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No more for me, thank you
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featgreen_172.shtml This is just one website out of thousands on this s***
Milk, they say, is an important source of calcium that helps kids grow up big and strong. Milk is said to contain vital nutrients and to help prevent osteoporosis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its food dietary guidelines, says that everyone should get 2-3 servings of dairy every day. Milk is advocated by various agencies of the U.S. government, legions of physicians, and the $180 million annual advertising budget of the dairy industry itself. Britney Spears, Carson Daly, Neve Campbell, Spike Lee, and other fine celebrities have endorsed milk, decorating thousands of billboards with their mustachioed mugs.
And, indeed, America has a love affair with milk. The average person living in the United States consumes over 600 pounds of dairy products every year, including about 420 pounds of fluid milk and cream, 70 pounds of various milk-based fats and oils, 30 pounds of cheese, and 17 pounds of ice cream. In aggregate, U.S. dairy farmers produce 163 billion pounds of milk and milk products a year.
But what if Britney and Spike were lying to us? What if milk doesnt do a body good? Instead, what if milk is a major contributor to breast cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and more? What if the U.S. government and the dairy industry are colluding to hide the ill effects of dairy consumption?
According to Amy Lanou, Ph.D., the nutrition director of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), "Besides prostate cancer, milk has been linked to asthma, anemia, allergies, juvenile-onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and ovarian and breast cancer."
Why then, is milk still widely regarded as wholesome?
The USDAs Food Pyramid Scheme
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to its mission statement, is charged with "enhancing the quality of life for the American people by supporting the production of agriculture." Created by the pro-business Lincoln administration in 1862, todays USDA has the dual responsibility of assisting dairy farmers while promoting healthy dietary choices for Americans. Not surprisingly, this creates a conflict of interest that puts at risk the objectivity of government farm policy and the health of all dairy-consuming Americans.
In December 1999, the PCRM filed suit against the USDA, claiming the department unfairly promotes the special interests of the meat and dairy industries through its official dietary guidelines and the Food Pyramid. Six of the eleven members assigned to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee were demonstrated to have financial ties to meat, dairy, and egg interests. Prior to the suit, which the PCRM won in December 2000, the USDA had refused to disclose such conflicts of interest to the general public.
The USDAs advisory committees have been dominated by the agriculture industry since the early 1950s, when the department devised the Four Food Groups, including milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, and breads and cereals. Over the years, these dietary guidelines have consistently reflected the industrys push for greater consumption of both meat and dairy, despite the testimony of numerous physicians groups and watchdog organizations criticizing the Food Pyramid as biased and unhealthful.
The USDAs counter-argument? The food dietary guidelines must be reality-based, says the USDA, arguing that what people should really be eating is moot because it doesnt fit with the American lifestyle. Apparently, the USDA thinks its unrealistic to promote healthy dietary guidelines to the increasingly obese American public, despite the fact that such guidelines are understood by just about everyone to be goals, not de facto rules. In other words, the USDA doesnt even think its reasonable to aspire to what constitutes a healthy diet.
Government Cheese
With the recent passage of the Farm Bill on May 13, 2002, dairy farmers and processors will receive $2 billion more in subsidies over the next three and a half years, largely realized through price supports that inflate costs for consumers. Dairy subsidies are a carryover from the Depression era, when survival of small dairy farmers was considered essential to maintaining a national food supply.
Today, a large chunk of that additional $2 billion in subsidies is going to large dairy farms in twelve northeastern states. Further, as consolidation continues to occur in the dairy industry, federal subsidies are going to an increasingly small number of highly concentrated dairy operations, hanging small farmers out to dry and encouraging the demise of family farms. This increase in large industrial farms bodes ill for both cows and humans.
Lactose Intolerance and Ethnic Discrimination
Another assertion of the suit brought by the PCRM against the USDA is that the status of milk as a staple in school lunch programs unfairly discriminates against non-whites who have a high incidence of lactose intolerance. In total, there are an estimated 50 million lactose intolerant adults in the U.S., including 15% of the white population, 70% of the black population, and 80 to 97% of Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Jews of European descent. These 50 million people suffer from a variety of digestive symptoms that result from consuming milk and other dairy products, including gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and indigestion.
Currently, the USDA requires that every public school in the country serve milk. Theres even a push by Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) to offer financial incentives to schools that install milk vending machines (after California, New York is the second largest dairy-producing state). Further, students cannot get free or subsidized alternatives to milk, such as juice or soy milk, without a note from their physician, so for 70% of black kids in public schools, a negative response to lactose intake is practically mandated by the U.S. Government. Same goes for 90% of Asian American students and 74% of Native American students.
