A dairy farmer has told of how "really offensive" comments by a vegan on national television to describe how cows are inseminated are "wrong".
ITV's This Morning programme, presented by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, hosted vegan campaigner Joey Carbstrong along with two dairy farmers.
Mr Carbstrong told dairy farmers Jonny and Dulcie Crickmore that cows are "artificially inseminated with a fist up their anus... When she can’t produce milk any more, she is murdered for her body."
The vegan campaigner implied that if the victim was a human being, it would be called rape.
But Mr Crickmore said the comments were "really offensive" and "wrong".
"I find that really offensive. The word rapist, to use that word for inseminating a cow, I feel is wrong," he said.
Safe farms
Mr Crickmore said that the dairy industry inseminate cows to make farms safer.
"I think what you need to understand being a dairy farmer is there's a few reasons why we inseminate cows first of all the danger to human beings imagine if you have a lot of bulls on your farm it can be very dangerous," he said.
"The second reason is the semen that we choose to buy to impregnate the cow leaves smaller calves so the cow has an easy calving.
"The third reason is the bull we use leaves calves that are stronger so they can have a longer and better life."
Consistent words
Mrs Crickmore also responded, saying: "We uploaded a social media post showing three triplets, and quickly received a lot of abuse from vegans. Words like rape, murder and slavery were consistent.
"Rape is an act of sexual predation; murder is one human being purposely killing another human being; and slavery is one human being enslaving another human being."
In January, television presenter Piers Morgan clashed with a vegan campaigner who backed a petition, attracting 35,000 signatures, to ban a school rearing pigs for meat.
And recent death threats made to farmers has led the Vegan Society to release a statement saying it "makes no sense" to attack farmers for providing the public with a product they want to buy.
