Images of healthy kids, purity and wholesome nutrition come to mind when we think of milk. Everyone knows that a tall glass of cold milk will help keep your bones healthy and strong, right? Milk has long been praised and promoted by doctors and nutritionists for health benefits such as high levels of calcium, vitamin A and protein.
However, even with all these great health benefits, there has been a decline in milk consumption in the past few decades. Even stranger is the effort by the dairy industry, with the use of growth hormones, to increase milk production in individual dairy cows. So if milk consumption is down and milk production is up, where is all this milk going?
Although milk consumption has dropped dramatically in the past century, consumption of cheese and frozen dairy items has increased greatly. In 2001, Americans consumed 8 times more cheese than they did in 1909 and twice as much as in 1975. As a nation, we've gone from eating almost no frozen dairy products at the beginning of last century, to eating around 25 pounds per person per year in 2000.i
The rise of “convenience foods” like cheese snacks, to-go yogurts and ice cream pops in the past century might explain the increase in processed dairy consumption while a dramatic increase in soda consumption has likely contributed to the decrease in milk consumption as a beverage.
So, even if a tall glass of milk isn't a part of your daily routine, you're probably consuming it in some form or another: cheese in processed snacks and sandwiches, yogurt, salad dressing, ice cream, coffee creamer, butter, milkshakes, pancakes, whip cream – the list goes on an on. So, if you want to know what exactly you're consuming when you sink your teeth into anything made with dairy products, we'd better find out what's going into the cows that made the milk….
What goes in?
On factory farms, there's much more going into the cow than grass. In fact, most of what goes into a cow on a factory farm isn't grassy at all. Most factory farmed cows are grain-fed, which is a much easier way to feed large numbers of cows than by allowing them to roam and graze naturally. Typically, hundreds to thousands of cows are crammed together and fed not just grain, but also plate waste, poultry litter (from poultry factory farms) and ground up animal parts. Cows are given hormones to produce more milk faster, and a low dose of antibiotics to prevent illness.
These practices are unnatural and unhealthy for both animals and humans, yet they are allowed to continue as a result of the meat and dairy industry's quest for larger profit margins and their ability – thanks to close ties with government regulators - to help shape laws, regulations and subsidies in their favor. As a result, animals are turned into production machines at the cost of their health, our health and the quality of the environment.
rBGH
rBGH stands for recombinant bovine growth hormone. Yikes! What is that? It is a genetically engineered artificial growth hormone, created by Monsanto, which forces cows to increase their milk production 10 – 15%. It also goes by the name recombinant bovine somatotropin.
Although the American Food and Drug Administration has approved it for safety, other countries, such as those in the European Union and Canada , have banned its use. Studies conducted in Canada have shown that artificial growth hormones have a detrimental effect on the general and reproductive health of cows, increasing the risk of clinical lameness by 50%. The warning label on this hormone, sold under the name Posilac by Monsanto, lists mastitis (a painful udder infection) as well as lesions of the knee, digestive disorders and hoof problems as side effects. ii
Antibiotics
The ripple effect of rBGH is that these increased levels of sickness in the herd require increased use of antibiotics to compensate for the animals' weakened immune systems, and this in turn creates further dissemination of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria into humans and the environment. Extensive overuse of antibiotics (20 million pounds a year to livestock alone iii) makes these drugs less able to fight the illnesses they are intended to cure because bacteria are able to build up stronger and stronger resistances. This compounds the existing problem of factory farming practices, which tend to include feeding a constant, low dose of antibiotics to help “prevent” disease and to make the animals grow faster. These so-called preventative measures often cause more harm to overall human and animal health in the long run. Read more about this on our Antibiotics page.
Disease
Because of a variety of factors – unsanitary and stressful living conditions,
artificial growth hormones and rapid birthing cycle – dairy cows on factory farms are much sicker than cows raised on pasture, often carrying the bacterial infection Mastitis in their udders which is transmitted to the milk. Mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary gland, resulting from an infection due to microorganisms entering and multiplying within the udder. Besides causing unnecessary pain to dairy cows, Mastitis reduces milk yield and directly affects milk quality by altering composition and increasing the somatic cell count (pus) in the milk, resulting in lower dietary value iv. In the quest for faster production and larger profits, these cows are worked until they can no longer produce, sometimes until they no longer can stand, at which point their spent bodies are shipped off for slaughter, often at a much younger age than their sustainable counterparts. Not only are these conditions inhumane, they create unhealthy circumstances for the production of milk and meat for human consumption.
The wrong kind of feed
According to the University of Nebraska's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, cows that are treated with the artificial growth hormone bovine somatotropin (similar to rBGH) require higher protein content in their diet to compensate for a higher rate of milk production v. Often, this means that cows are fed diets inappropriate to their digestive systems. Whether it be grain, beans, animal fat (tallow), animal parts, and even poultry litter, these feeding methods are all inappropriate for ruminants, which are designed by nature to eat grass.Cows are ruminants.
Because their digestive systems are not designed for grain, cattle can develop several related problems, including liver abscess and sudden death syndrome vi. As for the repugnant diet of chicken litter (which can include feathers, cardboard, feces and even ground-up remains of cows), it goes without saying that cows aren't meant to eat fecal matter, and that humans should not eat animals that have been fed waste products rather than food.
Most important is the issue of feeding post-slaughter waste back to cows and the threat of mad cow disease that follows from this practice. A 1997 government ban on the practice of “feeding ruminants to ruminants” was intended to stop the spread of the disease, which is transmitted from the brain and spinal cord when these tissues are fed back to cattle. Unfortunately, there are three loopholes in the 1997 feed ban:
- plate waste fed to cows, which can contain beef. Even cooking does not destroy the deformed prions responsible for mad cow disease.
