Vegans are cowed, cows can be happy

● It’s a question philosophers have grappled with since time immemorial: what is happiness?

The latest people forced to come up with an answer — and admitting they struggled — were advertising gurus who had to decide if dairy cows can ever be “happy”.

Eleven consumers complained to the Advertising Regulatory Board that Fair Cape Dairies’ social media claims that it had “#happycows” were self-evidently false.

“Milk cows are separated from their calves, which always causes trauma; and male calves are used as veal,” they told the ad watchdog.

Fair Cape, from Cape Town, said the complaints had been orchestrated by the Vegan Society of SA, which was using the company as a proxy for all dairy farming.

It submitted a Dairy Standards Agency audit in which it scored well in numerous areas, such as pain-free milking, cattle condition, gentle handling and care of calves.

Within the dairy farming context, the directorate said, “the cows are as humanely treated and therefore as ‘happy’ as possible”.

But it added: “Dairy farming is an extremely controversial area and there is always space to argue that any commercial farming of animals is inherently inhumane, no matter how carefully conducted.

“[We need] to consider what the reasonable person would understand from the advertising and whether they would feel misled if they knew ‘the truth’.”

The directorate said only a naïve consumer would think meat or dairy products arrived in a shop “without some suffering”.

It shared the Vegan Society’s discomfort with Fair Cape’s #happycows claims. But it found the claims of “#happycows” and “humane” farming substantiated, and dismissed the complaints.