Does a body good?
Sucks?
Can't decide?

By SYD BAUMEL

It's not easy being white - and edible.

First white rice and white flour. Then white sugar.

Now milk.

They're gunning for it with their big, rude, black spraypaint cans. And it's not just brazen "milk sucks" lait-disturbers like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) or dissident vegan doctors like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). Mainstream medical scientists with no trace of a "vegan agenda" are humbling the sacred cow too.

On multiple medical fronts, evidence is mounting that milk may indeed suck at least as much as it does a body good. But the evidence is frought with uncertainties. If milk were a lady she could sue for slander.

It's not just about health.

The excremental environmental impact of over one million dairy cows in Canada alone and the haunting issue of animal suffering have elevated the squabble about dairy from mere food fight to impassioned moral struggle.

And as in war, the first casualty is truth. Advocacy propaganda masquerading as public health information has created parallel universes of irreconcilable "facts" about milk.

As a  vegan ethically committed both to animal welfare and honest journalism, I set out to separate the curds of confoundment from the sweet whey of truth. Not an easy job. The evidence is vast and often very complex. Despite my best intentions, I'm sure to have stumbled here or there, hopefully only in minor matters. I welcome corrections and comments from readers.

I've  benefitted from the generous input of a number of experts, particularly Stephen Walsh, Ph.D., Vice Chair of the Vegan Society in the U.K. and a scholar whose respect for truth has often led him to defend milk against unfounded accusations. In that spirit, I hope this evolving online report will serve as a trustworthy guide to the medical, environmental, and ethical issues that inform our decision whether or not to drink milk.

Finally, a disclaimer: Much of the content of this report is controversial. I've already been threatened by one would-be litigator. (Don't worry. He threatens everybody. I'm in good company.) I therefore want to make it clear that I bear sole responsibility for the contents of this report and am speaking on my behalf only, not for The Aquarian Online, plant-based, the Winnipeg Vegetarian Association, or anyone associated with them. The buck starts and stops here.

Bone Country

"Remarkably enough, if dairy has any effect, both clinical and population evidence strongly implicate dairy in causing, rather than preventing, osteoporosis," declares PETA on its everything-bad-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-milk website, milksucks.com. When it comes to anti-milk rhetoric, that's almost a moderate position.

Milk-dissenters argue that milk is a high protein food, replete with sulfur amino acids. These acids steal milk's neutralizing calcium – and grab even more from your bones. Then they abscond with it in the urine.

Actually, milk has a modest protein content (only slightly more than soy milk), and no more sulfur amino acids than nuts, seeds, or grains. Most importantly, the ratio of calcium to protein in milk is exceptionally high – 38 milligrams per gram – rivaled only by that calcium susperstar of the plant world, kale – 41.

"The calcium losses induced by milk protein are miniscule in comparison to the total calcium content of milk," write vegan dietitians Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina in Becoming Vegan. Even after factoring in the 70 percent of milk calcium that passes through your gut unabsorbed, calcium balance studies suggest milk's protein claws back a not too greedy third of the calcium that doesn't.

The research?

In 2000, Roland Weinsier and Carlos Krumdieckpublished a comprehensive review on "Dairy Foods and Bone Health " in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Over half of the roughly 50 studies they found reported no significant effect for or against milk or other dairy foods. Studies favourable to dairy outnumbered unfavourable ones 8 to 1, but most were low on the evidential food chain. But among "21 stronger-evidence studies. . . .the overall ratio of favorable to unfavorable  effects . . . was 2.0." And when these were subdivided according to the age of the subjects, the ratio rose to 4.0 for people 30 years old and younger, but it sank to a milk-bubble-deflating 1.0 for everyone older.

As early as 1994, a U.S. National Institutes of Health consensus statement had determined that "intake and absorption account for only 25 percent of the variance in calcium balance [what the body keeps], whereas urinary loss accounts for approximately 50 percent. The typical American diet consists of high amounts of sodium and animal protein, both of which can significantly increase urinary calcium excretion."

Weinsier and Krumdieck's parting advice was that "age-related bone loss may be more attributable to excessivecalcium loss than to inadequate calcium intake. Accordingly,greater attention needs to be given to eliminating the causesof calcium loss, which in turn should lower calcium requirements."

