Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

Well, I promised Part 2 on the MILK Wars, so here’s some more material for rumination.

NOTE: Not for filing under “the author of Let’sGetHonest is an earth mother health nut.”

Well, the “nut” maybe, about health, plus some: subtract the earth, though

But I hope you file this under “the Pedigree of Ideas” and ask, what other nutty thinking fell off the same tree.

First of all, we saw how vicious the retaliation against small, self-sustaining and health-producing farms (and cows) who didn’t leave a large footprint, require cow food to be imported, or cows to be fed ground up parts of almost any refuse while stacked on top of each other, and use up more fossil fuel in the process of bringing their food in, and their output out, after which they could be abused some more shortly before slaughtering.

There MUST be some reasoning behind this. It’s clear some thought process went into trying to eliminate the small organic dairy farmers, and preventing people from choosing their own foods which don’t make them sick. Hmm…. It takes coordination to pull off a raid of a dairy farm, right?

THIS has a Business History, yes it does:

Not Milk: The USDA, Monsanto, and the U.S. Dairy Industry
By Ché Green

The dairy industry has spent billions of dollars convincing us that milk is healthy, all the while pumping chemicals into cows and the milk itself that makes it deadly.

Milk, they say, is an important source of calcium that helps kids grow up big and strong. Milk is said to contain vital nutrients and to help prevent osteoporosis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its food dietary guidelines, says that everyone should get 2-3 servings of dairy every day. Milk is advocated by various agencies of the U.S. government, legions of physicians, and the $180 million annual advertising budget of the dairy industry itself. Britney Spears, Carson Daly, Neve Campbell, Spike Lee, and other fine celebrities have endorsed milk, decorating thousands of billboards with their mustachioed mugs.

And, indeed, America has a love affair with milk. The average person living in the United States consumes over 600 pounds of dairy products every year, including about 420 pounds of fluid milk and cream, 70 pounds of various milk-based fats and oils, 30 pounds of cheese, and 17 pounds of ice cream. In aggregate, U.S. dairy farmers produce 163 billion pounds of milk and milk products a year.

But what if Britney and Spike were lying to us? What if milk doesn’t do a body good? Instead, what if milk is a major contributor to breast cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and more? What if the U.S. government and the dairy industry are colluding to hide the ill effects of dairy consumption?

According to Amy Lanou, Ph.D., the nutrition director of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), “Besides prostate cancer, milk has been linked to asthma, anemia, allergies, juvenile-onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and ovarian and breast cancer.”

Why then, is milk still widely regarded as wholesome?

The USDA’s Food Pyramid Scheme

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to its mission statement, is charged with “enhancing the quality of life for the American people by supporting the production of agriculture.” Created by the pro-business Lincoln administration in 1862, today’s USDA has the dual responsibility of assisting dairy farmers while promoting healthy dietary choices for Americans. Not surprisingly, this creates a conflict of interest that puts at risk the objectivity of government farm policy and the health of all dairy-consuming Americans.

In December 1999, the PCRM filed suit against the USDA, claiming the department unfairly promotes the special interests of the meat and dairy industries through its official dietary guidelines and the Food Pyramid. Six of the eleven members assigned to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee were demonstrated to have financial ties to meat, dairy, and egg interests. Prior to the suit, which the PCRM won in December 2000, the USDA had refused to disclose such conflicts of interest to the general public.

I’m not done yet, not with this site. Because we have to look at that school system, and which populations are probably LEAST likely to be able to get out from under it.

”

Government Cheese

With the recent passage of the Farm Bill on May 13, 2002, dairy farmers and processors will receive $2 billion more in subsidies over the next three and a half years, largely realized through price supports that inflate costs for consumers. Dairy subsidies are a carryover from the Depression era, when survival of small dairy farmers was considered essential to maintaining a national food supply.

Today, a large chunk of that additional $2 billion in subsidies is going to large dairy farms in twelve northeastern states. Further, as consolidation continues to occur in the dairy industry, federal subsidies are going to an increasingly small number of highly concentrated dairy operations, hanging small farmers out to dry and encouraging the demise of family farms. This increase in large industrial farms bodes ill for both cows and humans.

Lactose Intolerance and Ethnic Discrimination

Another assertion of the suit brought by the PCRM against the USDA is that the status of milk as a staple in school lunch programs unfairly discriminates against non-whites who have a high incidence of lactose intolerance. In total, there are an estimated 50 million lactose intolerant adults in the U.S., including 15 percent of the white population, 70 percent of the black population, and 80 to 97 percent of Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Jews of European descent. These 50 million people suffer from a variety of digestive symptoms that result from consuming milk and other dairy products, including gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and indigestion.

