Marina Bolotnikova

Americans ditched veal. What replaced it may be just as bad. The giant loophole that lets Big Dairy keep baby cows in solitary confinement

"The dairy business is, at bottom, organized around the hyper-optimization and commodification of one of life’s most intimate processes: pregnancy, birth, lactation," writes @mbolotnikova.bsky.social for @vox.com:

There Is No Housing Affordability Without Building More Housing If we make it easier to build dense housing in cities, then the resulting supply boost will ease the cost burden on renters and put homeownership within closer reach for millions of households.

Every couple of months or so, someone puts out a piece of bad social science meant to undermine the case for more housing. For Roosevelt Institute, I wrote a blog post responding to the two most recent specimens. rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/there-i...

There are legitimate reasons to focus the animal movement's precious resources on other things! But I personally will never ever be able to shut up about this

Under California's Prop 12, veal calves are required to have at least 43 sq feet each, but dairy calves, which are a MASSIVE industry in California, way way bigger than veal, get no protection from extreme confinement

in the animal movement, compared to the caging of egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs. I wrote about this too!

Calf ranches are interesting bc they represent one logical extreme of the dairy industry's business model, which is fundamentally about hyper-optimizing life's most intimate processes

But they're also interesting bc they reflect a form of extreme confinement that has received v little scrutiny

and a critical part of the beef supply chain too. They're located in California's Central Valley, the milk production capital of the US, known for its dense concentration of mega dairies. Grimmius is the largest calf raiser in California, raising calves on dairy farms' behalf

I wrote about this through a @dxeofficial.bsky.social investigation into Grimmius Cattle Co. You've never heard of it, but it's part of an industry of "calf ranches" — mega-farms that are an increasingly critical part of the dairy supply chain

gift link:

www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Many people think veal is the fate of male calves born in the dairy industry, but veal is virtually a dead industry in the US. Instead, male calves, & some females, are raised for beef. And dairy calves of both sexes are kept in crates that look like this (photo by @dxeofficial.bsky.social)

I tried to do what we call, if I may be so bold, a "conceptual scoop"!!

Pls read my story on the most overlooked form of extreme confinement of farmed animals—the routine caging of millions of dairy calves in tiny crates less than 1/10 the size of a parking spot.

It's not about veal! (🧵)

Close-up of a hand holding a Kindle e-reader displaying a passage about food systems, including the line: “The most important thing you can do is banish from your thoughts the idea that we should—and can—scrap the ‘broken’ food system and start over.”

Big belated congrats to @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social and @gnrosenberg.bsky.social on FEED THE PEOPLE! a book that everyone should read and will get a lot out of. It might surprise you to know that they call for throwing away the "broken food system" cliché but they have a GOOD POINT!

The biggest drawback of driverless cars Driverless cars could save thousands of lives. They might also break our cities.

"AVs almost by definition lower the friction and costs associated with driving ... And we already know, from the last century-plus of experience in the US, what happens when we make driving easier: We will get more of it. And more concrete and asphalt infrastructure to accommodate it."

High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone A new rung at the top of the housing ladder permits people lower down to climb up.

new from me: a story about VACANCY CHAINS, the idea that underlies the argument that more housing is good even if you can't afford it www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

There's considerable ignorance about animal agriculture practices

People overestimate the prevalence of high-welfare practices and underestimate low-welfare ones

Some of the replies are incredible. It may be true that some of the land used as pastures are not suitable for growing crops, but we don’t have to use all the land. We could just leave some places to be wild.

pour one out for DOGE

What the Foodies Get Wrong About Food Reform Telling people to eat more home-cooked meals and start gardening isn’t a realistic prescription for widespread change.

"Improving the American food system further will require engaging, improving, and fairly distributing modern agriculture’s productivity, not tossing it on the compost heap."

@gnrosenberg.bsky.social and I on the concept of democratic hedonism in food system reform.

newrepublic.com/article/2067...

Could lab monkeys soon become a thing of the past? The Trump administration might actually — yes, really — change science for the better.

Here's a thoughtful take on a contentious topic by @mbolotnikova.bsky.social .... www.vox.com/future-perfe...

screenshotted text: The Trump administration’s scientific agenda has been widely characterized — rightly so — as a war on scientific progress. But, hear me out here: There is more to the story. This administration’s science policy is being shaped not solely by anti-science ideologues, but also by a motley coalition of players who have distinct criticisms of the status quo and are united by their willingness to part ways with established orthodoxies. They include animal advocates, some of them scientists themselves, who quite reasonably hope to advance science beyond its current dependence on animal experimentation. Research animals — from mice, to rabbits, to monkeys — still underpin much of medical research. But their usefulness as models for humans has always been limited. As Harvard bioengineer Don Ingber told me last year, “Everyone admits that animal models are suboptimal at best, and highly inaccurate more commonly.” The ethical problems with experimenting on animals are also immense

The biggest university monkey lab in the country is working with the NIH to potentially end its experimentation on monkeys and transition to being a primate sanctuary. It's a big deal, and I had thoughts! Pls don't yell at me until you've read

www.vox.com/future-perfe...

I love @theguardian.com so much lmao

ha! I had not thought about that one letter of difference

Oatly banned from using word ‘milk’ to market plant-based products in UK Swedish company claims ruling is anti-competitive and ‘solely benefits Big Dairy’

This is such a waste of everyone's time and of government resources. Let people use normal words that have been flexibly used in many contexts for centuries ffs

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Clear (and distressing) example of animal waste. 18 billion animals were found to be wasted every year, but I bet things like this weren't always counted. As I mention in the blog, animal mortalities on farms are excluded from most global measurements

foodwastestories.com/2026/02/03/f...

every piece u write is on my envy list, king!!

People Who Don’t Understand Downtowns Are Destroying Downtowns A far-fetched plan to demolish Dallas’s seat of government is threatening the city’s role in the region.

Dallas may tear down its IM Pei-designed City Hall for a development site for the Adelsons, "raising the possibility that City Hall might ultimately be razed for a casino—a perfect symbol for our era of civic impoverishment and gambling addiction."

Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The hidden double standards driving our housing crisis Apartments are safer and more affordable than single-family homes. Why do we treat them like a hazard?

“It costs significantly more per square foot to build multifamily homes in the US (and in Canada, which has similar codes) compared to single-family homes.”

www.vox.com/future-perfe...

By @mbolotnikova.bsky.social

and it can be worse if it means sick and injured cows are denied antibiotics for actual medical needs

Someone replying to this thread asked me about organic milk but I can't find it now. The answer is that organic doesn't bar most of the things that make dairy farming so cruel, like cow-calf separation & housing calves in solitary confinement. See this canonical story:

This is part of the sexual politics of meat, so many ads for mammalian milk show cows happy to share their nursing product; smiling, skinny, thinking only of the consumer. Most ads omit, of course, their children for whom the milk was meant.

The life of a dairy cow The surprising truth about milk is hiding in plain sight.

& if I could broadcast one message to the world it would be that there is absolutely no good reason to mass produce another mammal for its breast milk. It will never not be an unmitigated atrocity. And I can't believe how poorly understood it still is among those who should know better

gift link: