AR-News: Fw: Guardian article questions health benefits of milk...

[jim robertson]

>
>  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 at guardian.co.uk
>  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."
>

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