You don’t have to look too far around the Vermont countryside to encounter herds of beef cattle, steers in large part. So much for the myth that there are few or no “male cows” in the state of Vermont. If you want to see “male cows,” don’t look for them in a dairy herd, for the obvious reason that male animals do not lactate.
On the subject of vocabulary, female bovines are cows, while male bovines are called bulls, and castrated bulls are referred to as steers. There is no such animal as a “male cow” any more than there is a “male mare,” a “male sow,” a “male doe,” or a “male hen.” If one wants to be taken seriously, the first step is to at least know the correct terminology.
A good second step is to avoid embracing the doctrine of PETA. This group’s own admitted agenda is anything but the welfare of animals.
The best step of all is to vote with your dollars at the supermarket checkout, the farmers market, or directly from a sustainable farm that treats its animals humanely with the respect owed to creatures who nourish us. Know your farmer so that you will know who and what you are voting for.
The “farming-industrial complex,” as I like to call it, is indeed guilty of much maltreatment of animals, enabled by laws exempting farm animals from the humane protections given to other animals, thanks to the industrial farming industry’s powerful lobby. If you disagree with inhumane confinement of farm animals in pens, cages and feedlots, don’t buy meat from these ill-treated pigs, chickens and cattle.
Money is what brought this industry into existence, so use your own money to support a different kind of industry.
Marci Sudlow
Danby