VERDICT: Milk almost certainly does a skeleton good, especially when you're young – but not nearly as good as the milk mustache people imply. Calcium is best thought of as a pivotal team player in a contest that includes eating less sodium and more potassium and vitamin K, avoiding excess protein (especially from meat, eggs, and fish) and vitamin A (beta-carotene is fine), getting plenty of sunshine or vitamin D, not smoking, and stimulating your bones regularly with physical activity.

A "Hearty" Drink?

Few things change as often in nutrition as the party line on fat. But one thing has remained more or less constant: saturated fat spells trouble. And milk fat has lots of it: two thirds to be exact – much more than beef itself.

It's not just that saturated fat elevates blood levels of artery-clogging LDL-cholesterol about three times as much as it boosts cardioprotective HDL-cholesterol. It also makes blood sticky, promoting clots that can plug cholesterol-narrowed arteries and cause heart attacks, strokes, and the thousand tiny brain insults that contribute to senile dementia. Controlled trials have shown that restricting saturated fats helps prevent these manifestations of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Surprisingly, some studies suggest more milk means less CVD. In the Caerphilly Study of nearly 3000 Welsh men, those who drank one or more pints of milk a day had an 88% lower risk of heart attacks and strokes than those who drank none. The famous Honolulu Heart Program found that, compared to men who shunned milk, men who drank two or more glasses a day were only half as likely to be felled by a thromboembolic stroke (the most common kind).

Whaaaaat?

Well, there are some serious methodological criticisms. The Caerphilly study, for example, didn’t rule out any risk factors of the "he drinks milk and works out a lot; he drinks beer and smokes all day" kind. By far the most significant criticism of the better-controlled positive studies (which have usually found a very modest effect for milk) is that few if any have data on what kind of milk. But at least one study does, and its results are very suggestive.

But first, a little background.

When scientists ponder why skim- or low-fat milk might prevent, rather than cause CVD, they typically cite its high calcium content, its moderate contributions of magnesium and potassium, and its modest burden of sodium. All these factors (especially potassium) prevent high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for CVD. For dairy dissenters, that's good news really. Calorie for calorie, whole unprocessed plant foods – especially fruits and vegetables – are as good, if not better than milk at producing this blood pressure-friendly mineral balance. In 1999, the Harvard Nurses' Health Study found that stroke risk fell by 6% for every serving of fruits or vegetables consumed.

Now to the study. Another dispatch from the famous Nurses' Health Study, this one found that women who drank the most whole milk (one or two glasses a day) had (respectively) a 48% and a 67% greater risk of fatal and nonfatal heart attacks than those who drank it almost never. In contrast, skim milk produced a modest, though nonsignificant, reduction in risk of up to 22% with increasing intake. The study appeared to neatly separate milk's cardiotoxic fat from its (perhaps) cardioprotective whey. But like the pro-milk studies, it too had an Achilles heal. The researchers had controlled for a posse of potential confounding factors - smoking, exercise, taking a vitamin E supplement, among others - but not the plant food portion of the nurses' diets. What if the throw-caution-to-the-wind whole milk drinkers had also neglected to eat their fruit and vegetables, and the "prudent" skim milk lovers had not? "It is possible the association with whole milk may be due to other factors," admits lead author Frank Hu, who says he and his associates are looking into the plant food connection. But, given what we know about saturated fat from a lode of other studies, Hu believes "a higher amount of saturated fat associated with regular milk may be also responsible for the positive association."

VERDICT: Because of its preponderance of saturated fat, it's a reasonable bet that whole milk is as inimical to your heart and blood vessels as any saturated fat source. In contrast, low-fat milk may actually be beneficial - just like fruit or vegetable juice.

Breast Cancer

"Since the 1980’s, study after study has linked dairy consumption to a high incidence of breast and other cancers."

Recently, for example, the dairy industry blitzed the media about a study from Norway that suggested high milk consumption could cut breast cancer risk almost in half. It was a good honest study. Which means Anette Hjartåker and her associates duly reported that other studies of milk or dairy and breast cancer have been about equally divided: pro, con, and non. "The contradicting results," they wrote, "may indicate that any association between milk consumption and breast cancer is not a strong one."

VERDICT: Studies have yet to clarify whether milk (whole or low fat) promotes breast cancer or helps prevent it.

