The suffering of farmed goats
Given the chance, goats love life – they like to roam, to browse, to run, jump and climb but inside British farms, their instincts are denied them.
Goats bred for their milk are typically zero grazed – that is, they are housed all year round as a matter of convenience. It is intensive farming. Some of the larger farms have thousands of goats kept permanently in barns. ‘Disbudding’ is commonplace. This is a painful procedure, acknowledged by one industry authority to be dangerous and life threatening. A hot iron is used to burn the horns off a kid within her first few days of life. The possibility of infection is great. The reasons goats are disbudded are twofold: so that they can fit easily into milking machinery; and to prevent the goats damaging one another in the stressful intensive conditions. As with cows, goats must be first made pregnant in order to produce commercial quantities of milk. Unwanted males are killed at birth.
Go Vegan
Killing an animal for food can never be regarded as humane. Animals’ lives are as important to them as ours are to us and none go to the knife willingly. Choosing organic or free-range over factory farmed meat, milk or eggs, continues to cause pain and suffering. The only viable solution to end animal suffering is to adopt an animal-free diet.