I have some vegetarian related questions?

Question

is milking harmful or abusive to cows?

is kosher gelatin (that was in a yogurt's ingredients) something that comes from animals (i know gelatin is, but idk if KOSHER changed it at all)

if i drink milk or eat cheese that isnt considered "vegetarian", does that mean animals were harmed in the making of it or something like that?

srry if u find the questions stupid- i just became vegetarian yesterday, and im not sure if i wanna ask my mom to buy soymilk or vegetarian cheese

Answer 1

DO what you can. Every little bit helps.  

Answer 2

'Club soda not seals' has answered perfectly. One more thing tho. Although almost all the milk we get comes from abused cows, some home cows are treated properly. In India all the cows naturally give much more milk than their babies need. So it is natural that one can gently take her excess milk. However, in most parts of the world there is no respect for mother cow. Therefore vegan seems the best alternative. After a few days you might like to go shopping with your Mum and tell her why it's better to have vegetarian rennet in the cheese. I hope she understands. It's OK if you gradually become vegan. The most important part is to stop the meat-eating first.

Answer 3

is milking harmful or abusive to cows?

Yes very much so. Mammals don't lactate unless pregnant, or recently pregnant, you must forcefully impregnate cows (rape), and the female calves are either slaughtered or added to the diary herd. The male calves are killed for veal. And the cow will stop making milk after the calf is born, so they inject the cows with steroids that keep the fetus from developing. The fetus will stay in there for as long as the farmers want, just so the cow will make milk. It's painful for the cow to be pregnant all the time. Cows live for about 25 years and produce milk for about nine years. The stress of the factory farm leads to disease, lameness and reproductive problems and most cows die or are sent to the slaughterhouse in four year. The cows are hooked by their udders to electronic machines and cows are subject to constant electric shocks, this leads to mastitis. They spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors and living conditions are abysmal.

is kosher gelatin (that was in a yogurt's ingredients) something that comes from animals (i know gelatin is, but idk if KOSHER changed it at all)

Yes. Kosher gelatin can be made with fish bones, and/or beef skins.

http://www.ivu.org/faq/gelatine.html

if i drink milk or eat cheese that isnt considered "vegetarian", does that mean animals were harmed in the making of it or something like that?

Animals are harmed in the making of any animal product, so yes of course.

These questions aren't stupid, congrats on becoming a veg! There is also rice, hemp, almond, and oat milk instead of soy.

Here are some sites to help out new vegetarians/vegans:

http://www.vivausa.org/activistresources...

http://vegan-info.com/faq.html

http://www.vegblog.org/archive/category/...

http://vegetarian.lifetips.com/

http://vegetarian.about.com/

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/vege...

This blog is good: http://veganpeace.blogspot.com . It has links to guides, information, reasons to go veg, recipe sites, foods to eat, other vegan blogs, nutrition, tips and ideas, just go to toggle post.

Just remember check the ingredients and research on nutrition nd what foods to eat (links above)!

Answer 4

eating vegetables is harmful and abusive to plants.

Go ahead and have a double bacon cheeseburger.  Seriously.

Answer 5

Yes it is

Still Gelatin, the animals are just treated properly

Yes

I'm a vegetarian, I drink milk still, I still have kosher gelatin (I'm a bad girl), I'm just not a strict vegetarian.  

Answer 6

Vegan is the way to go for me. You think your giving up something, but your not. You won't miss anything, with all the good dairy substitutes.

Answer 7

Milking is stealing.  That milk is meant for their babies...not us.  The cows have to be impregnated every year to keep them giving milk.  The male calves are used mostly for veal...They are separated from their babies withing days of giving birth.  Their babies cry for them and they look for their babies for weeks.  Then after everything is said and done the milk cows are slaughtered.  That's where most of the fast food beef comes from in the US.  Also the cows are pumped full of hormones that cause them to produce 3 times more milk than is natural to them.  Even if you get organic milk that doesn't mean that the cows lives are any better.

Kosher gelatin is still made from the same things...the difference is that they don't use pork and the cows that were used were blessed and bled instead of getting a bolt to the head.  Sorry to be so blunt.

Cheese is vegetarian unless it has rennet.  Rennet is made from the stomachs of cows.

The questions aren't stupid.  They are good and you had a right to ask them.  Good luck:)

Answer 8

Kosher gelatin is gelatin.

Defiantly buy vegetarian cheese.

Milking. Yes milking is harmful to cows as the only way to get the milk is to keep them constantly pregnant and then to take away their babies straight but the worst thing is, that if they have a boy calf then its immediately slaughtered and turned into veal. So by buying milk you are supporting calf slaughter.  

Answer 9

Milking is not harmful to cows in and of itself. Some people object to modern milk farming methods, but just like everything else, it's up you you.

Vegetarian really just means you don't eat meat. Dairy and eggs are still available. They are not the flesh of an animal, and the animal is not killed for it. If you're going to go all out and avoid animal products totally, then you're vegan.

But don't worry about what other people think anyway. Your diet is your choice. If you want to eat it, you can.

Good luck.

Answer 10

Good questions. Milking in and of itself isn't harmful or abusive. However, the way that most milk is obtained in the USA is less than kind. The milking process itself is less of a problem, though it certainly can be unpleasant and certainly isn't "natural" or gentle... I worry more about the hormones and antibiotics, etc. That being said, it is entirely possible to get milk from cows that were treated kindly and not given chemicals.

Kosher gelatin can come from a number of sources, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Kosher gelatin can come from cows and fish, or it can come from plants. There's no way to know by looking at the package. (The kosher designation deals with how animals were killed and how their bodies were dealt with post-mortem rather than how they were treated while alive.)

Non-vegetarian cheeses contain rennet, which is essentially the lining of an unweaned calf's stomach. Vegetarian cheese uses other enzymes (from microbes/bacteria) to coagulate the milk in the first step of the cheese-making process. To my knowledge, there's no such thing as non-vegetarian milk.

Unless you're prepared to go vegan (and deal with a somewhat more rocky transition), ask mom to buy Tillamook cheese (it's vegetarian, uses non-animal enzymes to coagulate the milk) and organic milk.