The Cost of Clinging to Cow's Milk

Across the United States and the United Kingdom, dairy is falling apart under the weight of its own contradictions. In New York, lawmakers are finally trying to curb the rise of mega-dairies. In the UK, the government is reluctantly considering taxing sugary milkshakes, years too late. And in both countries, the industry’s stranglehold on policy has led not just to environmental disaster and human health concerns, but to the routine, state, sanctioned killing of anyone who gets in the way, cows, badgers, and the truth.

Let’s start in the US, where New York, one of the nation’s top milk-producing states, is home to around 500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), mostly dairy. These mega-farms lock up more than 425,000 cows in industrial hellscapes where they live short, controlled lives of forced pregnancy, separation, and finally, slaughter. The scale is absurd: 17.5 billion pounds of manure are pumped out each year, polluting air, water, and soil. That’s the sewage equivalent of 12.9 million people.

The manure crisis alone should be enough to halt expansion. But that’s just one part of the disaster. In just two decades, New York doubled the number of dairy factories while wiping out over two-thirds of its small family farms. And yet, 95% of these “operations” still get to parade around under the wholesome-sounding label of “family-owned.” As if a prison becomes nurturing just because it’s run by someone’s uncle.

This isn’t progress. It’s a full-scale collapse of any moral or environmental framework. Which is why a new bill, aimed at halting the creation or expansion of new mega-dairies, is being described as a "first step." Not a solution. Just an attempt to hit the brakes before the industry drives off another cliff.

And what’s the defence from the dairy lobby? That limiting herd size “limits their opportunity for success.” In other words, environmental ruin and animal abuse are just the cost of doing business.

Across the pond, things aren’t much better.

In the UK, the dairy industry is fighting to hold onto its sugary mask. For years, flavoured milkshakes have somehow dodged the government's Soft Drinks Industry Levy, even though many contain more sugar than Coca-Cola. The excuse? “Children need calcium.” The truth? Only 3.5% of young people’s calcium comes from flavoured dairy drinks. Most kids get it from actual food. The exemption was never about health, it was about profit. 

And now that the Treasury is finally reviewing this loophole, the industry is panicking. But instead of reformulating their products or telling the truth, they’re clinging to the fiction that cow’s milk is a sacred health food. Never mind that it’s high in sugar, cholesterol, and saturated fat. Never mind that it’s been linked to acne, reproductive cancers, and early puberty. Never mind that everything people claim to need from milk is available in plant-based forms without exploiting anyone. Because the dairy industry isn’t selling nutrition. It’s selling nostalgia. 

But perhaps the most grotesque twist in this global dairy tragedy is what’s happening to badgers.

In England, badgers have been massacred in their hundreds of thousands under the excuse of controlling bovine TB, an epidemic largely fuelled by how cattle are traded, confined, and tested. Only around 5% of cases originate from badgers. And yet the government keeps expanding culls, even against the advice of its own scientists.

Why? Because it’s easier to kill wild animals than challenge the cattle industry. It’s easier to shoot badgers than question why we’re farming cows at all.

And it’s easier to keep the public focused on wildlife than admit that the dairy industry itself, this brutal cycle of forced breeding, infant removal, and early slaughter, is the true disease.

Because if we stopped farming cows, bovine TB would disappear. There’d be no more endless compensation to farmers, no more blood on badger fur, no more slurry lagoons poisoning waterways. But that would require confronting the unthinkable: that the entire system is the problem.

So we carry on. We let dairy farms balloon to unimaginable sizes. We let children drink sugar disguised as health. We let badgers die so we can keep milking cows. And we call it tradition.

But tradition doesn’t justify torment. History doesn’t excuse hypocrisy. And subsidies don’t make slavery ethical.

If cow’s milk were introduced today as a brand-new product, a sugary animal secretion harvested through forced breeding, infant separation, and slaughter, it wouldn’t just be banned. It would be unthinkable.

And yet it’s still in every school, still in every fridge, still being propped up with tax breaks, media campaigns, and dead animals.

The dairy industry isn’t just environmentally toxic or nutritionally outdated. It’s morally bankrupt. And the longer we protect it, the more damage it does.

This isn’t just about sugar. It’s not just about pollution. It’s not just about badgers. It’s about ending an institution that relies on violence and deceit to survive.

Tax the milkshakes. Ban the mega-dairies. Stop the culls. But above all, stop pretending dairy is anything but what it is: exploitation disguised as nutrition.