I had to slaughter a cow – Lying in a pool of blood

This weekend, Geir Freddy Toftaker had to call the vet for the fifth time in seven years to kill a dairy cow, which should have had many good years ahead of it.

Although the feed mixer is equipped with magnets to remove all nails, screws, and other metal parts that can end up in round bales during grass harvest, the aluminum in soft drinks and beer cans is not magnetic.

This means that if you throw a box of soda on the ground and the farmer does not see it until it has landed on the forage harvester, it is crushed into many small, sharp pieces, which in turn end up in feed for the animal.

– Cuts them from the esophagus and the entire system, Toftaker tells Dagbladet.

New Troms wrote on the subject first.

Huge loss

When he entered the stable, at Målselv in Troms, this weekend, after going out for a walk, he found pieces of aluminum on the cow’s feeding board.

– I picked it up and thought I had taken everything before someone ate it, but further down in the barn there was a cow in a pool of blood on the floor. I knew he was really angry. It is a completely idiotic way to die.

Toftaker had to call the vet immediately to kill the cow, and this time they were able to save much of the meat.

– But the loss of production is enormous. The cow was a dairy cow and should have produced milk for many years. Losing a cow that way is a huge financial loss.

You get many of those stories annually

The events Toftaker has experienced are heard by Norwegian Bondelag several times a year, Bjørn Gimming tells NRK.

Gimming is the first deputy leader in the Farmers Union and says it is difficult to determine how often and how often this occurs, as there are no statistics on how many animals die annually from food waste.

– We have tried to find out what the problem is, but we have not been able to answer it. The specific cause of such injuries is not recorded, either when the animal is slaughtered or when it is treated by a veterinarian.

I should show you

After the incident, he posted a post on Facebook, urging people to think a little before throwing garbage out of the car window.

“People have to use common popular fat,” says the farmer.

He says there has been a major focus on climate, environment, and source selection for the past ten years, and that he should wish that producers could consider making the boxes with something other than aluminum because of this.

– If I could take the person who threw the box to the barn floor to show them what’s going on, I would have liked it. Only then do they see what can really result, the farmer concludes.

Will not change material

Ringnes communications manager Nicolay Bruusgaard tells Dagbladet that they have not considered changing the material.

– No, aluminum cans are good and eco-friendly packaging type which is excellent for recycling and recycling. In Norway, we are also the best in the world in mortgages, so very few boxes end up free.

Bruusgaard says that doesn’t mean they can’t improve, and that his goal is for everything to be compromised.

– The examples of animals receiving boxed waste only underscore why it is so incredibly important. Here we all have a shared responsibility. The problem is not the boxes, but they are thrown into nature.

Also remember that you can deliver foreign cashiers at ATMs here in Norway, even if you don’t get a mortgage on them.

A problem

“It is sad to hear that cows must be killed due to garbage,” says Stina Kildedal-Johannessen. She is the director of communications and sustainability at Hansa Borg Bryggerier AS.

– The spill is a problem, be it plastic, glass or other things that people throw away, which can harm both animals and nature. We want to encourage everyone to take responsibility and not throw away containers and other things in nature.

Kildedal-Johannesen says the new mortgage rates were introduced in the fall of 2018, to get more people to mortgage.

– In recent years there has also been a great focus on people who have to clear the coast. Great that the focus is also on nature in general. Perhaps this can contribute to more cleanup actions across fields and fields?