The Dairy Battleground - Good for You or Liquid Poison?

Food has become a battleground. It's regulated to protect consumers which eliminates choices and farmers. It's attacked as being the source of disease and heralded as the substance of life. Few areas in this are more heated than dairy.

From the care and feeding of the cows to the final product on your table dairy is a lightning rod of political activity. The misinformation and partial information is put in front of consumers for sometimes lobbying reasons, sometimes financial ones, always to sway your action one way or the other. What to believe?

Opponents state dairy is poison. It is the cause of cancer, allergies and a host of other problems to our health. They point to antibiotic use and improper use of added hormones in the cattle escalating to abuse of cattle and employees.

Of course in any industry there are those who are not representative of the majority. This is true not only in farming but in teachers, law enforcement, clergy and other professions. There is no excuse for abuse of animals but defining "abuse" makes a different in perception. The perception of a farmer is different from an animal rights activist but that alone doesn't entitle one to charge cruelty.

The basis of cruelty charges with the latter is often merely breeding and removing the offspring after birth for hand feeding so that the cow - or doe - can be milked for human consumption of the dairy products.

Dairy animals in modern facilities are often fed special rations that are catered to the production level to insure that the dairy animal has enough nutrition to maintain the production without creating a nutritional deficiency. This is true in both cattle and goat dairies.

Offspring get colostrum to build immunity needed for a healthy growing period. Once the cow moves from producing colostrum - which can be tested for the amount of antibodies and frozen for future use - the calf is often moved to a specially formulated supplement for maximum health and growth, sometimes mixed with real milk on some dairies. The goat dairy may vary by feeding young kids pasteurized milk, needed to prevent passing of goat specific diseases like CAE.

The consumption of milk world wide is not just limited to cattle and goats. Water Buffalo is consumed in many countries, with higher protein, fat and carb content than cattle. One of the lowest protein and highest carb that comes closest to human milk is the milk from a donkey jenny. Fat wise the cow or goat is closer. Milk and cheese from sheep milk is also popular in some cultures.

Here in the USA the volume produced by cattle and goats makes them a viable dairy animal for people. Aside from drinking milk other products such as cheese, butter and ice cream are a part of the diet. Activists point to the American consumption of dairy products as a reason for a host of health problems that other countries don't have.

The problem with this is statistically it's inaccurate. According to the International Dairy Federation the per capita consumption of dairy products was listed in a study that showed Americans in 2006 drank 83.9 litres of liquid milk per capita, 16 kg of cheese and 2.1 kg of butter. This as 'proof' of our ills doesn't come close to many others. From a liquid milk standpoint we're not even in the top 10 and barely land in the top 15. Finland's 183.9 per capita consumption of milk, Greece's 28.9 kg of cheese and France's 7.3 kg of butter are much more than the USA totals, and yet all three countries are compared as having better health than Americans!

From a statistical standpoint that seems to indicate that Americans need to consume much more dairy! Comparatively Mexico has a consumption of less than half the milk and much less cheese and butter and yet are held up as a poor health country. Indeed the top five fluid milk countries according to the study was Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands and Spain; cheese top consumption was Greece, France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. For butter the rank was France Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland and Finland.

Of all of these high dairy countries the top 10 in production was by far the USA at over double that of India. China, Russia, and Germany rounded out the top 5 with Brazil, France, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Ukraine rounding out the top 10. The experts at Forbes report the healthiest countries in the world are (top 5) Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Sweden and (#1) Iceland. This indicates that some of the highest consumers of dairy are also deemed the healthiest nations.

Anti-dairy sites point to studies too most which are 10-20 or more years old. For example one points to a 1988 FDA survey that found 73% of samples from grocery stores in 10 cities found pesticide residues. It could also be pointed out that the FDA also near the same time found pesticides in about an equal proportion of human breast milk cases tested!

The anti-dairy activists even point to a 1960 quote charging milk as a cause of sudden death of infants and a 1966 study linking it to uterine and ovarian cancer. However experts at the Women's Cancer site online don't know, still today, what causes these cancers. Factors such as obesity, post menopause, lack of children, hypertension, diabetics and lack of ovulation raises the risk. None of these are direct results of dairy but rather of various other factors.

Our food and dairy especially has become a political battleground that shouldn't be. It has long been recommended as part of a healthy diet for good reason - it has nutrients the body needs. Moderation is needed but there is no need for most people to avoid or be fearful of dairy products.

Pass the butter please.