How can Jews justify consuming dairy products on Shavuot or any other time?

When considering our Shavuot menu, which has traditionally been centered around dairy dishes, we should consider how cruel the modern dairy industry is. Dairy cows are forcibly, artificially impregnated annually on what the industry calls “rape racks,” so that they will constantly provide milk. Their babies are taken away almost immediately, with VERY traumatic effects.

Below is a statement from Dr Michael Klaper about this:

The very saddest sound in all my memory was burned into my awareness at age five on my uncle’s dairy farm in Wisconsin. A cow had given birth to a beautiful male calf. The mother was allowed to nurse her calf but for a single night. On the second day after birth, my uncle took the calf from the mother and placed him in the veal pen in the barn—only ten yards away, in plain view of the mother. The mother cow could see her infant, smell him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse him. The heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour, for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant and painful auditory memories I carry in my brain. Since that age, whenever I hear anyone postulate that animals cannot really feel emotions, I need only to replay that torturous sound in my memory of that mother cow crying her bovine heart out to her infant.”

If a dairy cow was producing just enough to feed her calf, she would only produce about one gallon of milk per day. Instead, due to intensive artificial selection enabled by DNA sequencing, the average American dairy cow now produces over 7.5 gallons of milk per day. This unnaturally high milk load has created the dairy industry’s two biggest welfare issues: mastitis and lameness.

These painful conditions are exacerbated by the living conditions inside factory farms, where most American dairy cows live. Contrary to the happy pastoral scenes used in dairy advertising, over 90 percent of dairy cows live almost exclusively in barns on concrete floors slick with sewage, where their hooves and joints bear the weight of a full udder for most of their adult lives. Mastitis is an udder infection, and factory farms’ high-humidity, low-ventilation environment promotes bacterial growth. Cows live in stalls where they are tethered by the neck except when they are milked. This confinement severely limits opportunities for natural behaviors like exploring, socializing, and grooming. Industrial dairies are an animal welfare nightmare.

After the cow’s milk production decreases, generally after four or five pregnancies, she is sent away for slaughter.

Jews are to be rachmanim b’nei rachmanim, compassionate children of compassionate ancestors, emulating God, Who is compassionate to ALL His works (Psalm 145:9, recited three times daily as part of synagogue services). Jews are mandated to be kind to animals, consistent with the Torah prohibition of tsa’ar ba’alei chaim. There are many Torah and rabbinic teachings about compassion for animals.

An additional reason that Jews should not eat dairy products is that cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas over 80 times more potent per unit weight than CO2 in heating the atmosphere during the 10 -15 years its molecules are in the atmosphere. At a time when climate experts are issuing increasingly dire warnings about climate threats, seas are rapidly rising, glaciers and coral reefs are rapidly melting, and there has been a significant increase in the frequency and severity of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods, this is a very serious consideration.

In addition to major greenhouse gas emissions, modern dairy production also contributes to water pollution, land degradation, and inefficient use of water, energy,  and other resources.

Further, many health studies have connected the consumption of dairy products to several illnesses, some life-threatening, and many people are lactose intolerant. This is because the cow’s milk is meant for her baby, not for humans. Rav Kook, a leading  Jewish philosopher and author, considered the human use of cow’s milk a theft.

The above points impel the question: how can Jews (and everyone else) justify consuming dairy products, especially when there are so many delicious, nutritionist-approved plant-based substitutes, including almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, and oat milk, so that Jews can meet nutritional needs without the many negatives associated with cow’s milk?

On Shavuot, we can celebrate the first fruits of summer and, like Ruth in the fields of Beit-Lehem, enjoy the recently harvested grain. This is both true to the origin of the holiday and matches up-to-date nutritional recommendations to base our diets on grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables.

More information on Shavuot, dairy, and Jewish ethics can be found in the Center for Jewish Food Ethics’ new resource: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YW90BgqifPwPZPnGWM1wanu4RKLWs2-0/view?usp=sharing  . Some of the material in this article was taken from this website.