The Suffering Behind ‘Humane,’ Organic Milk - The Atlantic

Former employees said that sick cows were regularly denied antibiotics for mastitis and hoof infections, at least in part to maintain their milk as organic—a charge corroborated by an Alexandre farm worker not involved in the report. (Once a cow is given antibiotics, her milk must be sold as conventional for the duration of her life.) The farm has “natural” treatments that “allow us to not need synthetic antibiotics,” Vanessa Nunes, Blake and Stephanie’s daughter and a dairy manager at the operation, told me. “We don’t need to give an antibiotic for mastitis. We have a tincture that we’ll use.” (Mastitis can be debilitating when not treated with antibiotics.)

Whistleblowers also said cows with infections had their eyes packed with salt and had denim patches glued to their skulls. The farm responded that cows with pink eye were treated using a saline solution with cod-liver oil, and sometimes with apple cider vinegar. The farm said that the denim patch was a “gold standard” method to cure pink eye.

Jim Reynolds, a large-animal veterinarian, told me that salt would be “horrible” to use in any animal’s eye and that patches had no medical benefit, and could worsen an infection by trapping dirt and irritating the eye. “I don’t know that it’s been recommended since the 1980s,” he said. He told me that the farm’s treatment for eye infections was “nonsense.”

This #organic #quackery must end.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/alexandre-farms-treatment-of-animals/677980/