What is Quality?

Many people live their day to day lives without questioning much of anything and others are the complete opposite. The people who question things usually question things like topics on science, politics, and celebrity. A good majority of people even question about the quality of food, but this is one of the topics that is not as popular to the public eye. Dairy is an extremely important aspect in people’s lives and yet there are a lot of misconceptions of what quality dairy is. In the class’ discussion panel on Blackboard this week, I learned more about quality dairy from my classmates and I’s posts than I have my entire life. I learned that some big time manufacturers are actually credible and receive their milk from small, caring farms that actually feed and treat their cows right. This is not the case for others unfortunately.

When reading Deeply Rooted, I read how Lisa Hamilton discovered that not all cows lived a happy and healthy life while supplying milk. Cows are not always peacefully grazing in a field and then milked between two to four times a day. In some places, such as Clover, New Mexico, the cows are separated by age and kept in compact areas where they are not always free to roam and graze. They are unhappy without grass and do not really know what to do with themselves. Grass is a key part to their existence and like Harry’s ideology, “...pasture is not quantifiable. It isn’t a standard to be met; it is a principle.” In learning all the information about dairy from the discussion board and Deeply Rooted, I believe it is safe to say that (at least for me) the quality of dairy is based on the satisfaction of the producer and the consumer. For we as people to be happy with the product, we should make sure that the cows are happy throughout their time of producing the milk.