PETA, Milk wars

The Great American Milk Wars

What eminent threat to your health are you worried about? Is it your weight? Does eating sushi frighten you? Junk food? Or, perhaps, it is milk?

Two of the most effective and, thankfully, outspoken consumer advocates are Dennis and Alex Avery, a father and son team who head up the Center for Global Food Issues. If you want some fun reading about milk, (visit www.milkismilk.com).

In a recent blog on their website, Alex writes about a study that found that organic milk is no different from conventional milk. Moreover, research had determined that "organic" cows, those who graze in pastures, are actually less healthy than those bred and maintained in modern dairies.

Alex cited a peer-reviewed Journal of Dairy Science research report that concluded (1) organic milk and conventional milk are identical; (2) organic dairy cows produce less milk than conventional cows; and (3) organic dairy cows are less healthy than conventional cows.

You did not read about this in any mainstream media outlet. After 12 years of study, independent Swiss scientists from the University of Berne had produced the report. Why Switzerland? Think cheese! Think milk chocolate!

Thankfully, I grew up in the 1940s when the United States began restricting the sale of raw milk products. The reason was simple enough. Raw milk was known to transmit several kinds of deadly bacteria that the process of mandatory pasteurization killed.

Those bacteria had names such as Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella (some 1,600 variations), and Listeria monocytogenes. A child whose immune system was not fully developed could die from these forms of food poisoning and adults, too, could suffer meningitis, pregnant women could have a spontaneous abortion, and, like children, in its worst manifestations, an adult could die as well.

So, why, today do we have all this hype about "organic milk"? And why are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals investing big bucks in a campaign to get people to stop drinking any milk or milk product? The answer is that the "organic" farming and ranching industry is big business. And PETA is just nuts.

A group calling themselves the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a PETA front to lend credence to their nonsense and, in October, the Center for Consumer Freedom debunked their effort to get "warning labels" on all dairy products sold in the District of Columbia. David Martosko, the Center's director of research said, "This is a group that runs TV ads claiming milk causes cancer. In 2003 PCRM president Neal Barnard told the FDA that cheese is ‘morphine on a cracker' and ‘dairy crack.'"

The Great American Milk Wars did get a tiny bit of attention in March when ABC News published an article about a feud between the organic dairymen and their corporate counterparts. Bear in mind, organic milk is largely sold on the basis of claims of what it does not contain. It is a form of scare campaign because, of course, it implies that conventional milk is dangerous while organic is "safe."

Some of the claims are baseless, such as the one that organic milk contains no hormones. Friends, all milk contains hormones. Nor do modern dairy farmers stand around feeding pesticides to their herds. While it is true that dairies are treated to knock down flies and other insects, and to control a rodent population, to say that organic milk does not contain pesticides is like saying it does not contain latex paint. Any evidence of anything more than trace elements of pesticides would quickly generate a visit from the Food and Drug Administration and other food safety government types.

"Organic" is a marketing tool, not something based in the truth about modern dairy farming.

In March, a collection of organic dairymen were fretting over whether United States Department of Agriculture regulations insured that cows had sufficient access to grass in pastures as opposed to being fed a diet rich in both grass and grains. As noted in the Swiss research report, milk is milk no matter how it is produced.

However, when you consider that the Organic Trade Association's most recent survey of food sales between 1997 and 2003 showed a growth rate of 22.5 percent each year, generating $1.4 billion at the last tally, you can understand why such things take on an importance that has nothing to do with the true science involved.

These days Americans have sufficient time and money to worry about all kinds of bogus health issues. In his new book, "Hypochondria Can Kill", John Naish, a veteran writer on health topics, notes that "silly sicknesses are becoming epidemic…our appetite for the latest threat seems insatiable," adding that, unlike previous generations and the health threats they experienced, "thanks to modern sanitation and medicine, those dangers are now no longer anywhere near so real." Today, warns Naish, "the old demon, money, lurks behind much hypochondria."

Save some money and do your body a favor. Drink that nice, regular milk from the supermarket and put aside all the frightful things that people like PETA and others want you to believe. Life is too short to fret about milk. And besides, it really is good for you.