Prostate Cancer

A couple years ago, when PETA painted a milk mustache on billboard images of New York's prostate cancer-stricken mayor Rudy Giuliani, it was baaad taste. But the science was sound.

"Dairy intake has been consistently associated with increased risk of prostate cancer," according to June Chan and Edward Giovannucci of the Harvard School of Public Health. "This is one of the most consistent dietary predictors for prostate cancer in the published literature."

How bad is it?

"In these studies," Chan and Giovannucci continue, "men with the highest dairy intakes had approximately double the risk of total prostate cancer, and up to a fourfold increase in risk of metastatic or fatal prostate cancer relative to low consumers."

Thirteen of the studies looked specifically at milk; and in all but four, milk – including low fat and skim – was incriminated.

You'd think that when Larry King sports that milk mustache, there would at least be a fine print warning. So does PCRM. A couple years ago it complained to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which led to a report this June by a USDA-convened panel of experts. "Advertisements related to high-risk groups for prostate cancer or cardiovascular disease (i.e. adult males) should clearly indicate that low-fat milk is preferred or indicate that risks may be associated with whole milk consumption," the panel recommended.

But according to Chan and Giovannucci, the research suggests it's not the fat but the calcium in milk (which depletes cancer-protective vitamin D) that's the problem, along with milk's ability – again, regardless of fat content – to increase blood levels of a hormone called insulinlike growth factor-I (IGF-1) that can promote cancer growth.

VERDICT: If you're old enough to grow a silver mustache, you may want to scrap the milk mustache.

Ovarian Cancer

In 1989, Daniel Cramer and his associates at Harvard University published a tantalizing clue to the origins of ovarian cancer. Not only was ovarian cancer more common in countries with high milk consumption, but women with the disease were significantly more likely to be deficient in an enzyme called GALT. GALT is required to digest a breakdown product of lactose (milk sugar), galactose. It was a provocative finding, because galactose appears to damage ovarian egg cells, causing ovarian failure. And premature ovarian failure is a precursor to ovarian cancer.

Flash forward to 2002. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is citing Cramer's research to suggest milk is a cause of ovarian cancer. And Cramer is badmouthing PCRM.

"We don't have the scientific proof to say that it has definitely been linked to cancer," Cramer is telling CNSNews.com."I think that particular group has their own sort of agenda . . ."

Indeed, PCRM never mentions the studies that cast doubt on the viability of the milk-galactose hypothesis. As recently as 2000, Cramer's own group found no difference in milk consumption or in GALT activity between 563 new cases of ovarian cancer and 523 controls. But they did find a few other GALT-related abnormalities – enough to keep the hypothesis alive.

VERDICT: The evidence may still be half-baked, but if you have a family history of ovarian cancer and low GALT activity (the only practical way to know, according to Cramer, is if someone has galactosemia in your family), you might ask yourself if you really need dairy.

Colorectal Cancer

Don't look for the scoop on colorectal cancer from PETA or PCRM. That's because studies suggest milk helps.

Not that it's a uniquely milk thing. Research suggests calcium from any source acts as a neutralizer of carcinogenic substances passing through the colon. Other studies that suggest sunlight reduces colon cancer implicate milk's vitamin D. And while milk has a few relatively proprietary substances that may be cancer-fighters, like conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and whey protein, it also appears to raise blood levels of a growth hormone called IGF-1, which can promote cancer.

Most studies suggest high milk intakes reduce colorectal cancer risk by about 20 to 30 percent. But a recent study of men found a subgroup who may benefit much more. In that Harvard study, men with a high ratio of IGF-I to IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) who drank lots of low-fat milk had just one third the risk of colorectal cancer compared to those who drank little or none.

VERDICT: Especially for people with a high IGF-I to IGFBP-3 ratio, low-fat milk appears to be protective against colorectal cancer. Research suggests sunshine and nondairy sources of calcium should work too, without raising IGF-1.

Got Pus?

Imagine if there was a nasty bug infecting over 40 percent of Canadian dairy herds, and pasteurisation was only partially effective in killing it.

No need to imagine.

The bug is called MAP (Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis), and it causes an incurable bowel disorder called Johne's disease in domestic sheep and cattle. Johne's is a virtual replica of Crohn’s disease, which "chronically" afflicts nearly 100,000 Canadians.

