MEAT AS ENERGY

Found this a few days ago, and am just getting around to it-- it won't spoil.

I've posted a few anti-meat/milk, pro-vegan things in the past on PLM, generally expressed in terms of health, agricultural waste, pollution, economic inefficiency etc. But this study merits a good look not only because it comes from Japan, but more especially for the fact that it conveys the research results in terms of energy expenditure.

Carried out by Akifumi Ogino et al. of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, the study found that: “A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home… In other words, a kilogram of beef is responsible for the equivalent of the amount of CO2 emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometers, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days… [Moreover] The calculations… did not include the impact of managing farm infrastructure and transporting the meat, so the total environmental load is higher than the study suggests.”

This certainly sheds more darkness on that thick steak...

WORKING HARD FOR HUMANITY

While scanning Google news this morning I came across this newspaper headline: Avoiding Milk During Pregnancy Linked to Lower Birth Weight, with deeper down a few dozen more headlines on the subject, including these:

Milk's a must for mums-to-be
Avoiding milk 'leads to smaller babies'
Drinking too little milk 'can harm unborn baby'
Pregnant women 'need to drink milk'
Milk 'essential in pregnancy'
More Reasons For Pregnant Mothers To Drink Milk
Study: Pregnant Women Must Drink Plenty of Milk
Pregnant women who drink less milk risk low birth weight babies
Limiting milk can hamper Babies’ Growth

Only one headline had gotten the elemental fact of the matter right: Vit D linked to baby birth weight. Simply that. Seems more and more like the dead-tree media, under threat from bloggers and the internet in general, are increasingly resorting to scary tabloid-type headlines, much as the dairy industry is resorting to recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

Vitamin D intake was the key point to the story, not milk. So why all the emphasis on milk? In Canada (where the study was done), milk is fortified with vitamin D, but there are plenty of other sources of that vitamin, none mentioned in these articles. Milk of any kind is fundamentally an unnatural food for adults, to say nothing of cow's milk for pregnant humans and their babies...

So I wondered why all the scare headlines: why all this obvious pushing of milk on a trusting (?) audience? How unbiased was this study, anyway? So I went to the study itself and waaay at the very bottom was this statement: "Funding sources for our study included the Dairy Farmers of Canada..."

Oh.

Oddly, in all this deeply heartfelt journalistic concern for mothers and their infants, none of the news articles mentioned a study on, say, bi-weekly shots of rBGH, or the use of other hormones and antibiotics to keep cows alive and producing, not a word on Monsanto (which means 'Sacred Mountain,' ironically), sewage sludge in cow feed, or all the many other detrimental aspects of milk; nor did they refer to non-organic milk. Let alone the famous Milk Letter.

STUDY SAYS MILK NOT GOOD FOR YOU; U.S. NATIONAL DAIRY COUNCIL HAS A HISSY FIT

Hissy excerpt: "When it comes to nutrition, people should listen to health and nutrition experts, not animal rights activists."

Full statement [Warning: as biased as the National Dairy Council]

Perhaps not so oddly, the NDC statement failed to mention the many drugs dairy cows (and their milk drinkers) receive, such as Chloramphenicol, Clorsulon, Ivermectin and Thiabendazole, Penicillin, Erythromycin, Streptomycin, Tetracycline, a class of sulfa drugs called sulfonamides, to name a few, not to mention growth hormones like rBGH...

What is rBGH, you ask?

"Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone is a genetically engineered copy of a naturally occurring hormone produced by cows. Manufactured by Monsanto Company, the drug is sold to dairy farmers under the name POSILAC, though you'll also find it called BGH, rBGH, BST and rBST. When rBGH gets injected into dairy cows, milk production increases by as much as 10-15%. The use of rBGH on dairy cows was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late 1993 and has been in use since 1994. " From Shirley's Wellness Cafe

Early puberty, anyone?

One also gets the feeling that maybe the NDC hasn't read Milk:The Deadly Poison

"Once upon a time, milk was teeming with life forces. Today, supermarket milk is a brew of hormones, chemicals, DDT, fungicides, defoliants and radioactive fallout, produced by artificially inseminated creatures forced to stand around in muddy feed lots all day long."

Or visited tuberose:

"Milk fat contains high concentrations of toxins, which accumulate from the pesticides, chemical fertilizers and antibiotics, tranquilizers and other drugs that are applied to the bushels of grains that the cattle are fed, and that are injected into them... The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story detailing the results of two independent milk surveys. One survey sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), found drug residues in 38% of milk samples. The other survey, sponsored by the journal itself, found drug residues in 38% of milk samples purchased in 10 major cities.

A 1988 staff memorandum from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine listed 30 unapproved drugs believed to be used by milk producers. Sixteen of those drugs are being used extensively in dairy cows, on an extra-label basis.

Milk is a causative factor in most health problems plaguing Americans consuming the Basic American Diet. The drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of multiple forms of allergies and plays a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks. Cow milk is linked with recurrent ear infections and bronchitis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and simple dental decay. Milk is a carrier of radioactive substances. Dairy products are major contributors of saturated fat and cholesterol to the diet. According to cardiologist Dean Ornish, M.D., 'Milk rates second only to beef as the largest source of saturated fat in the American diet.' The greatest instigator of calcium loss, it turns out, is a high-protein diet."

HORMONE PROBLEMS, ANYONE?

Agricultural biotech giant Monsanto has sued Oakhurst Dairy, a small dairy in Maine, saying Oakhurst's label ("Our farmers' pledge: no artificial growth hormones.") implies that the dairy's milk is somehow better than milk from cows treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST, a hormone sold by the company under the brand name Posilac.

All the kids say a glass of recombinant bovine somatotropin goes down pretty good, with some cookies. About 17 percent of dairy farmers use rBST, injecting 32 percent of all cows in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If you find yourself suddenly mooing now and then, this may be the cause.

The hormone is made of an isolated gene from the growth hormone that cows produce when they lactate. Injections of the product make cows lactate longer and produce more milk. Most cows injected with rBST produce about 25 percent more milk than they would normally. Then it's passed on to the kids with the cookies.

[Dec 21 addendum: Further jaw-dropping info on all this and unappetizingly more, particularly as it pertains to UK and EU, at Vegan Society; thanks to Colin for the link.]