Public Response to the Stolen Baby Wombat: A Mind-Blowing Case of Hypocrisy

How can so many miss something so obvious?

You may have seen the viral video of a woman ripping a baby wombat from its distressed mother. Social media erupted in outrage, and rightfully so! What she did was was cruel, thoughtless, and inexcusable:

What almost no one seems to realize

Many of the people furiously typing angry comments about this incident are, in fact, supporting something far worse every single day. By consuming animal products, they pay for animals to have their babies ripped away from them and killed. In this article, I explore this glaring hypocrisy, with a focus on the dairy industry.

Parallels between the wombat incident and the dairy industry

1) Taking away what matters most

Just like wombats, cows love and care for their babies. After giving birth, mother cows form a deep emotional bond with their calves. When their babies are taken from them, they often cry out in desperation for days. For both mother and calf, it is the most essential bond they have. But the newborns can’t stay with their mother — because humans want to consume her milk.

2) Complete disregard for suffering

The woman in the video dismisses the obvious distress of both the wombat baby and its mother. Similarly, society largely ignores the suffering of animals in the meat and dairy industry, even though the cruelty is evident and well-documented.

3) Exploitation for personal gain

Critics of the wombat incident rightfully accuse the woman of exploiting the moment for “personal gain”. Yet, how is it any different when people willingly fund the needless cruelties of animal agriculture, just for fleeting palate pleasure?

Why dairy is MUCH worse than the wombat incident

1) Not a single tragic event, but a global system of exploitation

The dairy industry is not an isolated incident — it's part of a worldwide system of industrialized animal cruelty that exploits billions of animals every day. Animal agriculture is the largest act of systematic violence in the history of this planet.

2) Lifelong suffering and captivity

Unlike the wombat incident, where the baby is returned, dairy cows are kept in confinement for their entire lives, deprived of basic freedoms and constantly exploited for their milk. Dairy cows are pushed to produce up to 10 times more milk than they would naturally. This extreme demand causes physical suffering, including painful udder infections (which is also why there is regularly pus in cow’s milk).

3) Forced reproduction

As soon as dairy cows reach puberty — around the age of 13 in human years — they are forcibly impregnated in what the industry calls “rape rack”. This often involves horrific, painful methods, including the insertion of a fist into the cow’s anus. The forced pregnancies are repeated every year.

4) Male calves are discarded as ‘waste products’

Male calves in the dairy industry are often considered worthless. They are either slaughtered for meat shortly after birth or shot dead, a practice referred to as “dairy’s dirty secret.”

5) Brutal physical abuse

Many dairy calves undergo painful procedures such as castration and dehorning without anesthesia. Investigations continue to reveal how their mothers are violently kicked, beaten, whipped, hanged, stabbed, burned, dragged by ropes, drowned in ‘fecal soup’, or have body parts cut off with shears. It is common in the industry for cows to “go down” after 4 or 5 years of continuous abuse, pregnancies, and milk production (a fraction of their natural lifespan of 20 years). Nearly all dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse.

6) Beyond cruelty: Health and environmental dangers

Animal agriculture industry isn’t just cruel to animals; it also poses significant risks to public health, including antibiotic resistance and pandemic threats. Additionally, the environmental toll is staggering, heavily contributing to climate change, ocean dead zones, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, water and air pollution, and rainforest destruction.

“Some farms might be less cruel than others, but there is no such thing as cruelty-free milk.”
— Erica Meier, president of Animal Outlook

“Cows are suffering on even the most ‘humane’ dairy farms.”
— Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic

Conclusion

This article isn’t about forcing vegan values onto anyone. The outrage over the wombat video shows that we already share core values of compassion and empathy for animals.

If we want to stop animal cruelty, we must confront the systemic abuse happening every day in industries like meat and dairy. Shouting about isolated cases while funding industries that cause far more suffering is a glaring hypocrisy. Fleeting palate pleasure is just as poor an excuse for violence as the woman wanting to take a wombat photo for Insta.

It’s time to put our money where our mouth is. The same compassion we feel for the wombat mother and her baby should extend to the countless other animal victims who suffer — whether it’s pigs, chickens, or cows.

There’s no denying it: the animal agriculture industry is built on exploitation. It’s the largest act of systematic oppression and violence that has ever existed on this planet. If you’re truly against needless cruelty, then stop being part of the problem.

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