I recently heard that cows’ blood is in milk because the machines that are used to suck out milk are so rough on the cows. I didn’t get a reference when I heard it, but I checked out PETA’s web site. They had a nasty description of the milk industry but they didn’t mention any blood.
I guess I really have two questions:
Is there some miniscule amount of blood in milk?
Would this be a problem for strict vegetarians?
Depends on what kind of vegetarian. Some vegans don’t consume any animal products at all, which, of course, would include milk products.
As a vegetarian, and as someone whose best childhood friend was a dairy farmer’s daughter, and who therefore spend a large chunk of her childhood on a dairy farm, I can tell you that
A.) Milk is white
B.) Cows blood is red
C.) If there was red blood in my milk, I would not drink it
D.) If we’re talking about the vacuum tube milking machines, they are most certainly NOT rough on cows at all. They pop onto the utter, and make a pulsating, sucking motion that moves the milk through the utter. If they were rough, a cow would stop producing milk. They get freaked out easily.
E.) Where did you hear such a silly statement? I don’t eat meat for moral reasons, but as someone who has witnessed the milking process in a number of barns (hell, I live in Vermont) I can tell you that there isn’t anything rough about it. You can put your palm against the tube and feel how hard it sucking, and it’s not hard enough to give you a hickey. (shut up, you think kids play in barns and DON’T attempt to get into trouble?)
Hmm. Reminds me of the time my brother caught a cattle prod in the head… I wasn’t there to see it, but I hear there was a lot of blood when THAT happened.
[MAJOR hijack, completely off subject and having nothing at all to do with anything…DO NOT even bother to read it]
I warned you!
Drinking blood is not only a problem for vegetarians, it is a problem for all us omnivores because of the clotting problem. It’s always been difficult to get a nice fresh glass of blood in a restaurant. You usually end up with a big, frothy lump of coagulated…anyway, it’s easier to consume in the following form:
INGREDIENTS:
3 quarts pork blood
1-1/2 pounds raisins
1-1/4 pounds sugar
1 pound mixed nuts & chestnuts
3/4 pound rice–cooked
2 oranges with all rind
1 pound figs
1 teaspoon red pepper
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons salt
bay leaf
DIRECTIONS:
Mix all and bake in oven for one (1) hour.
Strict vegans are not concerned with any of this and I am starting to see their point.
Of course, I know you are wondering what happens when a vampire bites a vegan and creates an un-dead zombie that cannot drink blood. The difference is clearly shown by contrasting the tuxedoed and classy George Hamilton and the lovely Susan St.James in ‘Love at first bite’ with the average vegan vampire who sneaks through gardens, carefully circling away from garlic (the REAL reason for crop circles), to sneak up on carrots and suck the juice out of them as they lay asleep. This type of vampire is identified by muddy clothes and an orange chin.
[/MAJOR hijack, completely off subject and having nothing at all to do with anything…DO NOT even bother to read it]
Well…I DID warn you not to read it. Where are those damn pills? I must have forgotten to take them.
Nuts OP, nuts responses…I’m going back to MPSIMS where women are discussing nipples and somewhere else where the guys are talking jockstraps.
It’s enough to make you wonder…
But I thought you Londoners all loved blood pudding!
I’m still patiently waiting for a “Vegetarians: Spit or swallow?” thread.
I’m much too polite to bring it up myself…
Did you know old blood turns into like cottage cheese?
What about Vegetarians vaginatarians? Is that okay? But Im too polite to bring that one up.
To actually answer the Op: 1. No, vegetarians are not suppossed to drink blood (they CAN, tho). 2, What you describe is not a problem and does not exist, as i guarentee you our Kosher friends would have found out about it years ago, and raised Holy Hell over it.
As to the rest of you: BAD posters- no treats!!! 
another hijack–
would the blood drained when an animal in slain kosherly be kosher? i’m saying no, cuz i seem to remember that kosher meant that the blood didn’t touch the meat…
true?
You don’t need a thread. I had a vegan girlfriend once and I know the answer! She swallowed because she said “The animal didn’t have to give it’s life; the protein was a gift, and it contained none of the harmful ingredients in red meat.” She was probably rationalizing because I told her “it’s quid-pro-quo here” and she wanted to play the old ‘tongue-in-cheek’ game. (Not THAT cheek, you perverts!!!..homie don’t do ‘up the down staircase’!)
“The animal didn’t have to give it’s life; the protein was a gift, and it contained
none of the harmful ingredients in red meat.”
You didn’t mean she has oral sex with animals but won’t eat them, did you?
I have read somewhere that there are vegans that can eat meat that has not been killed. They are called placentaphages. They are allowed to eat human afterbirth as their name implies. Anyone heard about this before?
Well, insider, there is a certain faction of natural birth enthusiasts which advocates doing something useful or at least symbolic with the placenta. One option is eating it, as it is supposedly very nutritious. Many placental mammals do this.
I suppose a certain number of natural birth types are also vegans and I don’t see that a vegan would have any objection to eating an animal product if 1) they themselves were the animal in question or 2) the animal in question could actually say “Please, dig in, there’s plenty to go around.”
But no, jokes aside, you can’t go into a vegan grocery and buy a box of Placenta Helper.
SwimmingRiddles is right, but allow me to take another tack:
Of the five to ten women I have known who breastfed their children, about half of them quit when the kid cut his first tooth. Dairy farmers pay a premium for alfalfa and sweet feed, keep the fields and barns in top condition, keep their cows in perfect health to maximize output and test them on a monthly basis to make sure things are going right. The last thing they want to do is bruise up the area that gives the goods, thereby turning the cow off to the whole affair. The udders of dairy cows are treated well.
While I haven’t worked in the dairy industry, other family members have.
Well, that’s what I said at any rate. Possibly I dreamed everything after “I had a vegan girlfriend once…” Come to think of it, she wasn’t vegan at all.
Vegetarian vampires obviously would feed not on carrots, but on blood oranges.
In one sentence you have attempted to ruin a perfectly acceptable explanation for crop circles. Blood oranges indeed!! I’ll discuss this with my next thesis advisor. The last several have been institutionalized.
(Faraway stare…) Yep, I remember when Ted Kaczynski and I used to talk a lot.