Currently, the USDA requires that every public school in the country serve milk. There’s even a push by Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) to offer financial incentives to schools that install milk vending machines (after California, New York is the second largest dairy-producing state). Further, students cannot get free or subsidized alternatives to milk, such as juice or soy milk, without a note from their physician, so for 70 percent of black kids in public schools, a negative response to lactose intake is practically mandated by the U.S. Government. Same goes for 90 percent of Asian American students and 74 percent of Native American students.

The PCRM asserts that huge dairy subsidies and broad-based promotion of milk by the government’s school lunch program is a form of economic racism that isolates minorities and encourages them to consume something they’re disproportionately intolerant of or allergic to.

rBGH and the Damage Done

Girls in the U.S. are beginning to menstruate at younger and younger ages. According to the Cancer Prevention Coalition, some girls are now experiencing the effects of puberty as young as three years of age. Fifty years ago the incidence of breast cancer risk among U.S. women was one in twenty, a percentage that has grown to one in eight women as of 2001.

Here’s a big part of the reason why: Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) is a naturally occurring hormone produced by milk cows. Closely resembling the natural growth hormones in human children, the presence of BGH in milk has been shown to significantly elevate hormone levels in people, creating a host of growth problems.

That’s not even accounting for the use of artificial hormones. Recombinant BGH (rBGH) is an unnaturally occurring, genetically engineered hormone produced by Monsanto Company, a giant in the agrichemical industry, which has also made such other fine ecological and humanitarian contributions as Agent Orange and PCBs. Through a series of research cover-ups and a network of conflicting interests with government policymakers [see sidebar], Monsanto in 1994 managed to get approval for Posilac, the company’s commercial form of rBGH, which increases cows’ milk production by an estimated 15-25 percent.

According to Monsanto, over a quarter of U.S. milk cows are now in herds supplemented with Posilac. The vast majority of the country’s 1,500 dairy companies mix rBGH milk with non-rBGH milk during processing to such an extent that an estimated 80-90 percent of the U.S. dairy supply is contaminated.

What Monsanto doesn’t tell consumers is that supplementing the American diet with additional growth hormones is causing secondary sex characteristics to appear earlier in young children, particularly girls. Monsanto also won’t tell the public that rBGH-injected cows produce milk with exceedingly high levels of Insulin Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), a cancer promoter that occurs naturally in the human bloodstream at levels that generally do not result in tumors. Monsanto and the FDA refuse to acknowledge recent research directly linking elevated levels of IGF-1 to increased risk of breast and prostate cancer. Going even further, Monsanto and the FDA colluded in 1993 and ’94 to block labeling requirements for rBGH milk. Consequently, the average dairy consumer has no idea if they’re increasing their own risk of getting cancer.

Since 1994, every industrialized country in the world except the U.S. — including Canada, Japan, and all fifteen nations of the European Union — has banned rBGH milk. The United Nations Food Standards Body refuses to certify that rBGH is safe. Even the WTO, or more specifically its food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius, has refused to endorse Monsanto’s claim that rBGH is safe for use in the dairy supply. In the face of facts and the majority opinion of the global political and scientific community, Monsanto and the United States continue to endorse rBGH milk for general consumption, at the same time scratching their heads about increases in breast cancer deaths and the continually declining age of puberty for girls.

What about the Cash Cows?

Okay, so milk is bad for people. Really bad, in fact. But what of the effect on cows producing that milk? The life expectancy of the average cow in natural conditions is about 25-30 years; on the typical factory farm, where well over half of U.S. milk cows reside, they live only four to five years.

The increased milk production spurred by dosing cows with Monsanto’s Posilac causes them to suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of the udder, and widespread occurrences of cystic ovaries and disorders of the uterus. In addition to harming the cows, these conditions may produce discharges that are passed to consumers along with the milk.

