🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <34FB058F.499A@enterprise.net>, John Scudamore
<whale@enterprise.net> writes

>But, I don't feel you have to have farmed to get an idea about what the
>farmers are up to.  I know you would like to discuss me rather than what
>I mentioned---the factory farming of milk cows.  

Well we would, if you could give an example.

>I know I was a bit over
>the top with Oz but he does annoy me now and then with his theory that
>farming is going in the right direction with the chemical assault, and
>organic farming is stone age farming etc.

I DO think farming is correct to use tested products that are (to quote
a Torstenism) provably not unsafe so as to produce better quality food
free of pests and diseases. I do not think organic farming is stone age
farming for a whole host of reasons and I think organic and conventional
can live quite happily together offering a variety of differing
products. Indeed I am all for as much organic farming as there are
enthusiasts keen to do it. Personally I wish organic farming did not
permit industrial products and was indeed pre-industrial but it isn't so
there you go.

>It looks like BSE is due to OP warble dressing, 

No it's not. The evidence against this being the case is overwhelming.

>and the chemical
>industry want to blame the farmers for that---with the cow feed theory. 

The evidence that it is feed borne is utterly overwhelming.

>And there are plenty of sheep farmers injured with OP sheep dip---thanks
>to the wonders of modern farming---

Not to mention that blowfly attack and various other nasty parasites of
sheep makes it rather difficult for a caring farmer NOT to dip. The
problem is dipping without being contaminated all day (almost impossible
IMHO) and worse if you are contract dipping for weeks on end. This is a
problem.

>in reality the sales drive of the
>chemical industry.  And so on.

God, you are paranoid. It's the diseases of sheep that are the problem.
What are you going to do? Are you going to let sheep die a particularly
nasty death from blowfies or scab or not? Get real.

>One more thing----the milk isn't worth drinking anyway, which makes me
>laugh.  

Most people would be glad to laugh.

>And all that cows milk produced to make baby milk---another
>useless poisonous product, that also kills 1.5 million third world
>children every year, due to dirty water.

And that's the cows fault?

>This is a site by a vegan http://www.waste.org/~lanshark/vegan/milk.html
>  I don't subscribe to the dairy free diet myself, but it has some
>interesting facts about milk & the dairy industry.  

Almost certainly all or mostly biased or wrong, hardly an unbiased
source is it?

>"In 1905 the Lord Mayor's Cup at the London Dairy Show was won by a
>24-year- old cow. Where will you find a cow like that today?

Not a hope. Her cell count would be through the roof by that age. Modern
milk hygeine regulations prevent this happening, organic or non-organic.

>                   She had obviously enjoyed sound nutrition from the
>beginning. Now dairy cows are slaughtered at six or seven years after
>relatively few lactations, often in a diseased state and after too many
>difficult calvings having been put to a large Continental bull."

Boy, you think it wasn't worse in 1905? You are dreaming. TB,
brucellosis and a host of really nasty diseases were rife but you think
this was the 'ideal time to be a dairy cow'. You know nothing about it.

A question. Why do the smallest, most beautiful cows (Jerseys) often get
put in calf to a huge charolais bull and what is the effect of this?


-- 
Oz