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Traditional small dairies,
located primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, are going out of
business. They are being replaced by intensive 'dry lot' dairies,
which are typically located in the Southwest U.S.
Regardless
of where they live, however, all dairy cows must give birth in order
to begin producing milk. Today, dairy cows are forced to have a calf
every year. Like human beings, cows have a nine-month gestation
period, and so giving birth every twelve months is physically
demanding. The cows are also artificially re-impregnated while they
are still lactating from their previous birthing, so their bodies
are still producing milk during seven months of their nine-month
pregnancy.
With genetic manipulation and intensive production
technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100
pounds of milk a day — ten times more than they would produce
naturally. As a result, the cows' bodies are under constant stress,
and they are at risk for numerous health
problems.
Approximately half of the country's dairy cows
suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of their udders. This is
such a common and costly ailment that a dairy industry group, the
National Mastitis Council, was formed specifically to combat the
disease. Other diseases, such as Bovine Leukemia Virus, Bovine
Immunodeficiency Virus, and Johne's disease (whose human counterpart
is Crohn's disease) are also rampant on modern dairies, but they
commonly go unnoticed because they are either difficult to detect or
have a long incubation period.
A cow eating a normal grass diet
could not produce milk at the abnormal levels expected on modern
dairies, and so today's dairy cows must be given high energy feeds.
The unnaturally rich diet causes metabolic disorders including
ketosis, which can be fatal, and laminitis, which causes
lameness.
Another dairy industry disease caused by intensive
milk production is "Milk Fever." This ailment is caused by calcium
deficiency, and it occurs when milk secretion depletes calcium
faster than it can be replenished in the blood.
In a healthy
environment, cows would live in excess of twenty-five years, but on
modern dairies, they are slaughtered and made into ground beef after
just three or four years. The abuse wreaked upon the bodies of dairy
cows is so intense that the dairy industry also is a huge source of
"downed animals" — animals who are so sick or injured that they are
unable to walk even stand. Investigators have documented downed
animals routinely being beaten, dragged, or pushed with bulldozers
in attempts to move them to slaughter.
Although the dairy
industry is familiar with the cows' health problems and suffering
associated with intensive milk production, it continues to subject
cows to even worse abuses in the name of increased profit. Bovine
Growth Hormone (BGH), a synthetic hormone, is now being injected
into cows to get them to produce even more milk. Besides adversely
affecting the cows' health, BGH also increases birth defects in
their calves.
Calves born to dairy cows are separated from
their mothers immediately after birth. The half that are born female
are raised to replace older dairy cows in the milking herd. The
other half of the calves are male, and because they will never
produce milk, they are raised and slaughtered for meat. Most are
killed for beef, but about one million are used for veal.
The
veal industry was created as a by-product of the dairy industry to
take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted male calves. Veal
calves commonly live for eighteen to twenty weeks in wooden crates
that are so small that they cannot turn around, stretch their legs,
or even lie down comfortably. The calves are fed a liquid milk
substitute, deficient in iron and fiber, which is designed to make
the animals anemic, resulting in the light-colored flesh that is
prized as veal. In addition to this high-priced veal, some calves
are killed at just a few days old to be sold as low-grade 'bob' veal
for products like frozen TV dinners.
Say Cheese!
By Kymberlie Adams Matthews
http://www.satyamag.com/sept05/adams_cheese.html
The average
American consumes 200-plus pounds of milk and cream and 30-plus
pounds of cheese a year. And consider this fact: combined, Americans
eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or about 350 slices
per second. So why on earth would a person give up dairy? Well, some
people need to maintain a diet low in cholesterol, while others have
an intolerance to dairy products. I, on the other hand, gave it up
because there was pus on my pizza.
All in a Day’s Work
Let’s face it, today’s dairy cows have
it pretty bad—worse actually. Every year, dairy cows are forced to
give birth. With a gestation period of nine months, the physical
toll on a cow’s body is incomprehensible. To make matters worse,
cows are routinely artificially inseminated—a metal insemination rod
is thrust into her vagina and up into her cervix, as she is strapped
into what the dairy industry calls a “rape rack.” This all ensues
while the cow is still lactating from an earlier birth. In other
words, their bodies are producing milk through seven months of a
nine-month pregnancy!
To cap it off, a recent survey by Penn
State estimated that approximately 73 percent of the inseminations
performed in the U.S. are by incompetent factory farm workers.
According to an industry manual, Artificial Insemination
Technique: Dairy Integrated Reproductive Management, “Failure
to understand the functional relationships between the various
tissues and organs of the reproductive system leads to consistent
insemination errors.”
How’s that for cream in your
coffee?
Pus
Anyone?
Despite
the crowded conditions, accelerated production schedules and a
multitude of growth hormones, dairy cows are continually milked
even when suffering from severe udder infections called
mastitis. More than half of U.S. dairy cows suffer from mastitis, a
bacterial infection of their udders.
Because of mastitis,
blood, pus and bacteria from the infection are routinely pumped out
with the milk. One culprit causing the hundreds of millions of pus
cells in every liter of milk may be Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) a
synthetic often sold as Posilac. Posilac is extensively used by
dairy farmers to boost the amount of milk their overworked cows
produce, usually 100 pounds of milk a day—10 times more than they
would produce naturally. Bovine growth hormone has been banned in
many countries because of possible risks to consumers and adverse
consequences to the health and welfare of cows. Not so in the U.S.
