MUGGED by MILK
MUGGED BY MILK
Is Milk Too much to swallow?
Once upon a time… opening my first grade reader cast a spell that never went away. Enthralled by the smooth seduction of words, I sat oblivious to a desk-and-chair contraption that confined me like a torture rack, absolutely stunned by the raw power, brazen clarity and heart-stopping eloquence of “See Dick run.”
Haltingly, I followed Jane, Dick and Spot “up the hill”… and saw a cow.
I knew what moo meant. “Moo” was the milk in the thermos in my lunchbox next to a cheese and lettuce sandwich. It was the milk in the big glass and the bowl of Cheerios I’d gulped for breakfast, the glass I’d have when I got home, the glass at dinner later, and maybe even a warmed-up cup of milk at bedtime. Best of all was the mid-morning chocolate milk break – which should not be long now. And if I was really lucky, ice cream for desert. If CNN had interviewed me on the spot, I would have blinked and said, “Milk? Everybody drinks milk. It tastes good, and my dad says it makes you healthy.”
I drank lots of milk. Maybe you did too. Maybe you still believe all those mass-marketing mantras constantly telling us to drink milk so we “stay healthy” and our bones won’t melt. Or maybe you don’t drink it, but you give it to your own kids and their friends.
I hope not. I pray that you gently take the glass away from every child you see drinking the stuff. Give the little whippersnappers almost anything else. But please… Not Milk!
DOWNERS
Click on notmilk.com and the next time little moonbeam in her highchair makes a face, tips her cereal bowl onto the floor and laughs – you will rush to praise her perspicacity and wit. Because by then you will know (if you’d dared follow the links) that instead of standing around chewing their cud like slow philosophers, almost all of America’s 96 million cattle are transported, penned and persecuted like inmates at Guantánamo.
Swollen by high-protein, soy-based feeds, cows immersed in crowding, confusion, pain and fear have become milk machines. With each nipple grasped by a mechanical tentacle as swollen pituitaries painfully pump three-times more milk than normal, cows produce like Chinese sweatshop girls until they wear out. Just as these young women are discarded as broken hulks – burned out by too many Wal-Mart shipments – broken-down cows are chopped up and fed to other cows. It’s not supposed to happen. But hardly anyone official is checking. So it’s more than very likely that the hamburger you’re chewing came from a cannibal cow fed the brains and other parts of sick cows, sheep and other four-leggeds. Along with their discarded offal.
How gross is that?
GERMS
To keep concentration camp cows alive in cramped, feces-filled stalls long enough to produce 155 billion pounds of milk a year in the United States requires constant doses of antibiotics. The consequences of steadily drinking milk – as well as eating farm fish laced with antibiotics – are already showing up in “Superbugs” that have rapidly evolved to thrive on the antibiotics they’ve adapted to. [mercola.com]
In addition, organophosphate pesticides derived from chemical warfare – such as Malathion and Phosmet – are sometimes poured directly over the spines of cows, where these poisons are absorbed into the meat and milk that end up accumulating in your own tissues – particularly in the lymph nodes of female breasts. [Minnesota Statutes 1998]
When it comes to regulations and corporate profits, everything makes a circle. The US government agencies that certify milk and meat “safe” without really looking have long been in violation of World Health Organization standards of beef production. [corpwatch.org; Green Party USA 12/03]
GROW UP
Banned in Canada and Europe, the Bovine Growth Hormone forced into American cows shows up in milk as an insulin growth factor (IGIF-1). Surviving pasteurization and human digestion, IGF-1 is absorbed directly into the human bloodstream – especially in infants, who are not calves meant to suckle udders.
As Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of Total Health Program points out, it is “highly likely” that the same BGH that gives cows breast infections “promotes the transformation of human breast cells to cancerous forms.” After all, he adds, IGF-1 is a known accelerator of breast and colon cancer cells, “promoting their progression and invasiveness.”
Another big BGH bummer is that it also decreases the body fat in cows. Contaminated with an unappetizing stew of pesticides, dioxins, and antibiotic residues, the poisons accumulated in cow fat are passed into the cows’ milk – and the carton in your fridge. [Green Party USA 12/03]
Why are American and Japanese kids so much taller than their grandparents or parents? Follow the