milk.

Since I unintentionally went on and on about chickens and how eggs are produced in this country, I figured it would be as good a time as any to talk about milk.

The dairy industry faces a similar type of controversy in America as the chicken/egg industry. Cows are typically confined to lots with entirely too many other cows on them. Manure builds up and up and pollutes local streams when rainwater runs off. Because of the nitrogen in the poop, algae blooms in these local rivers and ponds and blocks out sunlight, essential for aquatic plant life. The plants die and thus the water becomes anoxic - deprived of oxygen - which means that other forms of life start dying. The Chester River, near where I went to school, was chronically anoxic due to surrounding farms. 

There are more problems with the dairy industry. In order to keep cows producing milk, farmers have to keep them pregnant, because mammals only produce milk when there is a baby to feed. Cows are constantly being artificially inseminated, which, as you can imagine, really stresses out their bodies. The babies are often taken away not too long after birth, which stresses the mothers further. Sometimes they are slaughtered, sometimes they are confined in tiny cages for veal production, and sometimes they are just left for dead somewhere. The cows, like the chickens, are fed lots of grain which is not a natural part of their diets. Cows are used to eating grass, so all that grain contributes to digestive troubles and excess flatulence (methane which is doing collective damage to the ozone). Since the cows are stressed from poor diets, overexertion, and overcrowding, they are prone to disease. Farmers combat this by administering antibiotics even when their cows are not sick. This means that, when you drink conventional milk, you are probably taking in antibiotics. 

Now, if you had a bacterial infection, drinking conventional milk isn't going to help you. What it will do, however, is teach the bacteria in your system how to survive low levels of antibiotics. This is one factor contributing to antibiotic resistance among bacteria, from what I have read and come to understand. On top of that, farmers have discovered that giving cows growth hormones will help them produce even more milk. So not only are you getting antibiotics in your milk, but you're getting growth hormones. Yes, that's right - in your milk, there are growth hormones. Many people believe this is a contributing factor to kids going through puberty earlier and earlier nowadays, because it's also in the beef you're eating.

Many companies now have started labeling their milk cartons as being "rbgh free" (rbgh = bovine growth hormone), but there are no standards for whether or not antibiotics are used. We have a local dairy here that labels their cartons in that way, but when I started reading and understanding this dairy situation in America, I made the conscious choice to never buy conventional milk again. The cows are not allowed to range in fields or eat grass naturally, they don't get enough exercise, and they are pumped full of chemicals because they're unhealthy. It makes no sense to me. Many organic companies give their cows at least some free-ranging opportunities and some feed grass. 

A local company here in Central Oregon does just this - during the summer, the cows are free range and grass fed. In the winter there is no grass of course, so they are fed hay. The distributor does not heat pasteurize, either. Pasteurizing is the act of heating up the milk to kill bacteria, but studies have shown that this process is not necessary for safe human consumption. In fact, some studies have shown that the natural enzymes in raw milk are strong enough to kill E.coli before it ever reaches your guts. The problem with pasteurizing is that it is indiscriminate: it kills the bad stuff AND the good stuff, so pasteurized milk is not as healthy, in some respects, as raw milk. This has led many people to believe that there is a federal effort to make people fear raw milk, since (it is my understanding, and I may be wrong) dairy farmers are government-subsidized. I personally know of a woman who told me that she's been drinking (and giving to her children) raw milk for two or three years with no trouble. E.coli and other bacteria become a problem with sanitary conditions are poor - fecal matter not being cleaned up (or being so abundant that there's no where for it to all go), which results from overcrowding. A few cows in a field that are grass-fed and healthy are much less likely to produce milk that will be infected with dangerous bacteria.

So check it out for yourself. And understand that beef is produced in the same way - overcrowding, chemical-injections, not nearly enough access to grass (if any). One book that helped me to understand the situation better is "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. The book has a decidedly vegetarian standpoint, but if you are open-minded enough to get around that, the book is full of shocking information that is kept hush-hush from the average American. It's my job and your job to know where our food comes from. 

To avoid confusion, I am not advocating against animal products or for them. What I am doing is trying to express that there are honorable ways to go about producing and eating animal products, and dishonorable ways to do so. The trend in this country has been "I don't want to know", so the abusive treatment of animals has gone unnoticed. It is time to know where our food comes from, so that we can support local, humane farmers instead of federally-subsidized farmers whose practices are questionable for human health and the health of the environment.

I wish a little star would fly across your screen right now. The More You Know.

EDITOR'S EDIT: I realize that when I wrote this post, I did not point out that not ALL farms behave in the manner I've described - so please recognize that this is not the rule for every farm, just what's happening behind the scenes in many factory farms.