The PCRM asserts that huge dairy subsidies and broad-based promotion of milk by the governments school lunch program is a form of economic racism that isolates minorities and encourages them to consume something theyre disproportionately intolerant of or allergic to.
rBGH and the Damage Done
Girls in the U.S. are beginning to menstruate at younger and younger ages. According to the Cancer Prevention Coalition, some girls are now experiencing the effects of puberty as young as three years of age. Fifty years ago the incidence of breast cancer risk among U.S. women was one in twenty, a percentage that has grown to one in eight women as of 2001.
Heres a big part of the reason why: Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) is a naturally occurring hormone produced by milk cows. Closely resembling the natural growth hormones in human children, the presence of BGH in milk has been shown to significantly elevate hormone levels in people, creating a host of growth problems.
Thats not even accounting for the use of artificial hormones. Recombinant BGH (rBGH) is an unnaturally occurring, genetically engineered hormone produced by Monsanto Company, a giant in the agrichemical industry, which has also made such other fine ecological and humanitarian contributions as Agent Orange and PCBs. Through a series of research cover-ups and a network of conflicting interests with government policymakers [see sidebar], Monsanto in 1994 managed to get approval for Posilac, the companys commercial form of rBGH, which increases cows milk production by an estimated 15-25%.
According to Monsanto, over a quarter of U.S. milk cows are now in herds supplemented with Posilac. The vast majority of the countrys 1,500 dairy companies mix rBGH milk with non-rBGH milk during processing to such an extent that an estimated 80-90% of the U.S. dairy supply is contaminated.
What Monsanto doesnt tell consumers is that supplementing the American diet with additional growth hormones is causing secondary sex characteristics to appear earlier in young children, particularly girls. Monsanto also wont tell the public that rBGH-injected cows produce milk with exceedingly high levels of Insulin Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), a cancer promoter that occurs naturally in the human bloodstream at levels that generally do not result in tumors. Monsanto and the FDA refuse to acknowledge recent research directly linking elevated levels of IGF-1 to increased risk of breast and prostate cancer. Going even further, Monsanto and the FDA colluded in 1993 and '94 to block labeling requirements for rBGH milk. Consequently, the average dairy consumer has no idea if theyre increasing their own risk of getting cancer.
Since 1994, every industrialized country in the world except the U.S.including Canada, Japan, and all fifteen nations of the European Unionhas banned rBGH milk. The United Nations Food Standards Body refuses to certify that rBGH is safe. Even the WTO, or more specifically its food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius, has refused to endorse Monsantos claim that rBGH is safe for use in the dairy supply. In the face of facts and the majority opinion of the global political and scientific community, Monsanto and the United States continue to endorse rBGH milk for general consumption, at the same time scratching their heads about increases in breast cancer deaths and the continually declining age of puberty for girls.
What about the Cash Cows?
Okay, so milk is bad for people. Really bad, in fact. But what of the effect on cows producing that milk? The life expectancy of the average cow in natural conditions is about 25-30 years; on the typical factory farm, where well over half of U.S. milk cows reside, they live only four to five years.
The increased milk production spurred by dosing cows with Monsantos Posilac causes them to suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of the udder, and widespread occurrences of cystic ovaries and disorders of the uterus. In addition to harming the cows, these conditions may produce discharges that are passed to consumers along with the milk.
It turns out that keeping dairy cows constantly pregnantthe only way they will produce milkcreates (surprise!) baby calves. The veal industry was created because the dairy industry didnt know what to do with male calves that otherwise had no economic value to dairy farmers (female calves are the future milk producers). The process is cruel from start to finish: the cows are artificially impregnated by being bound to what the industry terms a "rape rack," then injected with a series of bull semen, hormones, and antibiotics; veal calves are then immobilized in small wooden crates so that they cant move around, therefore ensuring the tenderness of their flesh when slaughtered. Over a million veal calves were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2001.
In the end, it boils down to a familiar story: Big business and the U.S. government joining forces to dupe the American consumer. The USDA tells us to drink more milk while subsidizing large dairy farms and federally mandating dairy consumption for schoolchildren. The government spends billions to buy unused milk and dairy products, one of the biggest forms of subsidies, while the industry spends almost $200 million every year promoting dairy consumption. Meanwhile, The FDA and Monsanto conspire to pollute the already unhealthful dairy supply with a genetically engineered hormone banned virtually everywhere else in the world.
So while the American public might fairly answer the dairy industrys ubiquitous question of whether it "Got Milk?" with a resounding, mustachioed "Yes," the better question might be whether people have gotten screwed in the process.
Try a google search on rBGH, the hormone they inject the cows with.Yummy!
