Concerns
One of the main differences between a vegan and a typical vegetarian diet is the avoidance of both egg and dairy products. Ethical vegans do not consume dairy or eggs because they state that their production causes the animal suffering and/or a premature death.
To produce milk from dairy cattle all female calves are separated from their mothers soon after birth and fed milk replacer in order to retain the cows milk for human consumption. Vegans state that this breaks the natural mother and calf bond. Unwanted male calves are either slaughtered at birth or sent for veal production. To prolong lactation, dairy cows are almost permanently kept pregnant through artificial insemination. After about five years, once the cows milk production has dropped, they are considered "spent" and sent to slaughter for hamburger meat and their hides. A dairy cow's natural life expectancy is about twenty years.
In battery cage and free-range egg production, unwanted male chicks are culled or discarded at birth during the process of securing a further generation of egg-laying hens.
Read more about this topic: Ovo-lacto Vegetarianism
Famous quotes containing the word concerns:
“Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The country is fed up with children and their problems. For the first time in history, the differences in outlook between people raising children and those who are not are beginning to assume some political significance. This difference is already a part of the conflicts in local school politics. It may spread to other levels of government. Society has less time for the concerns of those who raise the young or try to teach them.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)