The Brutality of the Dairy Industry Exposed by Farm Sanctuary

If you get a chance, please take a few moments to watch this superb video. It won't take you long. It's called "Behind the Mustache" (meaning milk mustache). It is a tragic video by the wonderful folks at Farm Sanctuary that shows, in an uncompromising way, the brutality of the dairy industry.

The day will come, I am certain, when good people will look back on this time in which we live and they will regard our treatment of animals as utterly barbaric. Generations from now, men and women, young and old, will gasp when they watch films such as this one, that show frightened and bewildered calves being reduced to mere commodities. Brutalized. Squirted down with hoses. Left to suffer in the dirt. And dragged off and turned into veal, without tasting the milk of their mothers. Because we human beings rob that milk from their mothers and drink it when we do not need it for our survival.

I watch films such as this one and regret that I was blind for so long. I regret I did not become a vegan 20 years ago.

But there is a wonderfully hopeful side to this video. Please keep watching it. Six minutes and forty-five seconds into the video, a caption comes on that says, "It Doesn't Have To Be This Way." And it shows calves who were going to be slaughtered and ended up in Farm Sanctuary's California shelter. These calves are happy. They're full of spunk and life and curiosity. They run and play and live the long lives that they were meant to live.

So a hundred years from now, future generations will speak of the barbarism that existed in 2010. But just as we today remember tiny pockets of abolitionists in the 1830s, 40s and 50s who resisted slavery, future generations will remember small groups of people living today who made a difference in the lives of animals. True, our numbers are small. But those who advocate for the rights of animals will be regarded the same way that we today regard abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

There is a lot of violence and malevolence in this world. There is a lot of cynicism and indifference, too. But one need not search hard to find inspiring examples of compassion, kindness, courage and hope. These wonderful qualities are as abundant now as they ever were in the past, and they will one day triumph over violence, indifference and the commodification of living beings.