By-products that are used for food

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Unless one can feel an empathetic connection with the dairy cow or one is politically involved with promoting Animal Rights, the use of by-products is the cut-off point. If we want to liberate animals in general (from being used for food) firstly this matter of dairy farming must be tackled. Because people have such difficulty in giving up dairy products, they won’t choose to look at the ethics of milk production, which in turn dramatically lessens the chances for Animal Rights to get a foothold. Unless the by-product and co-product boycott is widely established, no amount of meat-avoidance will ever be enough to secure freedom for farm animals. In the end it all comes down to the participation of ethically-minded people in the denouncing of the complete range of animal cruelty, not just some of it.

Milk and eggs are so familiar in almost everybody’s daily lives - along with cheese, butter, milk chocolate, yoghurt, cream and various confections. These by-products seem quite benign, as if anything so useful or so delicious could ever be thought to be tainted. Yet ethically, if not also nutritionally, these products are dangerous to both the animals who suffer as producers of them and the humans who ingest them. Certainly both milk and eggs hide behind a very ugly system of animal abuse.

Dairy products particularly are hard to ignore because they’ve insinuated themselves into so many food products. For example, if you read the ingredients label on almost any commercial cake or biscuits, you’ll see ‘milk products’ (and/or ‘egg products’) listed. In fact I once counted over two hundred supermarket food items which contained milk or egg! Most people wouldn’t be prepared to deny themselves that many tasty products on ethical grounds. In so many ways we are well enough informed but we choose to remain ignorant to avoid inconvenience.