It’s no secret that the conventional dairy industry is in a deep, downward spiral, decades in the making. This is largely the result of a

commodity-based pricing scheme that was designed to do exactly what it’s doing: keep prices paid to farmers low and focus on quantity over quality.

The negative impacts have been widely documented, everything from farmer attrition to ecological devastation. But when the story of industrial dairying is told,

rarely are the cows given much more than a mention. And that's probably for the better, because the story of the industrial dairy cow isn’t pretty.

It all begins with dairy farm economics. The more milk produced, the bigger the glut and the lower the prices. But the lower the prices, the more milk

the farmer needs to produce to try and make money. And around and around it goes, with the dairy cow taking the brunt of the push

to produce more and more milk. They are, after all, doing the producing.

With a near-complete fixation on maximizing production, the cow has been pushed to its physical limits and beyond. The average amount of milk

given per year by a dairy cow rose from about 7,000 pounds in 1970 to more than 22,000 pounds in 2012, a 313 percent increase in production—per cow.

It’s been accomplished with all kinds of corporate-driven methods, from hormones and antibiotics, to stunning advancements and increases in feed,

and to 24-hour confinement and increased number of milkings per day.

The industrial dairy cow has suffered greatly from this dramatically increased production. Dairy cow health is becoming a major issue for the industry, giving rise

to extra costs associated with replacing the burned out cows and concerns about meat containing residues of the increased medications being used. A recent

Cornell University study found that mortality rates in U.S. dairy herds was over 10 percent a year. That means one out of every 10 cows in a herd is

prematurely dying every year. In 2002, the dairy mortality rate was 3.8 percent. Something’s seriously wrong in the dairy barn.

Animal nutritionists working with confined-animal herds refer to the industrial dairy cow as a “nutrient highway,” a cold but realistic picture of the speed and

quantity of the feed blends and nutrients “traveling” through a dairy cow daily. The problem is that this nutrient loading is all aimed squarely at milk production,

to the detriment of the rest of the cow’s health. In the end, the dairy cow can’t keep up, succumbing to a whole host of health issues earlier and earlier in

her life, and ultimately leading to an early death, either from a chronic health issue and/or general burnout that results in an unceremonious exit to the beef yards.

“Dairy cattle death losses are an extremely important problem,” writes Dr. Franklyn Garry, a professor at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. ‘

“Not only are these losses an economic disaster, they also represent very substantial problems with animal well-being.”

One thing is certain, the industrial dairy cow and the commodity-based dairy farmer need relief. The downward spiral of both—in terms of health and economics—is serving

no one but the giant dairy processors and agribusiness monopolies profiting from the exploitation. Given the current political and regulatory climate, it’s the

marketplace that will dictate the change, driven by an increasing public awareness that safe, healthy food cannot come from unhealthy animals and farms teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

For the past decade or better industrial dairy operators have wished and wished to produce more and more milk – now in hind sight perhaps the old saying

comes to mind – “ Be careful what you wish for.“

Gregory Caron

Winthrop