We all know the dairy industry is in deep crisis as prices plummet, but now we are witnessing signs of terminal panic, with the demand from the industry to ban the word ‘milk’ from soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, oat milk and any other milk which does not fill their shrinking coffers.
The panic is justified: the demand for non-dairy milk in Australia has increased rapidly, and these products now cover ten percent of milk sales.
What is ‘milk’? The industry has asked to have an unjustified monopoly over the word by redefining it as ‘a mammary secretion of animals’.
Enticing as this would look on a carton, the fact of the matter is that most dictionary definitions put that as just one possible meaning, and add that it is secreted ‘for the nourishment of their young’.
This is inconvenient, in that the industry wants to steal that milk from those young, and therefore has to either kill them (all the male calves and many of the females) or add them to the herd, as replacements for the cows who are shipped to the slaughterhouse less than half way through their natural lives, done in by a lifetime of almost constant pregnancies and lactation.
Another dictionary definition of milk is ‘to exploit or defraud by taking small amounts of money over a period of time’ and this is evident in the industry’s argument that non-dairy milks are nutritionally inferior to their mammary secretions.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. For a start, at least two thirds of adults have trouble digesting lactose, the sugar found in dairy products. The allergic reactions include bloating, gas, cramps, vomiting, headaches, rashes, and asthma.
But even for the minority who can assimilate these secretions, dairy products are known to increase the chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other ailments.
Large scale studies have shown that, rather than preventing osteoporosis, milk may actually increase women’s risk of getting the disease through the consumption of too much saturated fat and Vitamin A which can weaken bones.
Fortified plant-derived milks provide calcium, vitamins, iron, zinc, and protein but do not contain any cholesterol.
They are a healthier choice, do not cause the massive environmental damage that cows inflict on the planet, and are not bought at the expense of a lifetime of misery for millions of gentle, intelligent cows.
They are truly the milks of human kindness.
Desmond Bellamy, PETA Australia, Byron Bay
Putting aside the misleading and inaccurate comments about nutritional aspects of true milk and of the supposed cruelty of dairying I thought it would be useful to comment on the references” deep crisis as prices plummet,” and “signs of terminal panic, ” The decline in dairying in the Northern Rivers is not new and it was never inevitable . Between the wars dairying prospered in the Northern Rivers based on refrigerated exports of cheese and butter to the UK. That did not continue because of the UK’s entry to the then EEC (EU). The EEC’s subsidies blocked competition from efficient producers like Australia, and the loss of the UK market sent this region into economic decline. Other restrictive trade practices prevented Australia selling to other large dairy markets like the USA and made it difficult for Northern Rivers farmers to sell fresh milk to the growing greater Brisbane Gold-Coast area. The economic decline of dairying and the resultant sell off of farms helped foster the influx of an imaginative counter culture , but with that came other urban values, like the URBAN alienation from animal husbandry that leads to the sort of sentimentality towards animals that gives PETA its support. The decline of dairying appears to be a matter which gives PETA, which has long shown a callous disregard for the livelihoods of people who work with animals, some satisfaction, but it was not inevitable and was a result of distortions in the international and interstate economies caused by the sort of economic nationalism so beloved by the Greens, the Hansonites and Trump supporters. If, as has been the general trend over the medium term, tariff barriers and NTBs were removed our region remains well placed to be an efficient and environmentally sustainable dairy producer.