Milk: A Cruel and Unhealthy Product

It was 9 a.m in the morning when I found this article accidentally as I busy googling something
for my lil Amirah. I am very sure mommies out there will be shocked knowing all these facts but
believed me…It’s not a joke ! Please read this,

Given the chance, cows nurture their young and form lifelong friendships with one another. They
play games, have a wide range of emotions, and demonstrate personality traits, such as vanity.
But most cows raised for the dairy-products industry are intensively confined, leaving them
unable to fulfill their most basic desires, such as nursing their calves, even for a single day. They
are treated like milk-producing machines and are genetically manipulated and pumped full of
antibiotics and hormones that cause them to produce more milk. While cows suffer in animal
factories, humans who drink their milk increase their chances of developing heart disease,
diabetes, several types of cancer, and many other ailments.

Cows Suffer on Dairy Farms

Cows produce milk for the same reason that humans do—to nourish their young—but calves on
dairy farms are taken away from their mothers when they are just 1 day old. They are fed milk
replacers (including cattle blood) so that their mothers’ milk can be sold to humans

Female cows are artificially inseminated shortly after their first birthdays. After giving birth,
they lactate for 10 months and are then inseminated again, continuing the cycle. Some spend
their entire lives standing on concrete floors; others are confined to massive, crowded lots, where
they are forced to live amid their own waste. Cows have a natural lifespan of about 25 years and
can produce milk for eight or nine years. However, the stress caused by the conditions in animal
factories leads to disease, lameness, and reproductive problems that render cows worthless to the
dairy-products industry by the time that they’re 4 or 5 years old, at which time they are sent to be
slaughtered.

On any given day, there are more than 8 million cows on U.S. dairy farms—about 14 million
fewer than there were in 1950. Yet milk production has continued to increase, from 116 billion
pounds of milk per year in 1950 to 170 billion pounds in 2004. Normally, these animals would
produce only enough milk to meet the needs of their calves (around 16 pounds per day), but
genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones are used to force each cow to produce more than
18,000 pounds of milk each year (an average of 50 pounds per day). Cows are also fed unnatural,
high-protein diets—which include dead chickens, pigs, and other animals—because their natural
diet of grass would not provide the nutrients that they need to produce such massive amounts of
milk.

Mastitis
Painful inflammation of the mammary glands, or mastitis, is common among cows raised for
their milk and is one of dairy farms’ most frequently cited reasons for sending cows to slaughter.
There are about 150 bacteria that can cause the disease, one of which is E. coli. Symptoms are
not always visible, so milk’s somatic cell count (SCC) is checked to determine whether the milk
is infected. Somatic cells include white blood cells and skin cells that are normally shed from the
lining of the udder. As in humans, white blood cells—also known as “pus”—are produced as a
means of combating infection. The SCC of healthy milk is below 100,000 cells per milliliter;
however, the dairy-products industry is allowed to combine milk from the teats of all the cows in
a herd in order to arrive at a “bulk tank” somatic cell count (BTSCC); milk with a maximum
BTSCC of 750,000 cells per milliliter is allowed to be sold. A BTSCC of 700,000 or more
generally indicates that two-thirds of the cows in the herd are suffering from udder infections.

Studies have shown that providing cows with cleaner housing, more space, and better diets,
bedding, and care lowers their milk’s SCC as well as their incidence of mastitis. Danish study of
cows subjected to automated milking systems found “acutely elevated cell counts during the first
year compared with the previous year with conventional milking. The increase came suddenly
and was synchronized with the onset of automatic milking.” Instead of improving conditions in
animal factories or easing cows’ production burden, the dairy-products industry is exploring the
use of cloned cattle who have been genetically manipulated to be resistant to mastitis.

