I’m Pregnant With Twins and was ‘Milked’ at Cardiff Market – Here’s Why
Earlier today, I stood outside Cardiff Market wearing a milk-pumping bra and little else, while tubes ran from my chest to a milk churn at my chained feet.
Stalls in Cardiff Market sell milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt, and other products of animal suffering. Every day, shoppers buy them without a second thought about the real cost of each product.
Standing on a giant milk splatter, I wore ear-tag earrings to represent the identification tags forced through cows’ ears on farms and held a sign reading, “Dairy Exploits Mothers.”
The message was simple: cows’ milk is for their babies, not us.
Dairy Depends on Pregnancy
At 33 weeks pregnant with twins, I know just how extraordinary it is that a body can create life, and just how exhausting pregnancy can be. Soon, my babies will be here, and the thought of someone taking them from me shortly after they’re born, for my milk, and then forcing me to become pregnant again soon after, is horrific. That’s exactly what cows endure for their whole lives when humans take the milk meant for their babies, and why I wanted to use my pregnancy to draw attention to this hidden truth about the dairy industry: cows only produce milk when they become mothers.
After calves are separated from their mothers, the females will usually be raised to replace their mothers in the dairy system. Male calves are often sold for veal or killed because they cannot produce milk.
Just like humans, cows are devoted mothers. They carry their babies for around nine months, just as humans do. They lick and nurture their calves after birth and call out for them when they’re taken away. Anyone can understand the suffering that causes both mother and baby.
Motherhood Shouldn’t Be Exploited
The chains wrapped around my feet at today’s demonstration represent the shackles that are placed around mother cows’ back legs to stop their exhausted bodies from collapsing on the hard, slippery floors they’re forced to live on, but also symbolise the way mother cows are trapped in a cycle of pregnancy, birth, loss, and milking.
Their bodies are treated like machines.
They are forcibly impregnated again and again. The cycle continues until their bodies can no longer keep up, at which point they are sent to slaughter, unless they collapse and die on the farm.
If this happened to humans, or even dogs or cats, we would immediately recognise it as torturous exploitation. The fact that the victims are cows does not make it acceptable.
We Don’t Need Dairy
The good news is that avoiding this cruelty has never been easier.
Supermarkets across the UK are packed with delicious plant milks made from oats, soy, peas, almonds, coconuts, and more. They can be poured on cereal, added to tea and coffee, used for baking, and enjoyed in exactly the same ways as cow’s milk.
What I Hope People Take Away
A few passers-by today looked shocked by the sight of a heavily pregnant woman connected to a milk churn.
But discomfort can be powerful when it makes us question something we’ve always accepted.
If watching a pregnant human mother symbolically treated as a milk machine feels wrong, that’s because it is. The dairy industry does exactly that to cows every single day of their miserable lives.
I hope people who saw today’s demonstration leave with one thought in mind: Cow’s milk is for baby cows, not humans.
Please go vegan and leave mothers and babies in peace.
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