http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story ... e_continue
okay i was quite freaked out by this story....
Milk CAUSES Osteoporosis
As always in such matters, one has to be really thorough and careful. Increminated, it seems to me, and I admit I have not read the whole article, are LARGE quantities of milk. Just as LARGE quantities of...water are bad, and can even kill you. For most people, I would assume that the amount of milk they drink or eat is far from represnting LARGE quantities.
Again, maybe, there are some other reasons to worry about milk consumption.
Again, maybe, there are some other reasons to worry about milk consumption.
there's alot of facts and bits of verification from official approved sources.
actually i was also quite freaked out because i have read all these books about how cows are treated to get milk (like huge vats of milk machines) and have to be separated from their calves everyday and call out to their calves constantly onto death even though they know they're not around when they're in the process of being milked.
i have become vegetarian again. in the process of being vegan.
the reason being...i work in the frontline of helping to save lives, and then i made a big mistake and a life was almost lost. don't ask me what, i don't want to say it...it will haunt me to the end of my life...and i thought, if i felt that way about almost killing a human being (albeit unintentionally) then how can i even contribute to the animal-killing food industry? why haven't i gone the other way round??! (instead of rationalising saving lives=saving animal lives, killing lives=killing animal life)
so in a way, this is just more ethical support of not drinking milk. it harms humans and it harms animals. cows are hurt in the process of milking and so are we.
only one type of milk is good for you, and that's your mum's milk...
"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.
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.
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. Although milk from cows being treated with antibiotics must be discarded and can't be sold, there are far more antibiotics in commercial use than are tested for. "
actually i was also quite freaked out because i have read all these books about how cows are treated to get milk (like huge vats of milk machines) and have to be separated from their calves everyday and call out to their calves constantly onto death even though they know they're not around when they're in the process of being milked.
i have become vegetarian again. in the process of being vegan.
the reason being...i work in the frontline of helping to save lives, and then i made a big mistake and a life was almost lost. don't ask me what, i don't want to say it...it will haunt me to the end of my life...and i thought, if i felt that way about almost killing a human being (albeit unintentionally) then how can i even contribute to the animal-killing food industry? why haven't i gone the other way round??! (instead of rationalising saving lives=saving animal lives, killing lives=killing animal life)
so in a way, this is just more ethical support of not drinking milk. it harms humans and it harms animals. cows are hurt in the process of milking and so are we.
only one type of milk is good for you, and that's your mum's milk...
"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.
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.
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. Although milk from cows being treated with antibiotics must be discarded and can't be sold, there are far more antibiotics in commercial use than are tested for. "
Last edited by whatis on Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
More..
So what's the alternative? Compulsory veganism and the banning of milk? The dairy industry is the single largest agricultural sector in Britain, which is the third largest milk producer in the EU. It generates ?6bn in retail sales, and can't just be wished away. Nor do most of us respond well to attempts to police our eating habits. Yet 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.
Dr Tim Lobstein, co-director of the Food Commission, an independent watchdog on food issues, is scathing about dairy overproduction. He 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. What would he say 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."
Why, Lobstein asks, do we need to import onions from Tasmania or beans from Kenya? Perhaps the ultimate folly is the import of New Zealand apples into a country in which so much of that fruit is grown already. Hird's report recommends more radical CAP reform, the removal of free school milk, the adoption by the WTO of anti-dumping measures, as well as other structural changes that would produce "less, better milk from happier cows".
Of course, changing food policy and individual eating habits is hard and slow. The first major step is a national debate about milk production and consumption - a real one, not the kind the government has conducted on GM foods. Part of this debate will have to be a frank appraisal of whether milk can jeopardise human health. Finding a way of discussing milk that neither evangelises nor demonises will be tough. So, too, is distinguishing the dogma from the science, especially since the research is so often conflicting. Yet it seems increasingly clear that dairy prodicts 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.
At the same time (and Atkinds 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.
So what's the alternative? Compulsory veganism and the banning of milk? The dairy industry is the single largest agricultural sector in Britain, which is the third largest milk producer in the EU. It generates ?6bn in retail sales, and can't just be wished away. Nor do most of us respond well to attempts to police our eating habits. Yet 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.
Dr Tim Lobstein, co-director of the Food Commission, an independent watchdog on food issues, is scathing about dairy overproduction. He 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. What would he say 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."
Why, Lobstein asks, do we need to import onions from Tasmania or beans from Kenya? Perhaps the ultimate folly is the import of New Zealand apples into a country in which so much of that fruit is grown already. Hird's report recommends more radical CAP reform, the removal of free school milk, the adoption by the WTO of anti-dumping measures, as well as other structural changes that would produce "less, better milk from happier cows".
Of course, changing food policy and individual eating habits is hard and slow. The first major step is a national debate about milk production and consumption - a real one, not the kind the government has conducted on GM foods. Part of this debate will have to be a frank appraisal of whether milk can jeopardise human health. Finding a way of discussing milk that neither evangelises nor demonises will be tough. So, too, is distinguishing the dogma from the science, especially since the research is so often conflicting. Yet it seems increasingly clear that dairy prodicts 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.
At the same time (and Atkinds 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.
hm...i guess first of all i have to say I'm totally against animal abuse and cruelty. I'm kind of an animal person. You need someone to care for your horses or lizards or dog, cat or whatever, no matter how exotic, I'm the woman to call and expect it to be living when you return.
I suppose I'm alittle guilty of the belief that animals are here to be eaten. Yeah. But the way people do it these days is in no way right. I've read all this stuff about cows before. Now, its all about money, morals are gone. I think I can't do anything about it so i don't care that much anymore. I could go vegan, but it's not gonna make all that much difference. I've already been thru all this with the horse slaughterhouses and stuff. Nothing that can be completely stopped.
I'm really not a heartless guttersnipe, I do care. I'd rather not eat meat because I don't like it, not to save the cows. They are cute though...
I suppose I'm alittle guilty of the belief that animals are here to be eaten. Yeah. But the way people do it these days is in no way right. I've read all this stuff about cows before. Now, its all about money, morals are gone. I think I can't do anything about it so i don't care that much anymore. I could go vegan, but it's not gonna make all that much difference. I've already been thru all this with the horse slaughterhouses and stuff. Nothing that can be completely stopped.
I'm really not a heartless guttersnipe, I do care. I'd rather not eat meat because I don't like it, not to save the cows. They are cute though...
-You can''t stop my heart from turning inside out.
i think my guilty conscience played a vast part..don't worry sweetie, most would-be vegetarians feel like that too, being useless..
but i would like to be a drop in the ocean. because without that drop, there would be no wave...
i wouldn't be an active campaignist or whatever, i didn't like to be told to be vegetarian when i first became one....it's the sort of thing that you have to make up your own mind about, like religion, politics, or loving someone..
but i would like to be a drop in the ocean. because without that drop, there would be no wave...
i wouldn't be an active campaignist or whatever, i didn't like to be told to be vegetarian when i first became one....it's the sort of thing that you have to make up your own mind about, like religion, politics, or loving someone..