The Veal Connection

If you drink milk, you’re subsidizing the veal industry. While female calves are slaughtered or
kept alive to produce milk, male calves are often taken away from their mothers when they are as
young as 1 day old and are chained in tiny stalls for three to 18 weeks to be raised for veal.
Calves raised for veal are fed a milk substitute that is designed to make them gain at least 2
pounds per day, and their diet is purposely low in iron so that their flesh stays pale as a result of
anemia. An enzyme from their stomachs is used to produce rennet, an ingredient used in many
cheeses. In addition to suffering from diarrhea, pneumonia, and lameness, calves raised for veal
are terrified and desperate for their mothers.
Environmental Destruction
Large dairy farms have an enormously detrimental effect on the environment. In California,
America’s top milk-producing state, manure from dairy farms has poisoned hundreds of square
miles of groundwater, rivers, and streams. Each of the more than 1 million cows on the state’s
dairy farms excretes 120 pounds of waste daily. Overall, animals in animal factories, including
dairy farms, produce 1.65 billion tons of manure each year, much of which ends up in our
waterways and drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that agricultural
runoff is the primary cause of polluted lakes, streams, and rivers. The dairy-products industry is
the primary source of smog-forming pollutants in California; a single cow emits more of these
harmful gases than a car does.

Eighty percent of all agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food or to grow
grain to feed them—that’s almost half the total land mass of the contiguous 48 states. Each cow
raised by the dairy-products industry consumes as much as 50 gallons of water per day.

Human Bodies Fight Cow’s Milk

Besides humans (and companion animals who are fed by humans), no species drinks milk
beyond infancy or drinks the milk of another species. Cow’s milk is suited to the nutritional
needs of calves, who have four stomachs and gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months,
sometimes weighing more than 1,000 pounds before they are 2 years old.

Cow’s milk is the number one cause of food allergies among infants and children, according to
the American Gastroenterological Association. Most people begin to produce less lactase, the
enzyme that helps with the digestion of milk, when they are as young as 2 years old. This
reduction can lead to lactose intolerance. Millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, and an
estimated 90 percent of Asian-Americans and 75 percent of Native- and African-Americans
suffer from the condition, which can cause bloating, gas, cramps, vomiting, headaches, rashes,
and asthma. Studies have also found that autism and schizophrenia in children may be linked to
the body’s inability to digest casein, a milk protein; symptoms of these diseases diminished or
disappeared in 80 percent of the children who switched to milk-free diets.

A U.K. study showed that people who suffered from irregular heartbeats, asthma, headaches,
fatigue, and digestive problems “showed marked and often complete improvements in their
health after cutting milk from their diets.”

Calcium and Protein Myths

Although American women consume tremendous amounts of calcium, their rates of osteoporosis
are among the highest in the world. Conversely, Chinese people consume half as much calcium
(most of it from plant sources) and have very low incidence of the bone disease. Medical studies
indicate that rather than preventing the disease, milk may actually increase women’s risk of
getting osteoporosis. A Harvard Nurses’ Study of more than 77,000 women ages 34 to 59 found
that those who consumed two or more glasses of milk per day had higher risks of broken hips
and arms than those who drank one glass or less per day. T. Colin Campbell, professor of
nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, said, “The association between the intake of
animal protein and fracture rates appears to be as strong as that between cigarette smoking and
lung cancer.”
Humans can get all the protein that they need from nuts, seeds, yeast, grains, beans, and other
legumes. It’s very difficult not to get enough calories from protein when you eat a healthy diet;
protein deficiency (also known as kwashiorkor) is very rare in the United States and is usually
only a problem for people who live in famine-stricken countries. Consumption of excessive
protein from dairy products, eggs, and meat has been linked to the formation of kidney stones
and has been associated with colon cancer and liver cancer. It’s also suspected that consuming
too much protein puts a strain on the kidneys, which compensate by leeching calcium from the
bones.

What You Can Do ?

The best way to save cows from the misery of animal factories is to stop buying milk and other
dairy products. Discover the joy of soy! Fortified plant-derived milks provide calcium, vitamins,
iron, zinc, and protein but do not contain any cholesterol. These alternatives are perfect for
cereal, coffee, and soups and also work well in baked goods and other recipes. Many delicious
dairy-product alternatives—such as almond, rice, oat, and soy milks. And rest assured for your
baby-breastmilk is the only choice!