Michael Greger, M.D., believes the resemblance between Johne's and Crohn's is more than coincidental. It's communicable.

"Since transmission of this bacteria is facilitated by its presence inside pus cells, American milk drinkers may be at particularly high risk since the US has the highest permitted upper limit of milk pus cell concentration in the world," Geiger writes.

In 1997, the USDA did a laboratory simulation test which purported to show that MAP is obliterated by normal pasteurisation. But a year later in Ireland, other researchers successfully cultured MAP from six out of 31 cartons of pasteurised milk.

Alarm bells rang across Europe. Still reeling from the Mad Cow disaster, Europeans had been worried about MAP since 1996 when John Hermon-Taylor, a professor and surgeon at St. Georges Hospital in London, announced that he and his colleagues had isolated MAP from the intestines of two thirds of patients with Crohn's but from no one without it. Now there was a smoking Irish milk carton.

Evidence mounted. At the University of Central Florida, Saleh A. Naser and his associates were able to distinguish with 74% to 98% accuracy between 53 patients with Crohn's and 45 controls by comparing how their blood reacted to MAP proteins. They also found MAP in the breast milk of women with Crohn's.

This December, the BBC reported that Hermon-Taylor "said that it was almost certain that MAP was responsible for Crohn's, and that medication to wipe out MAP could cure the disease." The British government was finally poised to apply the "precautionary principle." It recommended longer pasteurisation time and (possibly) "improved hygiene on dairy farms."

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has found MAP in between 47 and 72 percent of Canadian dairy herds. This fall, when CTV News asked Health Canada what they were doing about it, they received no reply. But according to a report last spring in La Presse, Health Canada is aware that preliminary results from Guelph University confirm that MAP survives pasteurisation.

VERDICT: Milk could give you a permanent "stomach ache." Until governments apply the precautionary principle, milk drinkers will have to consider applying it themselves.

Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) and insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM, also known as type 1- or juvenile diabetes) are two superficially very different diseases that actually have a lot in common geographically, ethnically, and genetically. Both are also autoimmune diseases, and growing evidence suggests that in both cases a trigger of the self-destructive immune process is milk.

Studies have long shown that IDDM and MS are prevalent in countries that drink cow's milk and rare in countries that don't. Recently, the evidence has become less circumstantial. Last year, in the latest in a string of similar studies, Hans-Michael Dosch, Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and his colleagues in Toronto and Pittsburgh reported that the T cells of people with MS, IDDM, or at high genetic risk for IDDM were very highly, and almost identically, reactive to several different cow's milk proteins and to lookalike proteins from the pancreas and nervous system. It was the strongest evidence yet that, at least in some cases of IDDM and MS, an allergy to milk becomes an allergy to one's own body.

Clinical trials are now under way to try and prevent or arrest the progress of IDDM and MS by avoiding cow's milk. Already, in one trial from Finland, a cow's milk-based formula with pre-digested (hypoallergenic) proteins reduced the incidence of autoimmunologic changes predictive of IDDM in genetically at risk babies by nearly 70% compared to cow's milk itself.

VERDICT: In part because of the IDDM risk, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against cow's milk for babies under one year old. But there is no guaranty it can't trigger IDDM or MS in older children or adults too, especially with a family history of autoimmune or allergic disease. Already, a large Finnish study has found that siblings of children with IDDM appear to have a greater than fivefold risk of developing IDDM if they drink lots of milk.

Intolerable

When it comes to the many ways milk can disagree with people, lactose intolerance (a problem for up to 90% of non-Caucasians) is the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, this crampy, indigestive consequence of an intestinal shortfall of lactase, the enzyme that digests milk-sugar (lactose), may be the tip of its own iceberg.

Preliminary research suggests women who are lactose intolerant are much more likely to suffer from depression or PMS (premenstrual syndrome). The researchers speculate that undigested lactose indirectly reduces brain levels of the mellow neurotransmitter serotonin.

But it's milk's proteins that most commonly cause symptoms in the 1 to 5% of people (estimates vary widely) who are allergic. The symptoms typically are gastrointestinal, dermatologic, or ear and respiratory. They include diarrhea or constipation, acne, earaches, and a stuffy or runny nose.

