Huge article questioning health benefits of and govt subsidies for milk

[Guest guest]

I know we're not supposed to forward emails from other lists, but I thought

this Dawnwatch alert might be of interest to people. It's the first time I

can think of a major publication serioulsy questioning dairy for health

reasons, and it also addresses many other issues around dairy. I think it's

a good article to forward to people who believe their bones will snap in two

if they stop drinking milk....

 

Nora

 

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On Saturday, December 13, one of the world's leading newspapers, The

Guardian (UK), published a lengthy article seriously questioning the place

of cows' milk in a healthful diet and government subsidies for the dairy

industry. The article looked at both the UK and the US. It is available on

the web in two parts at the following addresses:

 

Part One:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1104740,00.html

Part Two:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1104854,00.html

 

I highly recommend reading it, but will summarize it below for those who

don't have the time to read a 5467 word piece.

 

The article is headed, " DAIRY MONSTERS: We used to take it for granted that

milk was good for us. But now the industry faces a crisis, with the public

questioning such assumptions. So just how healthy is milk? Anne Karpf

investigates. "

 

Karpf notes that there is mounting scientific evidence that " regular

consumption of large quantities of milk can be bad for your health, and

campaigners are making a noise about the environmental and international

costs of large-scale intensive European dairy farming. " But she comments,

" So thorough is our dairy indoctrination that it requires a total gestalt

switch to contemplate the notion that milk may help to cause the very

diseases it's meant to prevent....Today, there's a big bank of scientific

evidence against milk consumption, alleging not only that it causes some

diseases but, equally damning, that it fails to prevent others for which it

has traditionally been seen as a panacea. "

 

She refers to the work of Frank Oski, former paediatrics director at Johns

Hopkins school of medicine, " who estimated in his book Don't Drink Your

Milk! that half of all iron deficiency in US infants results from cows'

milk-induced intestinal bleeding. " You can buy that book at:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0945383347/dawnwatch

 

She discusses lactose intolerance, which causes " bloating, cramps, diarrhoea

and farts. " : " In 1965, investigators at Johns Hopkins found that 15% of all

the white people and almost three-quarters of all the black people they

tested were unable to digest lactose. Milk, it seemed, was a racial issue,

and far more people in the world are unable than able to digest lactose.

That includes most Thais, Japanese, Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews, and 50% of

Indians. "

 

Karpf notes that milk critics say that the idea that osteoporosis is caused

by calcium deficiency is " one of the great myths of our time. " She writes,

" In fact, the bone loss and deteriorating bone tissue that take place in

osteoporosis are due not to calcium deficiency but rather to its resorption:

it's not that our bodies don't get enough calcium, rather that they excrete

too much of what they already have. So we need to find out what it is that's

breaking down calcium stores in the first place, to the extent that more

than one in three British women now suffers from osteoporosis. The most

important culprit is almost certainly the overconsumption of protein.

High-protein foods such as meat, eggs and dairy make excessive demands on

the kidneys, which in turn leach calcium from the body. One solution, then,

isn't to increase our calcium intake, but to reduce our consumption of

protein, so our bones don't have to surrender so much calcium.

Astonishingly, according to this newer, more critical view, dairy products

almost certainly help to cause, rather than prevent, osteoporosis. "

 

She notes, " American women are among the biggest consumers of calcium in the

world, yet still have one of the highest levels of osteoporosis in the

world " and that " Most Chinese people eat and drink no dairy products and...

consume only half the calcium of Americans. " Yet " osteoporosis is uncommon

in China despite an average life expectancy of 70. " Further, " In South

Africa, Bantu women who eat mostly plant protein and only 200-350mg of

calcium a day have virtually no osteoporosis, despite bearing on average six

children and breastfeeding for prolonged periods. Their African-American

brothers and sisters, who ingest on average more than 1,000mg of calcium a

day, are nine times more likely to experience hip fractures. "

 

She quotes T Colin Campbell, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of

Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University: " The association between the

intake of animal protein and fracture rates appears to be as strong as that

between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. " Another quote from Campbell

associates milk consumption with an increased risk of cancer: " Cows' milk

protein may be the single most significant chemical carcinogen to which

humans are exposed " .

 

Karpf discusses the conflicts of interest that have led to milk's status as

the perfect food despite much scientific evidence to the contrary:

 

 

" Another reason why official policy on milk is often at odds with medical

evidence lies in the conflict of government role, both in Britain and the

US. The US department of agriculture, for example, has the twin, and often

mutually incompatible, tasks of promoting agricultural products and

providing dietary advice. In 2000, it was still recommending two to three

servings of dairy products a day, to the rage of critics such as the

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. PCRM claimed that six of the

11-member drafting panel had close ties with the meat, egg and dairy

industries (five of them with dairy).

