cows are two entirely separate breeds by now. Old school cows you were able to butcher once they died of old age or whatever and get a decent cut of meta out of that. Modern cows are bred to either produce more milk or to produce more meat. Which on one end results in cows too thin to be butcherable and on the other end results in cows with too little nutrients in their body to produce any excess milk.

I say we go back to the old ways of mixed use cows and live with the reduced milk and meat output. What most people drink might as well be colored water given all the fat gets filtered out of the milk so switching to an alternative shouldn’t be a problem (aside from getting used to not drinking cow milk and instead whatever milk is to their liking)

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Pipoca@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
What do you imagine happens to old dairy cattle? We just compost them?

Dairy cattle absolutely get slaughtered for food. If you eat them, though, they were probably in your burger or hotdog.

That’s because older animals are less tender than young animals, and consumers prefer tender meat.

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abraxas@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The only issue you’re missing is this. If 5 dairy plus 5 meat cows yield 20% more total food now than 10 cows yielded then, focusing on the perceived waste of not eating a milk cow is fallacy. Is there a substantive argument that we are using cows less efficiently than we did a century ago?

What most people drink might as well be colored water given all the fat gets filtered out of the milk

Per the Mayo Clinic, it’s tough to beat dairy milk for balanced nutrition. That is even (or especially) with the excess fat removed and reserved for other products. Switching to an alternative is generally a nutrition problem. Only fortified and unsweetened soymilk comes close.

And one could argue it is the least palatable alternative. Calls to mind “instead of a doughnut, eat an apple”-style dietary replacement advice. Except in this case, there’s no huge nutritional gain like those stupid “instead ofs” have.

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