Dairy Farmers Take Heat in ‘The Buffalo News’

I read this letter to the editor recently that attacked the dairy industry. The author states that we need to "grow up" and stop drinking cow's milk. Most of the people I know (adults included) that drink milk are extremely healthy and strong. As a guy who has many friends in the dairy industry, this letter seemed like a personal attack and rather random.

I am not sure where people expect their food to come from in the future. With the amount of food that is imported from other countries and the lack of attention from government officials to the struggles of the American farmer, there is real concern for the future of the idea of "home grown." To ad insult to the entire thing, you have liberal ideals ripping things even further apart. The article is more than a statement about milk. It is a true example of the sad direction that this country is taking. America was founded on hard work and pride in your country. The backbone of America is farms. No two ways about it.

The scary part for me is that many people feel the way the author of this article does. It's not time we "grow up" in America...it's time we "WAKE UP!" Stop self-destructing this great land we live in. Stop reversing everything our predecessors worked so hard to put in place. WAKE UP and see that we are driving what is the heart and soul of the USA into the ground. Don't want to drink milk? That is your decision. However, on your weekend off, when you climb in to your car with leather seats or eat your trendy yogurt or buy your leather purses and shoes, keep in mind, it was a farmer that worked EVERY DAY of the year to provide the animals that were used to keep you happy.

Here is what appeared in The Buffalo News:

No reason for adults to drink cow’s milk

Milk is indeed a miracle food. Cow’s milk contains 15 percent protein, primarily casein, which is 20 times the amount in (human) mother’s milk. Cow’s milk is high in cholesterol, fat and calcium, nutrients needed for a calf to double its birth weight in 45 days. It also contains hormones, including recombinant bovine growth hormone, a genetically engineered hormone injected into the cow to increase milk production, and which has been linked to certain cancers in humans.

 

Cow and human milk is made up of milk sugar called lactose. The enzyme lactase is required to digest lactose, however, this enzyme’s activity in the small intestine is greatly reduced after the age of 4. In essence, milk-drinking is for infants and toddlers only. As cited in a recent Buffalo News article, lactose-intolerance is a major cause for abdominal distress in children. Humans are the only species that drinks milk from another and that continues to drink milk into adulthood. Milk is “the perfect food” – for calves. Perhaps it’s time for our society to grow up and wean ourselves from cow’s milk and dairy products.

 

Frances Ostempowski

Lancaster