In fact, Monsanto—the leading producer of rBGH—has used expensive
lawsuits and influence at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and
U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop other dairies from
advertising or labeling their milk as hormone-free.
Even the
dairy industry acknowledges a crisis. The ‘somatic cell count’ is a
system designed to measure the amount of pus in milk, and according
to the National Mastitis Council, milk with a somatic cell count of
higher than 200 million parts per liter should not enter
the human food supply. In spite of this, the FDA permits
the retailing of milk containing 750 million pus cells per
liter (that’s about two pounds). Researchers estimate that an
ordinary glass of milk contains between one and seven drops of pus.
Combating the cows’ infections requires the heavy use of
antibiotics. Antibiotics given to farm animals can leave
drug-resistant microbes in milk. With every slice of dairy cheese or
glass of cow’s milk, super microbes can stream into your system.
Once there, they can transfer drug-resistance to bacteria in the
body, making you vulnerable to previously treatable
infections.
Let’s Talk Cheese
Okay, now that we’ve gone over how milk is made, let’s talk
cheese. In order for milk to coagulate and eventually become cheese,
a bacterial culture is added to pasteurized milk to break down the
proteins that keep milk a liquid and convert it to lactic acid,
which in turn coagulates the milk protein—casein—to form
curd.
Many human bodies naturally regard casein as foreign
and normally react to its presence by creating an antibody. That
antibody-antigen reaction creates histamines (mucus and phlegm)
which clog internal body organs. And according to Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine, symptoms of lactose intolerance
also include gastrointestinal distress, diarrhea, and flatulence.
Additionally, dairy consumption has been linked to breast, prostate
and ovarian cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and a
plethora of childhood illnesses. Millions of Americans are dairy
intolerant, and an estimated 90 percent of Asian Americans and 75
percent of Native and African Americans suffer from this condition.
It’s no mystery why no other species drinks milk beyond infancy or
the milk of another species.
Casein is also used to make glue
for such things as holding wood furniture together and sticking
labels to soda and beer bottles. Try scraping off one of those
labels, and then consider the effects that casein may have in your
body. Eww!
Rennet is the most popular enzyme (chymosin) used
in the cheese-making process. Rennet is extracted from the fourth
stomach (abomasum) of slaughtered calves—calves typically
slaughtered for veal.
A quick lesson in the art of
cheese-making explains that after the calves are killed, the fourth
stomach is removed and cut into strips; the stomach lining is then
scraped to remove surface fat, stretched onto racks where moisture
is removed, ground and then finally mixed with a salt solution until
the rennet is extracted.
Since the consumption of calves for
veal has not kept pace with the demand for rennet in the preparation
of cheese, a distinct shortage of this enzyme has developed.
Consequently, a few years ago it became a common practice to mix the
rennet extract from calves’ stomachs with a pepsin enzyme derived
primarily from the stomachs of swine. This mixture is widely used in
the U.S.
The Mouse Ate the Cheese, but Should You?
There
is a chance you will stumble across vegetarian cheese made with
rennets of non-animal origin—fig leaves, melon, wild thistle,
safflower or the fermented fungus Mucor miehei. Unfortunately,
genetic engineering—or mad science as I like to call it—has brought
new and easier ways to create chymosin for use in cheese-making.
Many of these so-called vegetarian cheeses (they use calf cells) are
currently being made using chymosin produced by genetically
engineered microorganisms. The development of genetically engineered
chymosin has been encouraged by shortages and fluctuations in the
cost of actual calf rennet. Once the genetic material is introduced
there is no further need for calf cells. Basically, companies have
altered the genetic blueprints of living organisms and are selling
you the resulting gene-cheese and scientists do not know the
long-term effects of releasing these unpredictable organisms into
the environment and people’s diets.
Labeling
The problem
for consumers who wish to eat vegetarian or non-genetically
engineered cheese is determining what ingredients a particular
cheese contains. Unfortunately, the FDA does not require
cheese labels to differentiate between the kinds of rennet it may or
may not contain. To complicate matters, cheese-makers can mix
animal, plant, and microbial varieties of rennet and simply label
them “enzymes.” Cheese labels can actually include any one of the
following variations: enzymes, microbial enzymes, microbial enzymes
(non-animal, rennetless), rennetless, rennet, enzymes and rennet,
vegetarian rennet, and microbial coagulants.
Even though a
few companies take time to list the particular type of enzyme used,
finding a true vegetarian cheese is similar to venturing on a
treasure hunt without a map.
So…
It’s time to take a
closer look at the scary ingredients hiding in your cheese, and if
you do consider yourself a vegetarian, to also consider the calves
who go into making your gooey mozzarella. What’s the point of a
veggie pizza if there’s flesh in the cheese? And let’s not forget
about the insurmountable cruelty dairy cows face every day of their
lives.
From Cheddar to Swiss, cream cheese to Parmesan, a
variety of soy cheeses are available at most health food stores and
many supermarkets. These truly vegetarian and vegan cheese options
are not only healthier but are not the end products of cruel
manufacturing processes. Although these cheeses are called
“non-dairy,” they are not all vegan. Some contain casein, calcium
caseinate—even rennet. Fortunately these ingredients are usually
clearly defined on the label.
So, the next time you crave a
piece of cheese pizza, just think of the concentration of growth
hormones, antibiotics, calf rennet and pus you are putting into your
body. You are what you eat!
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