The Happy Cow Myth

Happy - The only emotion cows feel.

Not even scientists or philosophers deny anymore that cows are sentient beings. They can feel pain and they suffer but they also experience joy and happiness.

Not even the dairy and meat industry is denying anymore that cows can suffer, but in fact, so the myth goes, they don't. Instead they are happy, free-range, organic, and many of them even laugh.

There is a whole brand of cheese called 'The Laughing Cow' and the chocolate company 'Milka' is working hard on sustaining the myth of happy cows everywhere. They have even named one kind of chocolate bar 'Milka Happy Cows'. Whilst many advertisers revert to idyllic images of healthy and complete cow families as well as friendly farmers on a pasture, these two dominant players in the dairy industry also use comical anthropomorphised imagery of a cow with human traits.

Part of the Milka Campaign. The photo shoot for
this included a real cow in the studio. 

The combination of those opposable characteristics of human and animal in one persona has three functions:

1. It arouses humour as a cow wearing jewellery and having a good time laughing her ass off, is just funny.

2. A cow displaying human traits,  participating in human activities makes the cow very relatable to our human experience. We identify with her joy because she is shown to express joy in the same way we do (by visiting a massage parlour or by simply smiling in satisfaction and enjoyment)

3. A humanised cow also serves the function of convincing us that her life must be great, because human lives are more enjoyable than animal lives anyway, given the fact that we are sheltered from many risks that wild animals live with every day. So a humanised cow, is in fact a very lucky cow who is cared for and protected by her human community of farmers and consumers.

These images create an individual character for a cow. Whereas in reality all cows or even all animals are massified, that is grouped into one large mass, indistinguishable from one another (as Adams states in Sexual Politics of Meat) the dairy industry creates a characteristic happy cow, who we as the viewers of these adverts get to know. We begin to see her personality with all her quirks. The more we get to know her and the more we are exposed to her carefree lifestyle we want to become part of her happiness and bliss. We buy the product and we can rest assured that the milk in it came from the happy cow that we know, she is our friend and we want to support her.

Obviously not all of these factors play a role in our decision making when buying a product, at least not consciously. But the happy cow narrative is a very good strategies of eradicating any concept of a sad or suffering cow.

Luckily enough there are organisations that resist the invention of  a relatable character to give cows a personality and return dignity as well as intrinsic value to their person. Instead, they fight both the massifying of all cows as well as the construction of an absurd individuality for a specific member of the cow community. They expose the machine that is behind the oppression of cows whilst at the same time showing how diverse their community is and how each and every cow is affected in a different way by the dairy and meat industry's lies, depending on their sex, sexual orientation, age and physical ability.

To find out how you can combat the happy cow myth click here and visit White Lies.