Title Pending 1668

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.The Life of the Dairy Cow, a report originally published by Voiceless in January 2015, was conceived of by Ondine Sherman, Brian Sherman (Voiceless) and Deidre Wicks, then a Voiceless Council Member. By thoroughly analysing the scientific understanding of the health and welfare of cows and calves, along with reviewing key laws and regulations and identifying shortcomings in current Codes of Practice, the report highlights significant concerns related to animal cruelty. However, there have been a few notable changes in the last 10 years. The following pages present an abridged version of this report, which has been updated to reflect these changes. While positive, there is much more work to be done. Unfortunately, the key welfare issues in the report are still relevant.