It turns out that keeping dairy cows constantly pregnant — the only way they will produce milk — creates (surprise!) baby calves. The veal industry was created because the dairy industry didn’t know what to do with male calves that otherwise had no economic value to dairy farmers (female calves are the future milk producers). The process is cruel from start to finish: the cows are artificially impregnated by being bound to what the industry terms a “rape rack,”

{{Good grief — see my blog under “the Pit of Despair” and experiments, conducted by a man of course, on monkeys, i.e., Maternal Deprivation results in craziness such that they couldn’t have sex as adults. No problem, this dude came up with a “rape rack,” thereby probably starting the movement against cruelty to animals in laboratories. I kid you not — rape racks?? At what point in time does the process migrate to human beings, who are being treated like lab rats through this system and for $$, to start with? ???}}

then injected with a series of bull semen, hormones, and antibiotics; veal calves are then immobilized in small wooden crates so that they can’t move around, therefore ensuring the tenderness of their flesh when slaughtered. Over a million veal calves were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2001.

In the end, it boils down to a familiar story: Big business and the U.S. government joining forces to dupe the American consumer. The USDA tells us to drink more milk while subsidizing large dairy farms and federally mandating dairy consumption for schoolchildren. The government spends billions to buy unused milk and dairy products, one of the biggest forms of subsidies, while the industry spends almost $200 million every year promoting dairy consumption. Meanwhile, The FDA and Monsanto conspire to pollute the already unhealthful dairy supply with a genetically engineered hormone banned virtually everywhere else in the world.

So while the American public might fairly answer the dairy industry’s ubiquitous question of whether it “Got Milk?” with a resounding, mustachioed “Yes,” the better question might be whether people have gotten screwed in the process.

~ ~ ~ ~

Ché Green is the founder and director of The ARMEDIA Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focusing on farm animal issues in the United States. http://www.alternet.org/story/13557/

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(ME TOO, obviously). ..

ARE YOU UPSET YET? I HOPE SO, EVEN IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN THE U.S.A. …

THE LINK ABOVE HAS AN INSET NEAR THE BOTTOM (NOT PASTED HERE) CALLED “MONSANTO’S MOO JUICE.” (more on hormones)

Read it please. Towards the bottom, is a phrase about “incestuous relationships between Industry and the U.S. Government. . . . advisory boards (FDA) made by scientists and executives from the meat and dairy industries, with a few university executives thrown in for good measure.”

NOW do you see why I’m blogging this?

Of course, in social science, a lot more university academics can be brought in, BUT the funding often comes from some major foundations. Their wealth didn’t come from being middle class employees, typically (maybe originally), but you can be sure that the recommendations for fixing society will recommend the employee route, not the acquiring assets that will spin off some wealth (whether sales, investments, or owning businesses that have profits and almost run themselves) which might leave certain ethnicities time to think about WHY their kids are ending up in prisons, or in school systems which not only underperform, but push food that they might have some innate intolerance to, producing further health problems.

Or become themselves part of the ACADEMIC and CORPORATE food chain, namely the subject matter of experimentation IN social science field and behavioral management fields.

FORCES intent on centralization and eliminating competition MUST be nationalized.

For example, look at the school system.  THIS  is from today:

2. Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools – NYTimes.com

   Jul 21, 2010 … Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools … The common core standards, two years in the making and first released in draft …

I am not an Arne Duncan fan.

Below here is more data about MILK questioning WHY we Got’s to have it . . . .

But I think the Monsanto article kinda nailed the situation.   Anyone remember a  reference  to babies and cow’s  milk from the garden of eden?

KINDA makes me think of CRONE, and the migrations and evolutionary change from agricultural societies to nomadic.

MOST things can be measured more clearly by the profit motive than a psychological diagnosis.  Whatever the excuse for certain economies to work, there have to be forcible consumers.  More and more low-wage workers equals higher profits for the employers.

IF LOS ANGELES ALONE can keep a taxpayer’s rights group tied up in the courts for over a decade, and about a mere $30 million, how would such a mentality with more scope and reach act given authority over an entire nation?

Don’t blame just a President — none of them operates in a vacuum  (although you’ll pick up I am no Obama fan.  I noticed prior to election the Messiah-like claims; Clinton was no different (I voted Obama, incidentally).   Perhaps generations of dumbing us down has taught even the most academic to let their opinions be formed elsewhere.   They study and someone else pays the bills ….)

MORE MILK LOGIC:

FIRST OF ALL, in NATURE, who, generally speaking, sucks milk from Mama?

I could be wrong, but generally speaking in Mammals, YOUNG mammals.

Therefore, to fix this, young Mamas should always nurse and not do cow’s milk, right?

Well, not necessarily; it depends on what drugs they are on (none, let’s hope)>

Well, if they don’t abuse drugs, or alcohol, then it’s cool, right?

Not necessarily: as the first article points out, what she eats counts, too. And if she eats cows fed some of the stuff we read about in the last article, or other indirect forms of pesticides and growth hormones, well, maybe not.