Less commonly recognized are the mental and neurological symptoms.

"Milk and all that comes from milk increases melancholy," Robert Burton wrote 381 years ago in his classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. By 1976, there was enough evidence suggesting Burton was right to lead one expert to write in Annals of Allergy: "Allergies of the nervous system cause diverse behavioral disturbances, including headaches, convulsions, learning disabilities, schizophrenia and depression." That assessment was vehemently seconded in 1984 by James C. Breneman, then Chairman of the Food Allergy Committee of the American College of Allergists, in his textbook, Basics of Food Allergy.

Jonathan Brostoff, an allergist from Middlesex Hospital Medical School, speaks for many contemporary clinicians when he describes an elderly female patient whose years of depression and gastrointestinal symptoms came abruptly to an end when she dumped milk from her diet.

Scientifically, the case against milk is being made by a growing number of double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. The evidence that food allergy is a common cause of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and other childhood behavioural disorders is so strong and well-replicated that in 1999 the Center for Science in the Public Interest, doctors, and academics petitioned the U.S. Surgeon General to pressure the medical profession to make diet, not Ritalin, their first line of therapy.

There is also consistent evidence that as many as two-thirds of children with autism can benefit significantly, sometimes dramatically, by eliminating milk and/or gluten from their diets.

VERDICT: Cow's milk is universally regarded as one of the most potent dietary allergens. Anyone with unexplained symptoms would do well to consider avoiding it for a few weeks to see if it makes them feel better.

Children at Risk

In the seventh and final edition of his perennial bestseller Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock – the Walter Cronkite of baby doctors – wrote: "I no longer recommend dairy products." For Spock, the risks had come to outweigh the benefits.

The American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't go that far. But it does recommend against cow's milk for the first year of life, not only because of the allergic and autoimmune threat to immature immune systems, but because cow's milk is a recipe for iron-deficiency anemia, which makes babies weak, sad, listless, and dull.

Conventional medical wisdom has it that babies' milk allergies are soon outgrown. But a recent study from Finland found that, at age 10, two thirds of 56 children diagnosed with cow's milk allergy as infants were still allergic according to skin prick testing, and still highly symptomatic.

Many children may be allergic to milk and not know it. A 1987 study in Annals of Allergy examined 46 boys and girls, 3 months to 10 years old, who suffered from runny noses, wheezing, frequent ear- and other infections, coughing, rash, gastrointestinal upsets, or headaches. Blood tests suggested that 32 were allergic to milk and/or to other foods. When the children avoided the incriminated foods their symptoms improved by 70%. Another study found that 81 out of 104 children with recurring earaches and ear infections had food allergies. Milk was the commonest culprit, affecting 38%. On an allergen-free diet for 16 weeks, 70 of the 81 children were significantly improved, both symptomatically and by examination. Reintroducing the foods led to a relapse in all but four.

VERDICT: Dr. Spock may have had it right: at least for some children, the problems caused by milk clearly outweigh the benefits.

Got Pollution?

"Canada's 24 million cows and hogs now produce more waste than a human population of 122 million people," writes award-winning environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk in Canadian Business. "While most cities treat their sewage, factory farms simply spread the guck around on open fields, where it often finds its way into surface and groundwater. . . .[S]uch practices are likely to invite more political disasters like Walkerton, home to Ontario's densest livestock concentration."

In 1995, the federal government asked its scientists to determine if all that animal waste was getting out of control. Last January, it got its 235-page answer, and the Access to Information Act got it into the hands of National Post reporter Tom Spears, who summed the whole thing up: "The government asked: Are nutrients [refined livestock waste] really a pollution problem? The short answer: Yes."

"The pollutants," Spears wrote, "kill fish and frogs. They acidify lakes and soil, just like acid rain. They are 'on occasion, endangering human health,' according to the report."

Farms (especially factory farms) are the biggest polluter, according to the report. In 1996 alone, they spread nearly two million tons of nitrogen from "manure, sewage plant sludge and other fertilizers" and 441,000 tons of phosphorus. "These loads spill into waterways and kill fish," Spears wrote.

It's not just a water problem. "In the lower Fraser Valley in British Columbia, ammonia from the manure in intensive farms forms a rural smog," Spears writes. The nitrogen becomes food not just for smog, but for acid rain and global warming.

