Ep.3: Bovine Intervention to Supine Conversation

After Yellowstone, our trip took us south into Utah for 4 days of national parks and a Utah Jazz game. But, following that old adage, I will now focus on the journey instead of the destination.
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My dad and I have had many a conversation on important world issues while on roadtrips, including one infamous family drive where we all did nothing but come up with band names, including the Smiling Potatoes of Death, the State-line Walrus Jockeys and one controversial name that is not allowed to be mentioned in my family since that fated drive. Between Dillon, Montana and Idaho Falls, Idaho, we encountered a grand total of three (3) other cars on our side of the road. This accurately represents how little there was to see. But it was a full moon, casting a certain glow on the mountains as well as the cows in the fields. I quipped to my dad that one knew a scene was magnificent if the cows look picturesque.

This got us discussing the life of a cow. (Like I said, a long road of nothing.) After much discussion, I concluded that I wouldn't enjoy being a cow. "Why?" Dad asked. "Because I wouldn't be able to eat ice cream." ...Amongst castration, a painful procedure of cutting off a cow's horns and inevitable execution, that's the best I could come up with.

I had incorrectly concluded that it would be cannibalistic for a cow to drink cow's milk. While this is true when the character Heffer in the Nickolodeon cartoon "Rocko's Modern Life" eats a hamburger, it is not true of drinking milk. But would it be vegan? We couldn't decide. It's not new news that earlier this year PETA wrote Ben & Jerry's a letter suggesting they start using human milk instead of cow's milk. Apparently, this is an acceptable substitute for them. So veganism is only for the products of other animals, not one's own species. But cows do not have dextrous appendages for mixing ice cream. Is it vegan or not to eat the literal fruit of the loins of one's own species if the food product is made by another species and served back to you? Obviously, it's sick and twisted to do so if the consumer is unaware, but let's say the cows were willing: Would it be vegan?