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featgreen_172.shtml This is just one website out of thousands on this s***
Milk, they say, is an important source of calcium that helps kids grow up big and strong. Milk is said to contain vital nutrients and to help prevent osteoporosis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its food dietary guidelines, says that everyone should get 2-3 servings of dairy every day. Milk is advocated by various agencies of the U.S. government, legions of physicians, and the $180 million annual advertising budget of the dairy industry itself. Britney Spears, Carson Daly, Neve Campbell, Spike Lee, and other fine celebrities have endorsed milk, decorating thousands of billboards with their mustachioed mugs.
And, indeed, America has a love affair with milk. The average person living in the United States consumes over 600 pounds of dairy products every year, including about 420 pounds of fluid milk and cream, 70 pounds of various milk-based fats and oils, 30 pounds of cheese, and 17 pounds of ice cream. In aggregate, U.S. dairy farmers produce 163 billion pounds of milk and milk products a year.
But what if Britney and Spike were lying to us? What if milk doesnt do a body good? Instead, what if milk is a major contributor to breast cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and more? What if the U.S. government and the dairy industry are colluding to hide the ill effects of dairy consumption?
According to Amy Lanou, Ph.D., the nutrition director of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), "Besides prostate cancer, milk has been linked to asthma, anemia, allergies, juvenile-onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and ovarian and breast cancer."
Why then, is milk still widely regarded as wholesome?
The USDAs Food Pyramid Scheme
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to its mission statement, is charged with "enhancing the quality of life for the American people by supporting the production of agriculture." Created by the pro-business Lincoln administration in 1862, todays USDA has the dual responsibility of assisting dairy farmers while promoting healthy dietary choices for Americans. Not surprisingly, this creates a conflict of interest that puts at risk the objectivity of government farm policy and the health of all dairy-consuming Americans.
In December 1999, the PCRM filed suit against the USDA, claiming the department unfairly promotes the special interests of the meat and dairy industries through its official dietary guidelines and the Food Pyramid. Six of the eleven members assigned to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee were demonstrated to have financial ties to meat, dairy, and egg interests. Prior to the suit, which the PCRM won in December 2000, the USDA had refused to disclose such conflicts of interest to the general public.
The USDAs advisory committees have been dominated by the agriculture industry since the early 1950s, when the department devised the Four Food Groups, including milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, and breads and cereals. Over the years, these dietary guidelines have consistently reflected the industrys push for greater consumption of both meat and dairy, despite the testimony of numerous physicians groups and watchdog organizations criticizing the Food Pyramid as biased and unhealthful.
The USDAs counter-argument? The food dietary guidelines must be reality-based, says the USDA, arguing that what people should really be eating is moot because it doesnt fit with the American lifestyle. Apparently, the USDA thinks its unrealistic to promote healthy dietary guidelines to the increasingly obese American public, despite the fact that such guidelines are understood by just about everyone to be goals, not de facto rules. In other words, the USDA doesnt even think its reasonable to aspire to what constitutes a healthy diet.
Government Cheese
With the recent passage of the Farm Bill on May 13, 2002, dairy farmers and processors will receive $2 billion more in subsidies over the next three and a half years, largely realized through price supports that inflate costs for consumers. Dairy subsidies are a carryover from the Depression era, when survival of small dairy farmers was considered essential to maintaining a national food supply.
Today, a large chunk of that additional $2 billion in subsidies is going to large dairy farms in twelve northeastern states. Further, as consolidation continues to occur in the dairy industry, federal subsidies are going to an increasingly small number of highly concentrated dairy operations, hanging small farmers out to dry and encouraging the demise of family farms. This increase in large industrial farms bodes ill for both cows and humans.
Lactose Intolerance and Ethnic Discrimination
Another assertion of the suit brought by the PCRM against the USDA is that the status of milk as a staple in school lunch programs unfairly discriminates against non-whites who have a high incidence of lactose intolerance. In total, there are an estimated 50 million lactose intolerant adults in the U.S., including 15% of the white population, 70% of the black population, and 80 to 97% of Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Jews of European descent. These 50 million people suffer from a variety of digestive symptoms that result from consuming milk and other dairy products, including gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and indigestion.
Currently, the USDA requires that every public school in the country serve milk. Theres even a push by Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) to offer financial incentives to schools that install milk vending machines (after California, New York is the second largest dairy-producing state). Further, students cannot get free or subsidized alternatives to milk, such as juice or soy milk, without a note from their physician, so for 70% of black kids in public schools, a negative response to lactose intake is practically mandated by the U.S. Government. Same goes for 90% of Asian American students and 74% of Native American students.