"Although its health effects are not yet fully known," the scientists from five federal agencies concluded, "the direct relationship between fine particles, respiratory disease and mortality has fuelled growing concern over this unusual phenomenon."

VERDICT: Until government grabs "the bull" by the horns, whenever we drink nonorganic milk we're fouling our own nest.

Offline References
Andrew Nikiforuk, "The Ultimate End Product," Canadian Business, June 26, 2000, p. 50.
Tom Spears, "Farm Chemicals Threaten Our Air, Water: Scientists Farming Biggest Source Of Pollutants That Kill Fish, Frogs," National Post, May 1, 2001.

The High Price of Milk

To a dairy cow, the difference between life on a traditional or organic farm and life in the factory farms that dominate agriculture today must be like the difference between Walden Pond and Auschwitz.

Instead of grazing outdoors every day on fresh grass or straw, she spends most of her time confined or tied in a small stall in a crowded, noisy barn. Her unnatural diet is optimized to turn her into a cost-efficient milk delivery system. Instead of bearing calves every two or three years, she is artificially inseminated to calve about once a year so the tap can flow almost nonstop. She is milked not by hand but by rough, failure-prone machinery. Her huge, swollen udders are often infected and probably a source of chronic pain. Her horns are usually removed by cutting, scooping, or gouging.

No sooner does the dairy cow give birth than the calf is snatched away, usually within 24 hours. Fed a cheap milk substitute, the calf will follow in her mother's footsteps or (if male) become a breeding bull, join a beef herd, be slaughtered immediately as "bob veal," or endure a short, Dickensian existence chained by the neck in a dark wooden crate less than 2 feet by 4. There the calf will be fed an iron-free milk substitute to produce the anemic baby flesh that is veal.

Finally, "at sixteen weeks of age," writes Erik Marcus in Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, "the veal calf. . . .takes the first steps outside his crate since the day he was born – as the producer leads him onto a truck bound for the slaughterhouse."

Usually by the age of four or five, the calf's mother's milking days are over. Still a young woman in cow years, she is crowded into a cattle car and driven to her slaughter. You could call it a mercy killing were it not for the fact that:

She may die from trampling, exposure, or dehydration on a long trip to the stockyard or slaughterhouse.

She may arrive so sick and weak that she can't make it off the truck. If shouting and beating don't work, she will be chained and dragged off, because as long as she has the breath of life in her she can be slaughtered for human consumption.

Inadequately stunned before being strung up for slaughter, she may be bled and dismembered while still conscious. "I've seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. . . .I've been in the side-puller where they're still alive. All the hide is stripped out down the neck there." (From a sworn affadavit last year by one of 17 workers at the IBP meat packing plant in Wallula, Washington. IBP is the world's largest meat-packing company.)

Pronk is proud that on farms like his cows aren't pushed to be productive. "On our farm," says Pronk, "I would say the average animal is producing for about 10 years."

And during that time, the cows get to graze outdoors on grass in the summer, eat certified-organic feed all year round, and live in pleasant surroundings.

It sounds like a good life.

But when Pronk's cows can no longer bring home the bacon, the certified organic love-in comes to an end.

"When an animal goes off of our farm," says Pronk, "it's typically sold at the stockyards to another farm" – a farm willing to squeeze the last drops of milk out of it, Pronk explains. As for the other cows, "sometimes they're sold as slaughter meat, and then it often goes to a fast food restaurant or something like that."

What about the calves?

The females get to stay, and good bull calves also remain as breeders or are sold to breed on other farms. "But most of our bull calves are sold to a conventional market that will either raise them as veal or as steers," says Pronk.

Pronk knows of no farms anywhere that let unproductive cows live out their natural 20- to 25-year lifespan or that spare calves from the veal crates. (I've since learned that in response to consumer demand, a very small number of farms now do raise veal calves humanely.)

"I guess that would be the ideal system," Pronk says. But given how much more costly it would be, he doubts consumers would go for it.

VERDICT: Humane societies, including Winnipeg's, are certifying products from farms where animals are treated with certain minimal standards of compassion. But humane practices that would hike prices more than five or ten percent are not in high demand. "Humane labelled," "Freedom Food," and other seals of approval are a step in the right direction. But they continue to mask a heavy toll of animal suffering.

