Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Many people think that keeping a cow tied up in a dairy shed is a natural thing. When people see cows roaming on the roads they react by saying that the dairy people should not let them loose and that they should be cared for and protected within the confines of a dairy. Instead of finding their own food – often from trashcans and garbage heaps – they should be fed within the shed.
While I think it is appalling to let cows out onto the street to fend for themselves, keeping them in sheds permanently simply to be fed and to give milk, is even worse. Some spend their entire lives standing on concrete or dirt floors contaminated with blood, urine, faeces; most are confined in crowded sheds where they are forced to live amid their own waste.
In these small leaky sheds or halls these dairy cattle must endure all types of weather, including rain and extreme temperatures 24 hours a day. The shed may provide shade but certainly not clean comfortable resting areas. Their ropes are so short that most of them have to keep their heads low all day long. They have a rope going through their noses so that, if they pull, their noses start to bleed. The cows have no access to their calves the entire day. They show signs of stress from social isolation and the inability to lie down, as well as an increased susceptibility to a number of diseases. They are not even allowed to graze freely for a few hours a day. According to food production scientists, milk production in India is the lowest in the world because the cows and buffaloes are sick, unhappy, in constant pain and in a state of perpetual starvation. Cattle are large – they need exercise. They need the sun and fresh grass and movement. Failing this they fall sick very soon. A number of studies have shown that cows love exercise. Being confined to a stall severely limits their natural activities such as walking, exploratory behaviour, grooming and licking their hindquarters. Lack of exercise leads to lameness or injury – a common reason for dairy cows to be sent for slaughter. Other causes of lameness or injury include poor quality floors, cows being forced to stand for too long on hard surfaces and lack of proper nutrition.
Often the cows or buffaloes are bathed – if you can call throwing a few buckets of cold water over them as bathing – and the water is left to seep into the floor of the shed creating slurry and filth. The sheds have a pungent odour of urine and are almost impossible to breathe in. There is no ventilation or light and the animal stands in the dark the whole day. The food troughs are never cleaned – fresh hay is simply piled on top of old hay and this starts fermenting adding to the smell. Rats move in and often the cow/buffalo stops eating as she is liable to get bitten by the creatures already in the trough. Rat droppings become part of her food.
A highly contagious and erosive infection that affects the skin on the bulbs of the heel, digital dermatitis is caused by contact with slurry, and thrives in damp and dirty conditions. The disease exists in dairy farms with poor hygiene and wet spaces.
Cows and buffaloes have a natural span of about 20 years, and can produce milk for about eight years. But most dairies fail to recognise the veterinary care they need. After an injury or an illness is recognised – often at a young age of 3-5 years old – the cows are seen as worthless and sent to be slaughtered.
The dairy milker rarely washes his rough contaminated hands before he milks the cow. His hands hurt her and cause abscesses, and bacteria enter her body. Mastitis is the inflammation of the mammary gland and udder tissue, and is a major endemic disease of dairy cattle. It occurs as a result of chemical, mechanical or thermal injury to the cow’s udder. When a cow is infected with mastitis, her milk-secreting tissues and various ducts throughout the udder can be damaged permanently by bacterial toxins. The inflammation leads to decreased milk production. The milk becomes contaminated, poisonous and unfit for consumption. But the buyer is never told that, because there is no check of milk except for checking its fat content. There is absolutely no check of bacterial load.
So many cows get endometritis – an infection of the inner layers of the uterus that reduces fertility and milk yield. The disease is spread and transmitted due to poor hygiene in a dairy farm.
As the milk becomes less and less and the cow/buffalo gets sicker, the owner resorts to that dreadful injection of oxytocin which induces contractions in the uterus and forces the milk out. This also gives the animal labour pains twice a day and makes her even more ill. Her uterus becomes inelastic and now the farmer has to force artificial insemination on her to make sure he gets calves quickly because he sees how sick she is.
Now the animal gets ketosis, a disease that occurs in dairy cows characterised by partial anorexia and depression. The protein in her disease riddled body breaks down. The smell, the filth, the darkness, the rough milking, the pain in her joints, the pain in her neck from being tied so low – all of it combines to produce the unhealthiest, saddest being.
There are no dairy laws in this country and as a result the milk yield of our cows and buffaloes is the lowest in the world and the worst nutritionally. Would you allow a new born baby to drink from the infected breast of his mother? No, of course not. But everyday, because of the filthy state of the dairies, you are drinking diseased milk.
Is it better for the cows to wander around eating garbage, then? In the recent past every village had gauchar land – land kept for the grazing of cows. Today the heads of each village sell this land secretly and there is nowhere for the animals to go. They are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. They cannot stay in the sheds because those are appalling and they cannot move outside on the roads and the garbage dumps.
Has anyone considered their plight?
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