And if she’s in a very abusive situation, it’s possible some of the stress hormones (which can really get out of whack) may affect her milk too.

Some of the articles below might make us go “Huh?” and question, along with the concept of eliminating mothers and introducing instead child care workers, as well as the consequences of the dairy industry sucking up to the captive audiences in the school systems, and then we wonder what’s with the behavioral problems, obesity and other things associated with this — and consider which ethnicities in particular, are going to be stuck in the public school systems, we might want to reconsider a thing or two.

After a few articles, I’ll just put up some links — it’s been a long day …. I’LL DO THE LINKING AND YOU CAN DO THE THINKING, if you want to, including how come the nation’s banks and all ages’ of health needs so much regulating that the ship is SINKING.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

FIRST, a little Common Sense from Dr. Kradkjian, whoever he is (I used search function to locate articles on the topic):

THE MILK LETTER : A MESSAGE TO MY PATIENTS
Robert M. Kradjian, MD
Breast Surgery Chief Division of General Surgery,
Seton Medical Centre #302 – 1800 Sullivan Ave.
Daly City, CA 94015 USA

"MILK" Just the word itself sounds comforting! "How about a
nice cup of hot milk?" The last time you heard that question
it was from someone who cared for you--and you appreciated
their effort.

The entire matter of food and especially that of milk is
surrounded with emotional and cultural importance. Milk was
our very first food. If we were fortunate it was our
mother's milk. A loving link, given and taken. It was the
only path to survival. If not mother's milk it was cow's
milk or soy milk "formula"--rarely it was goat, camel or
water buffalo milk.

Now, we are a nation of milk drinkers. Nearly all of us.
Infants, the young, adolescents, adults and even the aged.
We drink dozens or even several hundred gallons a year and
add to that many pounds of "dairy products" such as cheese,
butter, and yogurt.

. . .

I believe that there are three reliable sources of
information. The first, and probably the best, is a study of
nature. The second is to study the history of our own
species. Finally we need to look at the world's scientific
literature on the subject of milk.

Let's look at the scientific literature first. From 1988 to
1993 there were over 2,700 articles dealing with milk
recorded in the 'Medicine' archives. Fifteen hundred of
theses had milk as the main focus of the article. There is
no lack of scientific information on this subject. I
reviewed over 500 of the 1,500 articles, discarding articles
that dealt exclusively with animals, esoteric research and
inconclusive studies.

How would I summarize the articles? They were only slightly
less than horrifying. First of all, none of the authors
spoke of cow's milk as an excellent food, free of side
effects and the 'perfect food' as we have been led to
believe by the industry. The main focus of the published
reports seems to be on intestinal colic, intestinal
irritation, intestinal bleeding, anemia, allergic reactions
in infants and children as well as infections such as
salmonella. More ominous is the fear of viral infection with
bovine leukemia virus or an AIDS-like virus as well as
concern for childhood diabetes. Contamination of milk by
blood and white (pus) cells as well as a variety of
chemicals and insecticides was also discussed. Among
children the problems were allergy, ear and tonsillar
infections, bedwetting, asthma, intestinal bleeding, colic
and childhood diabetes. In adults the problems seemed
centered more around heart disease and arthritis, allergy,
sinusitis, and the more serious questions of leukemia,
lymphoma and cancer.

I think that an answer can also be found in a consideration
of what occurs in nature & what happens with free living
mammals and what happens with human groups living in close
to a natural state as 'hunter-gatherers'.

Our paleolithic ancestors are another crucial and
interesting group to study. Here we are limited to
speculation and indirect evidences, but the bony remains
available for our study are remarkable. There is no doubt
whatever that these skeletal remains reflect great strength,
muscularity (the size of the muscular insertions show this),
and total absence of advanced osteoporosis. And if you feel
that these people are not important for us to study,
consider that today our genes are programming our bodies in
almost exactly the same way as our ancestors of 50,000 to
100,000 years ago.

WHAT IS MILK?

Milk is a maternal lactating secretion, a short term
nutrient for new-borns. Nothing more, nothing less.
Invariably, the mother of any mammal will provide her milk
for a short period of time immediately after birth. When the
time comes for 'weaning', the young offspring is introduced
to the proper food for that species of mammal. A familiar
example is that of a puppy. The mother nurses the pup for
just a few weeks and then rejects the young animal and
teaches it to eat solid food. Nursing is provided by nature
only for the very youngest of mammals. Of course, it is not
possible for animals living in a natural state to continue
with the drinking of milk after weaning.