A Jain's Dilemma

In 1995, religion forced Pravin K. Shah to tour a Vermont dairy farm.

Shah is a Jain. Jainism gave the world the doctrine of ahimsa (harmlessness), the cornerstone of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. For Jains, ahimsa means eating without killing – even plants, to some extent. But taking the milk of a cow, if kindly treated, is fine. Which is why Jains like Shah are having second thoughts. When Shah toured the mid-sized dairy farm in Vermont, he wanted to see if there was any kindness left in the milk he drank. He came away deeply disappointed.

"It was milking time (5:00 PM)," Shah reported, "and the machine was milking the cow at 3.5 minutes per cow, without regard to how hard it was on the cow. It was extremely difficult for me to watch. . . .The evening I was there, the farm was shipping three baby calves in a truck to a veal factory. The mother cows were crying when their babies were separated from them. I cannot forget the scene and can still hear the cries of the mother cows. . . ."

"Needless to say," Shah writes, "the dairy farm tour made me an instant vegan."

VERDICT: For people who aspire to make every act – even what they pour on their cereal – congruent with their moral values, the decision to drink milk is not just a health question. It's a matter of conscience.

Got Good Milk?

What if all this dirt about dairy was just a bad dream?

The milk marketing boards would love for you to wake up to that unreality. But it's the producers of organic milk and dairy who just might have a case.

"The raging debate over 'milk as medicine' vs. 'milk as poison' reflects how today's food processing techniques can completely alter the state of a food, changing it from its natural healthy form to something totally different," writes Ontario naturopath and organic dairy farmer John Pronk.

"Modern processing techniques (pasteurizing, homogenizing, and skimming) destroy most of the beneficial nutrients in milk," Pronk continues. "Enzymes (which make milk easy to digest) and beneficial bacteria (which prevent people from developing allergies to foods) present in raw milk are destroyed by the heat of pasteurization, making it harder to digest and more allergenic. . . .

"Dairy cattle are now fed a fixed ration of feeds which they would not typically eat if given a choice. . . .Not only might this be considered inhumane, but what is not considered is the effects of these feeds on the quality of the milk and the effects of this milk on those who drink it.

"Having to deal with feeds that disagree puts an extra stress on a cow's immune system. Stressed cows are much more susceptible to infections and, not surprisingly, farmers are seeing very high rates of mastitis (udder infection) in these herds. The typical treatment for mastitis is antibiotics; antibiotic residues then end up in the milk. Overuse of these antibiotics has lead to the problem of antibiotic resistance.

"Milk has historically been used very effectively as medicine for a number of different conditions. Fresh raw milk from healthy animals contains many beneficial nutrients that can be very nourishing and healing. Complete protein, lactoferrin, various digestive enzymes, immunoglobulins (antibodies), conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), and beneficial lactobacillus bacteria are just a few of the valuable nutrients that milk, in its natural form, supplies. . . .

"I would say that organic milk is a lot closer to the whole food milk used to be. I would consider conventional store-bought milk to be a 'modified milk ingredient'; nothing close to the natural food it was a century ago."

Although the healthfulness and medicinal value of organic milk is still more a matter of lore than science, one thing is for sure: the evidence against modern milk can no more be applied to organic milk than the evidence against white rice can be applied to brown. These are cows of an entirely different colour.

Do We Need Milk?

"Cow's milk is not the evil villain it is portrayed to be," says vegan dietitian Brenda Davis, Past Chair of the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association. "But I feel strongly that it is not essential for human health – in fact we can get the nutrients from milk in foods that provide even greater health benefits, such as greens."

Robert Heaney, a leading calcium scientist and inveterate dairy booster, seconds that emotion: "The sheer quantity of calcium in dairy products certainly makes them attractive sources, but they have no monopoly on calcium. There's no reason in the world why you couldn't get an adequate intake from a vegetable source."

Dark leafy greens (except oxalate-rich spinach), broccoli, bok choy, beans, whole sesame seeds, and calcium-fortified beverages are among the most concentrated nondairy sources of highly absorbable calcium. For vitamin D, look to sunshine, fortifed milk substitutes, or a supplement. Milk undoubtedly has some unique aces up its sleeve, but so do blueberries and brussel sprouts. And nobody says you have to eat them.
 
 

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