There is no fair go for anyone in the dirty dairy business.
The Queensland Dairyfarmers’ Organisation tried for years to register a ‘Fair Go Dairy’ logo that would recognise a minimum price paid to farmers and tell consumers (more or less) what they were buying. The giant dairy corporations have now killed the scheme with expensive legal actions, leading to the withdrawal of the logo. Once again, any hint of transparency is abhorrent to this industry.
Anyway, a fair go logo would have been false advertising. Cows get nothing like a fair go. They are repeatedly artificially impregnated and then separated from their newborn calves so their milk can be sold to humans instead of given to their own calves.
I remember living on a farm as a boy and listening to the cows crying all night for their stolen babies. Male calves cannot produce milk so are usually slaughtered at five days old, females replace their mothers who are often suffering from malnutrition, mastitis and lameness and are considered ‘spent’ and killed at about five years old.
Consumers are increasingly realising the cost of dairy to the cows, the farmers, the environment and their own health, and some 34 per cent of consumers are now turning to delicious, healthy alternative milks like soy, oat, rice and almond. No amount of obfuscation or marketing spin can halt the decline of the pitiless dairy industry.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