IS ALL MILK THE SAME?

Then there is the matter of where we get our milk. We have
settled on the cow because of its docile nature, its size,
and its abundant milk supply. Somehow this choice seems
'normal' and blessed by nature, our culture, and our
customs. But is it natural? Is it wise to drink the milk of
another species of mammal?

Consider for a moment, if it was possible, to drink the milk
of a mammal other than a cow, let's say a rat. Or perhaps
the milk of a dog would be more to your liking. Possibly
some horse milk or cat milk. Do you get the idea? Well, I'm
not serious about this, except to suggest that human milk is
for human infants, dogs' milk is for pups, cows' milk is for
calves, cats' milk is for kittens, and so forth. Clearly,
this is the way nature intends it. Just use your own good
judgement on this one.

Milk is not just milk. The milk of every species of mammal
is unique and specifically tailored to the requirements of
that animal. For example, cows' milk is very much richer in
protein than human milk. Three to four times as much. It has
five to seven times the mineral content. However, it is
markedly deficient in essential fatty acids when compared to
human mothers' milk. Mothers' milk has six to ten times as
much of the essential fatty acids, especially linoleic acid.
(Incidentally, skimmed cow's milk has no linoleic acid). It
simply is not designed for humans

WHAT I THINK HE’s SAYING HERE IS, APART FROM WHETHER THE MILK IS RAW OR COOKED, OR WHETHER THE COW IT CAME FROM WAS TREATED AS A LIVING ANIMAL, OR A LIVE PROFIT-MAKING MACHINE, OR FED CRAP AND THEN DRUGS TO PRODUCE MORE, EVEN PERFECT RAW COW’S MILK FROM HAPPY BESSIE MIGHT NOT BE THE NORM. IN FACT (NEXT ARTICLE) IT COULD BE AN EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTION FOR CERTAIN NOMADIC TRIBES TO KEEP ON DRINKING IT, AND NOT NECESSARILY JUST THE MASAI.

GOT MILK? What else comes with it:

• Are you Lactose-Intolerant or Lactase Persistent?

It may depend on “Who’s Your Daddy?

STUDY LINKS ETHNICITY AND LACTOSE INTOLERANCE

Dairy & Milk Allergy

Dr. Frank Oski, the late Director of Paediatrics, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, wrote a book titled “Don’t drink your milk!” This pioneering book written more than 25 years ago, described in detail, the diseases caused by taking cow’s milk. These included leukemias, ear infections, nephritis, skin problems, diabetes, atherosclerosis, breast cancer, and auto immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma. He also found that cow’s milk caused gastrointestinal bleeding in babies leading to iron deficiency anaemia. Allergy to cow’s milk is increasingly seen both in adults and children, due to the presence of pesticides and due to the widespread administration of antibiotics, animal residues, growth additives and hormones in the cow’s feed. In contrast people who drink cow’s milk and take milk products, taken from cows which graze naturally on grass in fields, have a much lower incidence of allergy to cow’s milk. With safe inputs to the cow the output (milk) will also be safe. In India, milk allergy is common in big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Madras & Bangalore where imported milk powder from the European community is used to provide reconstituted milk. Milk allergy in India used to affect less than 5% of the general population in 1990. In my estimation over 50% of people who live in the metropolitan cities of India suffer from health problems caused or aggravated by milk and milk products, beef & gelatin (commonly used to make capsules). Capsules made from gelatin are used commonly to administer antibiotics and vitamins. Many vegetarians are unable to digest this animal protein, and suffer from nausea & diarrhoea because of the capsule. This side effect is wrongly ascribed as a side effect to the use of the antibiotic, and disappears when the same medication is given as a tablet! In the same cities those people who consumed cow’s milk from their local dairy continued to have a low incidence of allergy (less than 5%). With the increasing promotion of commercial fodder, enriched with animal wastes, fish meal, hormones and antibiotics as well as the use by various cooperative milk producing societies, the incidence of milk allergy is rising in other parts of India. This allergy to cow’s milk is normally unsuspected and undiagnosed, and is a common cause of many health problems including stomach pain, peptic ulcers, hyperacidity, hiatus hernia, chronic diarrhoea, Ulcerative colitis, Type1 (childhood onset) diabetes, asthma, eczema, depression, hyperactive or aggressive behaviour, backaches, infertility, endometriosis., ovarian cancer, Rheumatoid arthritis and flatulence.