Deadly Dairy – Routine, Standard Practices of Animal Cruelty in the Dairy Industry

“Eating dairy fuels the cycle of brutality to animals.”

The short documentary, Deadly Dairy is produced by Animal Equality India and shows the routine abuses and cruel standard practices of mistreatment and exploitation for every individual cow in the dairy industry, every single day.

Animal Equality conducted an extensive undercover investigation on dairy farms all across India to produce this film. The film shows the standard routine practices of dairy farms in India’s dairies of all sizes, both in India’s villages and cities. Since India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of dairy milk, and it takes an enormous number of animals to address the demand, you see first-hand how these animals are brutally and severely treated and made to suffer. This happens everywhere in the world to dairy cows for milk. It doesn’t only happen in India. It is the exact same ritual cycle of abuse, cruelty and exploitation in the U.S., Europe, and wherever dairy is produced. 

We are all being harmed by the production and consumption of dairy, as this industry along with the meat industry, is horrifically cruel to animals every single day, and is destroying our environment. In addition, the animal agriculture industry uses a tremendous amount of water that is running out on our planet, and it produces an enormous amount of pollution that is destroying our Earth’s waterways and oceans, and is the biggest known contributor to climate change. 

We could save water, our environment, and millions of sentient individual animals, by choosing alternative plant-based milks and cheeses. Instead of dairy that causes horrific suffering to animals–choose a healthier and kinder diet with plant-based milks and cheeses made with almonds, cashews, hemp, coconut, soy, rice, oat, peanut, barley, and pea milk. These plant-based milks and products will not contribute high cholesterol or saturated fat, nor heart disease and reproductive cancers like dairy products do.

Always choose kindness over cruelty and killing animals. 

The Ritual Cycle of Dairy Cruelty – The Truth about Dairy:

• Dairy cows receive no medical care, ever.
• Dairy cows are forced to reproduce.
• They are forcibly artificially inseminated, causing females significant pain – using unsterile equipment, unhygienic conditions, and all done by humans’ unclean arms into the female.
• The forced reproduction insemination process is done every year, until the female cow collapses – from overproduction (this is not normal to produce a baby every year).
• Animals spend their entire lives chained and tethered, so they can barely move.
• The female cow is forced to stand in her own feces and urine, leading to painful urinary and reproductive infections that are never treated, this is horrific for them.
• Every female cow’s newborn baby calf is not allowed to drink their mother’s milk—colostrum–and many babies die as a result. All so humans can have her baby’s milk. 
• The baby is left to die or is sold to slaughter, and can barely move, is thrown on to a truck, treated like “garbage” never knowing their mother – all for a human.
• Male offspring share the same fate as female calves, they are also “treated like garbage” as newborns, and either are forced into “veal calf slavery” or thrown onto a slaughter truck.
• The mother’s torment is excruciating, both physical and emotional, she is not allowed to ever nurse her own young. All for milk that is not ours and causes human reproductive cancer.
• Workers forcefully inject the mother with the drug, oxytocin, to speed the flow of the cow’s milk for increased profits – the pain is on par with going into labor for her. It is illegal, but is commonly used. 
• Female cows are forced onto artificial milking machines, which is painful for the cow, and it can stay on long after the cow is dry—creating even more pain and suffering for her. 
• Many cows are used in research to see how humans can increase milk production and get more from her body, more quickly – plus increasing her birth rate – increasing her number of births – all causing her significant and painful birth problems. She, a sentient being, is treated like a “machine” for the humans that drink her milk.
• Dairy owners abandon their sick cows. There is no empathy or compassion for her. 
• Cows are being sold to slaughter when their milk production slows.
• Frightened, sick, terrorized, and half-dead cows are forced onto the slaughter trucks – they are whipped and beaten on to the truck because they are sick, and can barely move, and never were allow to lie down in their five years – they are riddles with arthritis.
• Men will break her tails, kick and beat them, even worse, to get them on to the trucks; then give them no food and water for the long transit to slaughter; and many are severely hurt during the long truck-ride to slaughter.
• The animals are forced to watch as their mothers and siblings are brutally killed with hammers and knives, all fully conscious – for humans that drink her milk and eat cheese.
• Every single day – for those who consume dairy.

See more about plant-based milk alternatives.

See more about plant-based butter alternatives.

See more about non-dairy cheese and egg alternatives.

Film Length: 17 Minutes

Film Premier: 2017

Watch the Film

Watch on YouTube

Learn more from Animal Equality

Know the Dairy Cycle

See the Photo Gallery

Quotes from the Film

“Animals experience love, grief, joy, pain and suffering—just like humans. 

“Have you ever noticed that humans are the only animal that continues to drink another species milk—into adulthood? No other species in the world continues to drink the milk of an entirely different species. And no other species drinks the milk of another species beyond very early childhood.”

“Eating dairy fuels the cycle of brutality to animals.”

“The average lifespan for a cow in the wild is 15-20 years. But due to the abuse and cruelty and abuse of pushing females to have too many baby calves too quickly, they die within 5 years and are sent to slaughter.” 

“An entire life of suffering, for those who buy dairy products.”

Film Credits

Animal Equality India, Animal Equality