My Dairy-Free Milk Alternatives bring all the Boys to the Yard

Hindus sure know how to love their cows (photo source)

The world of milk is rife with environmental problems, shady dairy-free alternatives, and dodgy animal welfare standards. So I'm going to try to navigate this milky minefield in under 650 words. Its kind of an info overload, sorry.

Welfare Standards

Lets start with cow-milk, because that is the kind of milk that most of us put in our tea (we are British after all). It seems that a lot of British cows eat pasture in the summer, and live indoors eating hay, maize and crop waste products in the winter. This sounds like a good enough reason to buy British dairy products since I'm not sure how cows are treated in other countries.

The Compassionate Food Guide doesn’t go into loads of detail about milk, but it does say to buy organic or RSPCA Freedom Food milk wherever possible because it means the cows have access to pasture in the grass growing season and are less crowded when inside. Once again Red Tractor standards are easily the lowest.

Welfare standards are not only affected by the environment cows live in but also by their breed. Milk production per cow roughly doubled in the past 45 years and organic farmers are more likely to keep breeds which produce moderate amounts of milk.

Animal Health and Welbeing

Following on from my pig post two weeks ago we should remember that milk is not cheap, it doesn’t happen by magic. Milk is produced by mothers to feed babies (as some of you worldly folk might already know), so cows must become pregnant to produce it. This tends to mean artificial insemination (not very romantic), calves being taken from their mothers too soon (making mums and babies stressed and traumatised) and health problems associated with selective breeding for higher milk production (lameness, mastitis, infertility, weight-loss, I mean literally so many health problems, I don’t have time to explore them here, but if you would like more info here’s a link to start you off).

Milk Alternatives

So it’s unsurprising that its not just weirdy-beardy vegans who drink milk alternatives nowadays. Soya and almond milk seem to be the most popular but both of these have come under scrutiny recently for their environmental impact: it seems like milk drinkers can’t do anything right!

A lot of almond milk is produced in California which was suffering from some pretty serious droughts until recently, and extra industrial farming isn't going to improve their water situation. Industrial-scale soya production, on the other hand, contributes to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. But I think that the main problems with milk alternatives are:

• They transport a lot of water from their place of production
• They are produced in tetra-packs which are hard to recycle because they are made of a bunch of materials mixed together

Coconut milk and rice milk seem to be slightly better (for now), but I think that once again the solution before us is to simply drink less milk. Let's think about what we might be able to substitute water for, or perhaps drink more mint tea (I know we’re British but let’s face it, tea is imported thousands of miles to get here).

Good Milk!

The good news is that there are plenty of decent local farmers selling milk in Bristol: Bruton Dairy and Jess’s Ladies are two good examples (Jess’s Ladies make the most delicious yogurt on earth by the way). Also I have started making my own pumpkin seed milk, which makes me cringe every time I say it out loud (although its actually quite similar to sugar-free almond milk). And if, like me, you love chocolate, you might be interested to hear that the Compassionate Food Guide gave Green & Black's a big fat thumbs up for their animal welfare standards.

Do some research of your own, share ideas, I would love to hear your thoughts or anything you find out.

Well done for reaching the end of this post! I know it’s been a bit heavy going, I think I’m going to take a break from the Compassionate Food Guide for my next post. Please share comments/corrections/ideas below, and I’ll see you on the other side of Christmas.

Life Isnt Cheap

Today I would like to talk about pigs. To start with here’s an extract from an essay called Pig Rhythm by Rob Percival:

“Pigs also resemble humans in their mental and emotional lives, in some respects. Pigs are intelligent and sociable. As piglets they are fond of play. As adults they are gregarious. In the wild they like to sleep close to one another, lying nose to nose. They learn to respond to their own names and they wag their tails when they are happy. They dream and have good memories. They experience what can only be described as contentment, happiness, love, fear, grief, anger and sorrow, although these mean something very different to a pig than to a human. As many as 1.4 billion pigs are born to be slaughtered every year and the majority are reared in intensive systems.”

I am not a vegetarian, but the killing and eating of pigs, particularly on an intensive scale makes me deeply uncomfortable. Occasionally I do eat pork, and I try to get it from small/local farms, because what I am most disturbed by is how cheap meat has become, and how easily we cheapen a life until it is only worth paper and coins and a humane death.

A friend at work said to me that we are always amazed when an animal does something reasonable or intelligent (I was surprised to find out that pigs dream and have good memories). But this is because it suits our world-view and our purposes: if animals are unintelligent machines running on instinct we don’t have to feel bad about how we treat them.

But if we accept that these animals can solve problems, that they possess emotions, perhaps as acute as our own, and that they have their own wisdom (even if it is very different from human wisdom), we then have to start valuing their lives. At the very least, we have to treat meat as something costly and sacred, because its value does not just come from the sum of food and water that it consumed while alive. A creatures’ value is derived from the very life that it once possessed.

So, back to the trusty Compassionate Food Guide. Pig welfare varies in how much time the pigs spend outdoors, the amount of space they have and how long piglets stay with their mothers. It ranges from intensive systems to organic and free-range:

• A lot of pigs are reared intensively indoors. In Britain (and throughout the EU) the standards of welfare are better than elsewhere in the world, so buy British.
• Outdoor bred pigs are born in systems with outdoor space, then brought indoors for fattening after weaning and the mum continues to live outdoors. Waitrose, M&S and Sainsburys are better than other supermarkets for supplying outdoor bred pork.
• Outdoor reared pigs are born into systems with outdoor space and spend around half their lives outside.
• Organic and free-range pigs are born and reared in systems with space where they can roam outside.

And here are the assurance schemes in order of piggy welfare:

• Soil Association (the best)
• RSPCA Freedom Foods
• Red Tractor (easily the lowest)

Meat should certainly be a treat, and not something that we eat every day. So instead of getting squeamish and not thinking about where it comes from, we should honour the animal that has provided the meat.

My final word on the matter is to buy from smaller, local farms if you can. Their produce might not be organic, for various reasons, but it seems to me that smaller groups of farmed animals are more likely to have enough space and be better cared for. Smaller, local farms charge more than supermarkets too, which makes sense because life isn’t cheap. So animals are not cheap. So meat isn’t cheap.


As ever, please share any comments/thoughts/corrections/questions below :)