Left alone it would divide out into a lot of smaller local dairies, and the agri-business dairies would shut down. Sadly, its a given that the dairy lobby will prevent that from happening in the US.
As to why it’s better for the environment, comprehensive studies are hard to find. An Individual goat definitely puts out less methane than a cow, but also less milk. Most sources agree that the carbon and methane emissions per unit of milk are about equal.
That is, until you consider the question of feed. Goats will eat anything, and thrive on it. You can rent them out to clear brush by day, and milk them by night. Or you can let them loose in craggy landscapes where no food crops could possibly be grown. At most an occasional fly-by scattering of alfalfa and clover seeds will keep the landscape supporting their nutritional requirements. They do not need the kinds of grain-based, fishmeal enriched and hormone enhanced feeds that cows do in order to achieve the parity described above.
Goats (like sheep) can be allowed to range on rough landscapes and will come home to be milked on their own - no need to cramp them up in barns and warehouses necessitating the constant stream of antibiotics to manage disease vectors. This also feeds into the “better for us” category.
Cows get into trouble in any but the flattest, richest pasture lands. And a percentage of them will tend to stay out and dry up rather than come in for regular milking unless rounded up twice daily. And in the rare case, the loss of a single goat is no where near to the financial impact on the farmer to the loss of a cow.
OK, so your goats will eat anything, and you can use them to clear brush. What happens when all of the brush is clear? I mean, on a small scale, this isn’t an issue, but if you were raising enough goats to replace a decent sized herd of dairy cows, there’s not enough brush or craggy landscape for them to consume. At some point, you need to feed them.
As pointed out, there is an oversupply of milk. There are too many dairy farms producing too much product that the market cannot absorb. I would think thinning the herd of dairy farms would impact the smaller dairies hardest (closing them down, not consolidation), while the bigger and corporate-owned ones would welcome the reduction in overall industry output (leading to more stable, potentially higher prices).
Well, I think gambling is stupid and harmful too, but I don’t go around asking why are there still casinos.
I like milk. Case closed.
Godammit, I get so tired of these self-righteous types trying to save the fucking world when nobody asked them to. They won’t be satisfied until we’re living in teepees and drinking our own piss.
I like drinking straws too. Any animal stupid enough to get one stuck up their nose deserves to go extinct.
Surely environments costs for milk being destroyed is the most egregious part of this, I should think!
And this is why supply management is a better choice for the dairy industry. No price crash due to over production, farmers always meet their production costs, no subsidies to destroy milk!
Oversupply is the core issue here, raw capitalism, more, more, more! And why the US is so desperate to overwhelm the Canadian dairy market.
Supply management is more environmentally responsible, by far, than dumping milk.
Should it be pointed again? THEY CAN PRY OUT CHEESE OUT OF MY DEAD HANDS!
It is not about if can survive without it, we can live on potatos and water, but “criminalizing” dairy products is every revolutionary’s wet dream. So yes. We need milk (and i am not completely lactose tolerant) or there would not be “todays world.” It would be some kind of world, but certainly not the same.
We are down to almost a page of comments and the OP has not returned to address anyone. Sadly, I think they are not coming back, and tossing-out a topic with a thread title like this and then leaving seems like trolling. :mad:
I don’t drink coffee, sodas/soft drinks or al-kee-hol (occasional iced tea), so if you try to take my Moo Cow Fuck Milk*[sup]TM[/sup], we’re going to have a go-around.
Thanks TruCelt, Dewey Finn for education re the [dairy]-goat scene. So it would appear that goats (and sheep) tend to enjoy a better life than cows under highly-industrialised dairying; but this largely because of the difference in natures and habits, between different species.
I like shitting on the sidewalk. And yet there are laws against it. That said, the OP is wrongheaded. Sure milk production has its disadvantages. Same for any other product. But the real problem is that while you pay for the farmer’s labor and implicit rent for his land, the damages from all that cow manure and gas aren’t reflected in the cost of the milk. Put a fee on those gases and smells, and the price of milk will go up somewhat, while the gases will go down somewhat. Then people will adjust. Only this time consumers will be paying their way, unlike now. In other words, what RidderSport said.
we as a society apparently don’t really care about that sort of thing. trucking accounts for an inordinate amount of damage to roads, but maintenance and repair of roads is not accounted for in the cost of moving goods by truck.
Another reason trucks must be weighed is to calculate taxes on the truck. Carriers pay thousands of dollars in taxes to put that much stress on the roads, and it is calculated by their load weight. These taxes help maintain the roads and bridges.
What a coincedence, just today I first saw a tax form for Heavy Highway Use. The feds have taxes on vehicles that tear up the road more than others.
Of course, it assumes that you’re using the vehicle all the time. But if you’ve bought a 55 thousand pound vehicle, it’s probably because you’re going to be using it nearly all the time.
Additionally, there are federal taxes on gasoline that go towards highway maintenance. If you use a significant amount of taxed gasoline for something other than motor vehicles operating on public highways, you can get a credit for this tax.
While the amount of gasoline used isn’t exactly linear with damage dealt, larger and heavier vehicles that tear up the road more use more and thus pay more tax.