Fetal Bovine Serum - From a Cow's Point of View
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Debbie Nelson
January 2019

As serum I am the valuable part to the biotech humans. The dead body which nurtured me is destroyed.

Image from AnimalsVoice.com

I’m with calf again. I must have been pregnant a long time because I can feel my body getting ready to give birth. This calf is really showing life. I hope I get to stay with this baby. All the others were taken away from me a few hours after their birth. I was devastated. I don’t know where they took my calf.

The farmer is walking through the rows of us lined up in this big concrete building. His assistant is with him too. It’s pointing at individual cows. Oh no he’s pointing at me now. He’s waving his hand toward the door. This can’t be good. Whenever he’s around it signals trouble for some unlucky cows in my herd. It’s my turn now! I’ve noticed after his appearance some of us leave this un-natural home of concrete and metal. I wish I could live out on a big beautiful grass pasture with my herd and calf.

What have I done wrong to be expelled so callously? I gave all the milk I had to the humans. I’m only 5 years old. I’m so tired and lame! My housing is concrete and manure. I can’t give them as much milk as I used to.

The humans are forcing me on a trailer with some of my miserable herd friends. I’m in such bad shape it’s hard to stand up in this moving vehicle. We have arrived at a big windowless, bleak and frightening building. I can’t see inside.

The humans are forcing me and my friends inside this building. I smell blood and death all around me. I hear lots of desperate and panicky bellowing. I see other cows being murdered. But I’m pregnant you can’t kill me. It doesn’t matter to them.

I feel something against my head. Are they going to shoot me? Bam I’m gone. I wish I didn’t wake up out of the sleep of death again. I’m hanging in the air by one of my back legs. My throat has been cut and I’m bleeding. I can feel my baby inside. She’s fully alive and kicking. I can feel them cutting my baby out of me. It’s fighting for life. Please die quickly. I’m dead.

I have to get out of my mother’s body. I’m ready to live outside of her. This doesn’t feel like the right way to be born. The humans are slicing open my mother’s body. I’m not sure if she’s dead or alive. They’re pulling me out. I’m still wrapped in my protective covering my mother gave me. I’m alive! Why are they taking me away from her? I have no understanding of anything which is happening to me. All I know is I have breath and feeling.

The humans are taking me to a scary room. They strip me of my shielding wrapper. The long cord attached to me is being tied. I’m being cleaned. Some strange fluid is being rubbed all over me. It has a unfamiliar smell. A large needle is being stuck into my body. The pain is unbearable! The needle goes in-between my ribs into my beating heart. I hear a troubling noise. It’s like the sound I heard from outside my mother in the months before my birth. The pain is excruciating ! My blood is being drained out of my pounding heart. Just like my mother I’m dying. I’m dead.

I’m not dead. I’m the extracted blood. Very much alive I’m allowed to clot. I become two entities. Besides the clotting substance there is serum. I am refrigerated and by centrifugation we are separated. As serum I am the valuable part to the biotech humans. The dead body which nurtured me is destroyed.

I’m so alive I can culture cells. I can easily help cells grow because my host was in the growing phase. I also am so treasured because I am a friendly growing medium for many different kinds of cells. I’m not very picky. I’ve heard new synthetic kids on the block can replace me. Go ahead and try I’m cheaper. Humans are a greedy lot. Eventually I die too.

Death death and more death!

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And so ends this story of more dairy industry woe. Go vegan please. Be a producer and/or consumer who stops this extreme cruelty.

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