 

" Britain isn't free from conflict of interest, either. The government is

heavily involved in encouraging us to drink milk. "

 

Karpf criticizes the UK's National Dairy Council advertisements, commenting,

" Of course, it's no crime for the industry to promote itself; what's

disturbing is its masquerading as a disinterested source of incontrovertible

information. "

 

Karpf feels that perhaps the " most insidious dimension of the dairy

fightback is funding research. "

 

The article discusses animal welfare concerns in detail. She starts with

" the vegetarian fallacy " which allows people to separate the dairy and veal

industries:

 

" Alongside the researchers raising questions about milk sits the more

inflammatory animal rights movement, which has recently focused its

attention on dairy farming and what it argues is its intrinsic cruelty. For

a long time, those concerned about animal welfare seemed magically to exempt

milk from their preoccupations. They suffered from what Richard Young of the

Soil Association calls 'the vegetarian fallacy': non-meat-eaters who still

drink milk and so perpetuate the cycle that ends in crated veal calves

destined for European dinner tables. Now many of them have begun to contend

that, organic or not, there's no such thing as humane milk. For in order to

lactate, cows - like humans - first have to get pregnant. Calves are

essentially the waste by-product of the industry. What happens to them once

they've done what they were created to do - stimulate a cow's milk

production by the very fact of their being conceived?

 

" Male udderless cows are of no value to the dairy industry, so if prices for

male calves are low and the veal route unprofitable, most are killed within

a couple of weeks for baby food or pies, to make rennet, or sent to

rendering plants to be turned into tallow or grease or, in other countries,

animal feed. Female calves, on the other hand, are bred as replacement stock

for their mothers. The provision of beef essentially originates in the dairy

industry: if we didn't drink milk, we wouldn't have all that extra meat to

get rid of.

 

" Though a male calf's life is unenviable, its mother's is no better. To

ensure almost continuous lactation, she endures annual pregnancies. Her calf

is removed from her within 24 hours of its birth. Calves hardly ever drink

their mother's milk.

 

She goes on to discuss the exhaustive exploitation of the cows' bodies:

 

" Like agribusinesses everywhere, milk producers have tried to increase

output while cutting costs. The victims are the cows. Today, from the age of

two, they're expected to produce up to 10,000 litres of milk during their

10-month lactation stint (before they dry off, are re-inseminated and the

whole process starts up again). Milked once or twice (or even three times)

daily while pregnant, they produce around 20 litres a day, 10 times as much

as they'd need to feed a calf. The amount of milk cows are required to make

each day has almost doubled in the past 30 years, because having a smaller

number of high-yielding cows reduces a farmer's feed, fertiliser, equipment,

labour and capital costs. That's why the variety of cattle breeds in Europe

has declined so much - everyone wants the high-yielding black-and-white

Holstein-Friesens.

 

" You don't need to be sentimental about animals to pity the poor bloated

creatures, dragging around their vast, abnormally heavy udders. Many each

year go lame, and they rarely live longer than four or five years, compared

with a natural lifespan of around 25 years. Then they are slaughtered.

 

And she notes the pain of mastitis and its impact on human health:

 

" The official view is that not only do dairy farmers care about their cows,

but that it's in their interests to keep them healthy. The reality is that

overmilking, problems with cleanliness and the choice of high-yielding

breeds together cause more than 30 incidents of mastitis per 100 British

cows each year. Mastitis is a painful infection of the udder. Cows' mastitis

has implications for human health, too, because to control infection farmers

use more antibiotics. "

 

Finally, Karpf discusses government efforts to protect the dairy industry,

such as the food disparagement acts introduced in 13 US states, and the UK's

Common Agricultural Policy, which she writes is so absurd it " will have you

thinking you've woken up in the middle of a Dali painting. " She details the

ways in which the government props up the dairy industry at the expense of

small-scale farms in developing countries, human health, and animal welfare.

 

She asks what the alternative might be, and notes that people don't want

their eating habits policed. " Yet, " she writes, " what we eat and drink

isn't just the result of individual choice and cultural tradition: the

contents of our shopping trolleys are at least equally shaped by government

policy and official decisions. "

 

She quotes Dr Tim Lobstein, co-director of the Food Commission, an

independent watchdog on food issues, who " advocates the removal of all EU

subsidies from dairy production, with the money going to support sustainable

forms of food production, including some organic dairy farming. " He

comments, with regard to struggling dairy farmers: " I can't help to stay in

business the producers of commodities that aren't helping human health -

they'll have to find alternative employment. The EU should help farmers

transfer to products more helpful to human health, such as horticulture. "

 

Karpf calls for a national debate on milk production and consumption. She

writes, " Part of this debate will have to be a frank appraisal of whether

milk can jeopardise human health.... it seems increasingly clear that dairy

products alone probably don't protect bone health in the way we've long

thought, and that calcium intake on its own has only a small effect on bone

density. "

 

The article concludes: " At the same time (and Atkins notwithstanding), while

some fats are essential, the human body does not thrive on excessive amounts

of milk fat. Yet milk's connotations are so primordial, its associations so

pastoral and the interests that promote it so enormous, that changing the

way we think about it, and drink it, will be a process every bit as

challenging and root-and-branch as the loss of unquestioning religious

faith. "

 

The appearance of this article in one of the world's leading papers tells

us that there has been a real shift in the perception of milk. And the

article will surely further that shift. The Guardian deserves many

appreciative letters to the editor. The paper takes letters at:

letters

It notes, " We do not publish letters where only an email address is

supplied; please include a full postal address and a reference to the

relevant article. If you do not want your email address published, please

say so. We may edit letters. "

 

I hope you will forward this article to those who assume that animal

advocates who shun milk are extremists who put slight animal discomfort

before great benefit to human health. The article should serve as quite a

wake-up call.

 

Yours and the animals',

 

Karen Dawn

 

www.DawnWatch.com

 

 

 

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