- cow's blood fed to calves as a replacement for their mother's milk. Though it has not be conclusively determined that cow's blood can transmit mad cow disease when fed to calves, the deformed prions that cause the disease are found in blood. Scientists have witnessed the disease pass from sheep to sheep through blood and are currently studying cases where it is believed the disease passed from human to human through blood transfusions.vii
- uneaten poultry feed, which can still contain ground-up cow parts, including spinal cord, brain tissues, eyes, intestines, tonsils and other risky tissues that transmit mad cow. This feed, though not meant for cows can easily be swept up in poultry litter which is then fed back to cows. viii
Although scientists are not yet sure if Mad Cow Disease can be transmitted through milk, the fact that the majority of dairy cows are sold for beef when their milk production ends makes their diet of cow parts a risk to human health.
Ultimately, the reason for feeding cattle diets that are inappropriate to their digestive systems has to do with profit. Grain diets are encouraged, if not required, by the modern factory farm system in order for cows to produce enough milk for the farmer to compete in the marketplace. And it is easier and cheaper to feed cattle the waste products from animal confinement facilities and slaughterhouses than to let them graze naturally. With the advent of vertical integration, a system where the same company owns (or controls through contracts) each step of the processes of animal production, they can cut their expenses by “recycling” waste back into the food stream rather than properly disposing of it.
Which brings us to the topic of...
What comes out?
Besides the detrimental effects of what goes into dairy cows on a factory farm, there is the persistent and unmanageable problem of what comes out. Modern dairy farms can create some of the worst industrial environmental hazards in America because of the waste created in such density by the large number of animals confined to such a small area.
Manure lagoons
On farms where cows are allowed to graze naturally, they are able to move about a larger space, and therefore their waste products are recycled back into the environment at a rate that the soil and plants can adequately use. Considering that a 1,200 lb cow excretes as much waste as 23 humans, a 10,000-head CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) will produce the amount of waste generated by a small city like Portand, Maine or Baton Rouge, Louisiana. ix
But rather than a proper sewage system such as what small cities have to deal with that much waste, waste from these farms is collected in open areas called manure lagoons which surround the CAFO. Leaking lagoons often contaminate the groundwater with E. Coli and high nitrate concentrations, which then seeps into the private well water of residents living nearby. Pathogens which can cause serious illness or even death are found in much higher concentrations near CAFOs, and outbreaks of cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite which causes intestinal illness, have been directly linked to agricultural pollution. x
In August 2005, the holding wall of a manure containment area ruptured at a dairy farm in upstate New York, allowing 3 million gallons of liquid manure to flow into the Black River, which required that nearby towns shut off their water supply to avoid the contamination. xi The spill was responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of fish, according to New York state officials. And residents along the Black River said it was one of the biggest fish kills ever witnessed. xii
Click here to find out how your state ranks for animal waste pollution.
MPC – Milk Protein Concentrate
Another unappetizing product of dairy farms is something called MPC or Milk Protein Concentrate. Though cheese and other dairy product producers would like to call this stuff just plain milk, the fact is that MPC is what is left over when the higher quality substances in milk have been extracted for other, higher quality products. MPC is sold in a powdered form (but is NOT powdered milk – which made from actual milk) and is considered to be a dairy waste product.
Unregulated and untested for safety, this cheap alternative to real milk is not approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), and is not on the GRAS (generally regarded as safe) list. MPC is usually imported from other countries where food regulations are less stringent, and is often imported as a chemical or pharmaceutical product rather than a food product. xiii
Although it is technically illegal to use this waste product in food items, Kraft has been doing a booming business thanks to MPC, importing over 52,000 metric tons of the substance in 2000. MPC is on the ingredient lists of processed cheeses and frozen desserts as well as less obvious foods such as high protein sports drinks, energy bars, and nutritional supplements. As dairy processors buy more and more MPC from overseas rather than real milk from the USA, dairy farmers are finding themselves with a surplus of dry milk (which is made from real milk and should be used in place of MPC), which must then be purchased by the government through the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation, courtesy of taxpayer dollars. xiv
Sustainable Milk
So how can we keep enjoying the dairy products we've come to love without inadvertently polluting rural communities, or consuming antibiotics, artificial hormones, low quality milk-waste and diseased milk from sick cows? Try milk, cheese, yogurt and other dairy items from grass-fed, sustainably-raised cows!
Sustainable grass-fed cow's milk comes from cows that were raised on the pasture – where nature intended them to be. By breathing fresh air, eating fresh grass and fertilizing the grounds where they graze, they are participating in the natural cycle of life that their bodies were meant for, and that keeps nature in balance. It also means that we get clean and healthy milk and dairy products with:
- No artificial hormones
- No antibiotics
- Almost 4 times the Omega 3's
- 5 times more CLA (conjugated linoleic acid- possible cancer risk- reducer, possible contributor to weight loss)
- More beta-carotenexv
For more information on sustainable agriculture, read our “What is Sustainable Agriculture?” and “Sustainable vs. Industrial” pieces.
In today's world of industrial agriculture, the average meal travels up to 1,500 miles before landing on our plates, so when you buy sustainable dairy products from local farms, you are not only helping your health and the welfare of animals, but you also reduce the amount of fossil fuels used to transport your food. Buying locally also contributes to your local economy, so that your hard earned money goes directly to farmers who raise animals well and keep our environment safe and balanced.
Use Sustainable Table's Eat Well Guide to find farms, stores and restaurants in your area that serve sustainably-raised dairy products! And don't forget to bring some "Questions to Ask" when you visit your local dairy farm.
- by Jill Peterson
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