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News :: Agriculture |
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down with milk! |
Current rating: 0 |
by tiffy
(No verified email address) |
02 Jul 2004
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down with milk!
boycott milk as a food sorce
FOR THE ANIMALS:
Corporate-owned factories where cows are warehoused in huge sheds and treated like milk machines have replaced most small family farms. With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100 pounds of milk a day— 10 times more than they would produce in nature. To keep milk production as high as possible, farmers artificially inseminate cows every year. Growth hormones and unnatural milking schedules cause dairy cows' udders to become painful and so heavy that they sometimes drag on the ground, resulting in frequent infections and overuse of antibiotics. Cows -- like all mammals -- make milk to feed their own babies -- not humans.
Male calves, the "byproducts" of the dairy industry, endure 14 to17 weeks of torment in veal crates so small that they can't even turn around. Female calves often replace their old, worn-out mothers, or are slaughtered soon after birth for the rennet in their stomachs (an ingredient of most commercial cheeses). They are often kept in tiny crates or tethered in stalls for the first few months of their lives, only to grow up to become "milk machines" like their mothers.
FOR THE ENVIRONMENT:
Cow's milk is an inefficient food source. Cows, like humans, expend the majority of their food intake simply leading their lives. It takes a great deal of grain and other foodstuffs cycled through cows to produce a small amount of milk. And not only is milk a waste of energy and water, the production of milk is also a disastrous source of water pollution. A dairy cow produces 120 pounds of waste every day -- equal to that of two dozen people, but with no toilets, sewers, or treatment plants.
In Lancaster County, Pa., manure from dairy cows is destroying the Chesapeake Bay, and in California, which produces one-fifth of the country's total supply of milk, the manure from dairy farms has poisoned vast expanses of underground water, rivers, and streams. In the Central Valley of California, the cows produce as much excrement as a city of 21 million people, and even a smallish farm of 200 cows will produce as much nitrogen as in the sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people, according to a U.S. Senate report on animal waste.
FOR YOUR HEALTH:
Dairy products are a health hazard. They contain no fiber or complex carbohydrates and are laden with saturated fat and cholesterol. They are contaminated with cow's blood and pus and are frequently contaminated with pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. Dairy products are linked to allergies, constipation, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.
The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it can cause anemia, allergies, and insulin-dependent diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease, America's number one cause of death.
And dairy products may actually cause osteoporosis, not prevent it, since their high-protein content leaches calcium from the body. Population studies, backed up by a groundbreaking Harvard study of more than 75,000 nurses, suggest that drinking milk can actually cause osteoporosis. |
This work is in the public domain |
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Re: down with milk! |
by Wayne Pickette
waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jul 2004
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I do not support the inhumane treatment of bovines, but children could definably benefit from whole milk consumption.
I for one grew up on a Santa Clara County California gentlemen's farm where we had nice pasture areas for cows to cruise, eat and relax. Daisy our first milk cow gave 16 gallons of milk a day. She was a Holstein/Guernsey mixture. I drank a gallon or more of this milk per day for 12 years, 1957 through 1969.
As a kid, I had several accidents where when other kids had the same incidents or less they ended up with broken bones. I did not, I always wondered why.
In the year 1972 I had another accident where I received a broken neck, I walked around with the broken neck for 10 days, then I was re-hospitalized and operated upon. The doctors said if a karate hit had broken my neck, the force of the hit should have killed me. I did not completely understand them.
In the year 2000, in Rochester NY, I had another accident, after x-rays at Rochester General I was told that I had the densest skeleton the doctors had ever seen.
I am sure I owe my solid skeleton to whole cow's milk! |
