***DAIRY PRACTICE EXPOSED***

That's the sensationalist headline the Kansas City Star puts on this story from the Chicago Tribune, detailing how diary cattle that are in "rough shape" from being intensively milked for years, wind up in 17% of the beef our country produces - something implicit in the Humane Society video that they're just now reporting out.

Yes, Virginia, milk is a murderous industry. It's a fact of which vegans have long been well aware, but one that vegetarians try to avoid thinking about and about which the general public has so far been clueless. Granted, the Chino story is no longer front-page for most of the public, but the fact that major newspapers are devoting ink to this is welcome. And if the specter of depleted cows being treated like garbage isn't enough, the story also mentions the prevalance of Johne's disease in dairy cattle being slaughtered and its possible connection to Crohn's disease in meat-eating humans. Again, the unethical treatment of the animals and potential health liabilities for those eating them are two sides of the same coin.

Unfortunately, after a solid start, the piece backs off into standard mainstream claptrap, "balancing" the stark facts with blather from warm-&-fuzzy dairy farmers about how those facts simply don't, apparently, exist, with laugh-out-loud statements like this: "You don't get into a business like this unless you care about animals." Oh really? Can we get Steve Mendell to back that up? By the way, where is he these days?