It's Definitely Not Awesome For Bobby Calves: A Response To Fonterra

The new regulation by dairy giant Fonterra that bobby calves are no longer allowed to be killed on farm from June 2023 is being hailed as a breakthrough of sorts.

A rescued bobby calf , Bambi. Photo credit: Jinki Cambronero

This cannot remain unchallenged as there are serious ethical issues surrounding bobby calf transport and slaughter that people need to be aware of. One of the reasons Fonterra gave for this new regulation is that complacency over the contentious issue of on-farm calf treatment may harm the dairy industry. It is also an attempt to put ‘value’ on bobby calves so that the issue becomes more publicly acceptable.

I am not swallowing it and neither should you.

What consumers of dairy need to be aware of is that bobby calves are still being killed in huge numbers (around 1.8 million a year) . This new regulation – and in fact, their trip to the slaughterhouse is most likely to be less humane than being killed on farm. It seems to me to be a particularly weak way of reframing the issue of bobby calves.

One particular comment by Paul Everest, a dairy farmer in Mid-Canterbury was extremely difficult to swallow. A news item by 1News quotes Paul Everest as saying, “there is always and there will always be a position for the four-day-old bobby calf. They live an awesome four days and then they're down to the processor”.

An awesome life? All four days of adjusting to being taken from their mother; living in a small pen among other confused calves; getting fed twice a day from a milk dispenser instead of suckling naturally.

Sounds awesome. Not.

Paul Everest’s rather glib and dismissive attitude toward the reality of bobby calf suffering needs to be challenged. It is in the interest of public transparency that consumers of dairy know the reality of dairy production and not this smokescreen put out by Fonterra.

Consumers need to know that the New Zealand regulations that are supposed to protect bobby calves from extreme suffering are inadequate.

Don’t take my word for it. The Animal Welfare(Calves) Regulations 2016 state that the maximum time for transporting 4 day old calves to the slaughter house is 12 hours. These are young neonatal animals, still with their umbilical cords attached, who would naturally suckle regularly from their mother frequently. Going 12 hours on a noisy, smelly truck, on their tiny unsteady hooves, with no protection from their mother and no milk is cruel. It is not awesome. The regulations also state that calves can go 24 hours without milk before slaughter.

It seems to me that on-farm slaughter would be more ‘humane’ then this distressing scenario. Can you imagine the young four-day-old calf being offloaded at the slaughter house after a long and exhausting trip. Waiting time before being killed can go on for up to 24 hours (inclusive of transport time).

Kind of put me off consuming dairy over 10 years ago. I am now an ethical vegan and will never be part of the cruelty involved in dairy production by consuming dairy products.

Treating young animals in this way is horrendous. And the numbers involved are seriously disturbing, Let’s be exact with numbers. On the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) website the statistics lie buried deep in a spreadsheet -but they are nonetheless there for all to see. In the 2020/2021 season 1,854,898 tiny calves were sent to their deaths.

This is a bloodbath of grand proportions. I think most New Zealanders would find the statistics and regulations that I have highlighted to be distressing. Most people care about animals. They don’t like to hear about these unpalatable facts.

Nonetheless, they are facts. It’s time to get factual about bobby calves. They are a systemic problem of the dairy industry. A cow must get in calf to produce milk – but that leads to a surplus of unwanted calves (both male and female). They are considered of ‘low value’. This attempt by Fonterra to make them a part of the ‘value chain’ doesn’t mean they won’t still suffer.

They will still be taken off their mothers; kept for four days in pens; suffer from sicknesses due to lack of colostrum or bugs going around the sheds; be sent on a noisy truck for up to 12 hours; wait at a slaughter house for their deaths without any food or care for several more hours. Then they will be stunned by a bolt gun to their brains and have their throat slit.

What a party! What an awesome experience!

Please consider giving up dairy and challenging the mirrors and smokescreens put up by the dairy industry. It’s not fair on 1.8 million calves to be treated like this. They did nothing to deserve such cruelty except being born.

© Scoop Media