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A note to our friends – ISCOWPs Matching Gift Challenge, sponsored by an anonymous donor, was launched on July 13. Up to $50...
A note to our friends – ISCOWPs Matching Gift Challenge, sponsored by an anonymous donor, was launched on July 13. Up to $50,000.00 will be matched in four increments of $12,500.00 by the end of the year. As of August 30, generous ISCOWP donors have given the first and second $12,500.00! We will be announcing the third increment challenge in October. The ISCOWP staff and cows are grateful for your love and support! Updates will be posted in future e-newsletters, our donate page, and our Adopt A Cow page.
Dairy farms are among the most dangerous workplaces. Why aren’t they regulated like it? (Articles published August 27 by Vox, August 21 by PBS News)
Dairy farms are often portrayed as quaint and bucolic. But on the ground, the dairy industry is among the most hazardous to work in — the combination of heavy machinery, thousands of large animals, and the millions of tons of toxic manure that they produce creates a perfect environment for injuries, and even death.
This was made painfully, tragically clear when last week, six workers — five adults and one teenager — were killed at a Colorado dairy farm 45 miles northeast of Denver. Four were part of an extended family, including a father and two sons.
Local officials haven’t said much about the deaths, other than confirming the victims died from “gas exposure in a confined space.” The source of the gas? Cow manure.
According to two unnamed dairy industry sources who spoke with Denver’s ABC affiliate, a contractor working on an underground manure pit accidentally turned on a valve or pump that released hydrogen sulfide, a gas that is formed by decomposing animal manure. Exposure to the gas caused the worker to collapse “almost instantly,” according to a dairy industry publication.
In an attempt to rescue him, five other workers at the farm, called Prospect Valley Dairy, entered the underground manure pit and met the same fate (a supervisor had reportedly warned them against doing so).
Breathing in high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can cause rapid unconsciousness and “nearly instant death,” according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is now investigating the Colorado deaths.
Agriculture is already one of the most dangerous industries to work in, OSHA reports, and dairy work ranks among the most dangerous jobs within that sector. Yet farms aren’t held to the same labor safety standards as other industries.”
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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — After six 12-hour shifts milking cows, José Molina-Aguilar’s lone day off was hardly relaxing.
On April 21, he and seven co-workers were arrested on a Vermont dairy farm in what advocates say was one of the state’s largest-ever immigration raids.
Nearly two-thirds of all milk production in New England comes from Vermont, where more than half the state’s farmland is dedicated to dairy and dairy crops. There are roughly 113,000 cows and 7,500 goats spread across 480 farms, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, which pegs the industry’s annual economic impact at $5.4 billion.
That impact has more than doubled in the last decade, with widespread help from immigrant labor. More than 90% of the farms surveyed for the agency’s recent report employed migrant workers.”
To fill the supermarket shelves with milk and milk products, there is more than one soul who gets exploited. There is the obvious exploitation of the cow. Additionally, humans are exploited to help produce the milk. Not only do dairy workers have a grueling work schedule with low pay, but they also face barely regulated working conditions that can be hazardous and even cost them their lives. Because many souls suffer to put dairy on the shelves, the cost of dairy is very high.