The PCRM asserts that huge dairy subsidies and broad-based promotion of milk by the governments school lunch program is a form of economic racism that isolates minorities and encourages them to consume something theyre disproportionately intolerant of or allergic to.
rBGH and the Damage Done
Girls in the U.S. are beginning to menstruate at younger and younger ages. According to the Cancer Prevention Coalition, some girls are now experiencing the effects of puberty as young as three years of age. Fifty years ago the incidence of breast cancer risk among U.S. women was one in twenty, a percentage that has grown to one in eight women as of 2001.
Heres a big part of the reason why: Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) is a naturally occurring hormone produced by milk cows. Closely resembling the natural growth hormones in human children, the presence of BGH in milk has been shown to significantly elevate hormone levels in people, creating a host of growth problems.
Thats not even accounting for the use of artificial hormones. Recombinant BGH (rBGH) is an unnaturally occurring, genetically engineered hormone produced by Monsanto Company, a giant in the agrichemical industry, which has also made such other fine ecological and humanitarian contributions as Agent Orange and PCBs. Through a series of research cover-ups and a network of conflicting interests with government policymakers [see sidebar], Monsanto in 1994 managed to get approval for Posilac, the companys commercial form of rBGH, which increases cows milk production by an estimated 15-25%.
According to Monsanto, over a quarter of U.S. milk cows are now in herds supplemented with Posilac. The vast majority of the countrys 1,500 dairy companies mix rBGH milk with non-rBGH milk during processing to such an extent that an estimated 80-90% of the U.S. dairy supply is contaminated.
What Monsanto doesnt tell consumers is that supplementing the American diet with additional growth hormones is causing secondary sex characteristics to appear earlier in young children, particularly girls. Monsanto also wont tell the public that rBGH-injected cows produce milk with exceedingly high levels of Insulin Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), a cancer promoter that occurs naturally in the human bloodstream at levels that generally do not result in tumors. Monsanto and the FDA refuse to acknowledge recent research directly linking elevated levels of IGF-1 to increased risk of breast and prostate cancer. Going even further, Monsanto and the FDA colluded in 1993 and '94 to block labeling requirements for rBGH milk. Consequently, the average dairy consumer has no idea if theyre increasing their own risk of getting cancer.
Since 1994, every industrialized country in the world except the U.S.including Canada, Japan, and all fifteen nations of the European Unionhas banned rBGH milk. The United Nations Food Standards Body refuses to certify that rBGH is safe. Even the WTO, or more specifically its food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius, has refused to endorse Monsantos claim that rBGH is safe for use in the dairy supply. In the face of facts and the majority opinion of the global political and scientific community, Monsanto and the United States continue to endorse rBGH milk for general consumption, at the same time scratching their heads about increases in breast cancer deaths and the continually declining age of puberty for girls.
What about the Cash Cows?
Okay, so milk is bad for people. Really bad, in fact. But what of the effect on cows producing that milk? The life expectancy of the average cow in natural conditions is about 25-30 years; on the typical factory farm, where well over half of U.S. milk cows reside, they live only four to five years.
The increased milk production spurred by dosing cows with Monsantos Posilac causes them to suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of the udder, and widespread occurrences of cystic ovaries and disorders of the uterus. In addition to harming the cows, these conditions may produce discharges that are passed to consumers along with the milk.
It turns out that keeping dairy cows constantly pregnantthe only way they will produce milkcreates (surprise!) baby calves. The veal industry was created because the dairy industry didnt know what to do with male calves that otherwise had no economic value to dairy farmers (female calves are the future milk producers). The process is cruel from start to finish: the cows are artificially impregnated by being bound to what the industry terms a "rape rack," then injected with a series of bull semen, hormones, and antibiotics; veal calves are then immobilized in small wooden crates so that they cant move around, therefore ensuring the tenderness of their flesh when slaughtered. Over a million veal calves were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2001.
In the end, it boils down to a familiar story: Big business and the U.S. government joining forces to dupe the American consumer. The USDA tells us to drink more milk while subsidizing large dairy farms and federally mandating dairy consumption for schoolchildren. The government spends billions to buy unused milk and dairy products, one of the biggest forms of subsidies, while the industry spends almost $200 million every year promoting dairy consumption. Meanwhile, The FDA and Monsanto conspire to pollute the already unhealthful dairy supply with a genetically engineered hormone banned virtually everywhere else in the world.
So while the American public might fairly answer the dairy industrys ubiquitous question of whether it "Got Milk?" with a resounding, mustachioed "Yes," the better question might be whether people have gotten screwed in the process.
Try a google search on rBGH, the hormone they inject the cows with.Yummy!
