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I mean it: don’t have a cow, man

The California Cheese Board sponsors a TV ad featuring two sleek, sun-drenched dairy bulls standing amid rolling hills of lush pasture while hitting on a passing pair of comely heifers. It almost makes you want to be a cow. What a crock.

Ninety-one percent of cattle physically unable to stand for inspection at meat packers come from dairy breeds such as the familiar black and white spotted Holstein, according to a study done by the University of California at Davis. All of the cattle famously caught on tape this past October being stabbed with a forklift, jabbed in the eye and otherwise tortured and abused at a Chino, Calif., slaughterhouse were dairy animals.

In addition to an appalling disregard for food safety — the incidence of mad cow disease is up to 58 times more likely in downer animals — outrage exploded over the absence of simple humanity in the cows’ treatment. It all begins down on the farm.

For dairy cattle in a commercial operation, life is short and hard. Male calves are destined for meat, many as veal, ensuring them a living hell.

Veal calves, which grow to about 400 pounds, are forced to live their entire lives without solid food in tiny pens about the size of a Great Dane’s dog crate. They can lie down on the bare slatted floor where they poop, or they can stand up. Turning around isn’t an option. Walking is impossible. Located in large buildings for ease of production, they never see the light of day. And the public doesn’t see them.

After three months, veal calves are forced onto a truck bound for the slaughterhouse. Upon arrival, they stumble into outdoor holding pens, completely exposed to the weather. The most able among them walk awkwardly with muscles shaky from disuse, but so many can’t even manage to get up that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s slaughter policy prohibiting downers makes a special allowance for veal calves “too tired or cold to stand.

” Veal parmigiana, anyone?

Approximately 30 percent of a herd’s milkers are culled each year, a University of Florida study found. Most of these are healthy cows whose production has begun to decline with age. Meat from these 5- and 6-yearold animals, which were bred for milk and not prime rib, becomes cheap hamburger.

To maximize profits, most dairy farms also put in the food chain cattle that have broken legs and debilitating illnesses. Often, they have suffered difficult birthing, milk fever or other injury. These sick and hurt beasts get stuffed into trucks together with healthy, nervous herd mates for agonizing journeys to the meat packer that may last hours or more. By the time they arrive at their destination, many are in such deplorable shape that they are unable to get to their feet.

USDA policy calls for summoning a veterinarian to examine animals that cannot get up upon delivery to the packing house. If the animal is declared a downer and therefore unacceptable as meat, workers have to euthanize it and dispose of the carcass. If they can instead force it to stand for inspection, their job is done and the producer is paid more. Thus, the stomach-turning footage of sick beasts power-sprayed to simulate drowning; agonized immobile animals shocked again and again with a cattle prod; helpless 2,000 pound creatures being shoved out of trucks to drop onto concrete four feet below.

All they could do was scream tortured bellows of protest before they died.

The USDA needs to do some strict culling of its own. Heads should roll over the lack of oversight in holding pens, and more agents posted to observe every last truck of cattle arriving at plants.

Congress needs to enact the Downed Animal and Food Safety Protection Act and the Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act. Veal crates need to be outlawed, as has already happened in Europe.

Dairy organizations across the country should devise humane guidelines mandating, not recommending, euthanasia at the farm for very sick and badly injured animals. Records of downer cattle are available. They can and should police their own members.

Soy milk ads don’t have talking cows. But drinking the stuff means you don’t want to see any more screaming ones.