The following is a first person account of Susana Romatz's transition from dairy goat farmer to vegan cheesemaker. READ ON
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My Journey from ‘Humane’ Dairy Farmer to Vegan Cheese Maker
Marloes Boere grew up on a dairy farm in the Netherlands
"I grew up on a dairy farm. It's the reason I'm vegan today. Just the other day, my father told me that one of the cows died because she refused to eat after her baby was taken away from her. This broke my heart. For cows to produce milk at profitable levels, they need to have a baby every year. After birth, their calf is taken away from them within a couple of hours. The calf is put into a READ ON
Jan Gerdes, former dairy farmer
Hof Butenland is a farmed animal sanctuary in North Germany founded by Jan Gerdes & Karin Mück. Jan was a dairy farmer for many years but after a change of heart that included the decision to go vegan, he converted the farm into a sanctuary and vowed to devote the rest of his life to caring for farmed animals and working to end their exploitation. Speaking about the animals he once used, READ ON
Helen Peppe, small family farmer
Helen Peppe grew up the youngest of nine children on a farm in Maine, where she lived until college. In her recent memoir, Pigs Can’t Swim, she recounts how the early connections she made with the animals raised and killed on her family’s farm drove her decision to become a childhood vegetarian (and a vegan in adulthood), and the often lonely world she inhabited as a result of that READ ON
Christine Mariani Egidio, former sheep farmer
"In April of 2009, we purchased 32 acres and decided to get into breeding and selling meat sheep to help pay the mortgage and to provide income after we retire… I am horrified to tell you my motto about our sheep breeding business. I would tell everyone, “They have a really great life, up until they no longer have one.” It makes me cringe now to type that. I wholeheartedly believed in the “humane READ ON
Renée King-Sonnen, former beef farmer
Six years ago, Renée King-Sonnen fell in love with, and married, a fourth generation cattle rancher. She moved from suburbia to 96 acres of Texas pasture where she soon discovered she had fallen in love with the herd of cattle who lived there, too. Fascinated by the animals, Renée began spending a lot of time on the range with them, getting to know their individual personalities, and observing READ ON
Dr. Michael Klaper, grew up on dairy farm
Dr. Michael Klaper is an internationally recognized clinician, teacher, and speaker on diet and health. He has practiced medicine for more than 40 years and is a leading educator in plant-based nutrition and integrative medicine. Klaper writes: “I did much of my growing up on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin. I began milking cows when I was 8 years old. Several things are now clear to me: The READ ON
Edith Barabash, former cattle ranch worker
In the summer of 2016, Mike Lanigan, a multigenerational farmer and cattle rancher, decided he no longer wanted to raise animals for slaughter. He said it felt too hypocritical to continue loving the animals on his farm as much as he did, only to send them to violent, unnecessary, early deaths. With the help of an employee, Edith Barabash, who had gone vegan while working on the farm, he decided READ ON
Bob Comis, former pig and sheep farmer
In late April of 2011, on his "humane, pasture-raised-and-grass-fed" farm's blog, pig and sheep farmer Bob Comis posted a sobering one-sentence personal reflection, entitled, "It Might Be Wrong to Eat Meat": "This morning, as I look out the window at a pasture quickly growing full of frolicking lambs, I am feeling very much that it might be wrong to eat meat, and that I might indeed be a very READ ON
Howard Lyman, former beef and dairy farmer
The people I knew involved in animal production were good people just trying to do the best they knew how for what they envisioned were the right reasons — feeding a hungry America. They believed they were providing an absolute necessity: first-class protein. It was ingrained in them from the time they were kids: 'Eat your meat'. Howard Lyman is a fourth generation cattle farmer who converted a READ ON
