Recently The New York
Times published an article on
female cheesemakers who have been naming their cheeses after famous feminists.
Their cheeses are named after women who have
fought fiercely to improve women’s lives, including Amelia Earhart, Marie
Curie, Hillary Clinton, and Jane Goodall. Yet in using their products to
celebrate women, the cheesemakers are forgetting someone: the female animals
who have their milk stolen to make cheese.
If “animal-based feminist cheese” seems like an oxymoron, that’s because it is.
Female
animals are exploited in animal agriculture specifically for their milk, eggs,
and reproductive organs.
All
mammals lactate to nourish their babies. Accordingly, though it may seem
obvious, female animals actually have to be pregnant or have just given birth
to produce milk.
In
the dairy industry, cows are put through a yearly cycle of forcible
impregnation, birth, and lactation. Their daughters are dragged away only to suffer the same fate as their mothers (they’ll be used for milk as soon
as they’re old enough to conceive). Cows’ sons are forced into tiny crates and
given only weeks to live before they’re violently slaughtered for veal.
The
misery of mother animals is undeniable. Mother cows have been known to cry and bellow for
days, yearning
for the calves they will never see again. Many have been filmed following the farmers as they drag the babies away.

After
four or five years of enduring this cruel cycle and producing abnormally large
quantities of milk, thanks to genetic manipulation and drugs, cows become “spent. Their milk production slows down and
their bodies just give out. Many suffer painful infections, such as mastitis.
Some become so weak they are unable to stand.
No
longer profitable for dairy farmers, “spent cows are sent to the
slaughterhouse and brutally killed. Many are so weak they are dragged onto transport
trucks.
Now
before you say, “Oh, but this was a goat farm, you should know that mother
goats and their babies suffer a similar fate. They are torn apart, often only
hours after birth. Female kids are raised to replace older goats, while the males
are either slaughtered immediately or raised for meat. Virtually all baby goats
suffer painful mutilations, such as castration and disbudding.
And
it’s not just the dairy industry that exploits female animals. The meat and egg
industries exploit female bodies every single day all around the world.
In
egg production, one of the most egregious abuses is the extreme confinement
of hens, who are
crammed together into cages so small that each hen must spend her life on floor
space smaller than a notebook-sized sheet of paper. These cages often contain
five or six hens who are denied nearly everything natural to them, like
walking, perching, nesting, or spreading their wings.

Similarly,
mother pigs are often kept in gestation crates, individual cages so small the
animals cannot walk, turn around, or lie down comfortably. They are continually
impregnated to produce more pigs for human consumption. Mother pigs spend their
lives on concrete floors. They will never see grass or root through dirt, and
they will never be allowed to bond with their piglets.

Still
not convinced? Watch this.
Simply put: Animal agriculture is
anti-female.
The
cheese sold by dairy farms should never be called “feminist cheese if it’s made
from animals’ milk. As a woman and a feminist, I could not promote feminism
while contributing to an industry that systematically exploits female bodies
and has been linked to higher risks of
cancer in women.
By imagining myself in their place, I realized what animals went through: a
needless cycle of abuse that we can end simply by leaving animal products off
our plates.
For
a list of true feminist cheeses—which don’t exploit females—click here.
Check
out the tasty vegan recipes on our Pinterest page.