Is Your Milk Safe to Drink?

Is Your Milk Safe to Drink?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=M_Heimann]M Heimann 

According to a survey in AdAge, the average American will drink over 20 gallons of milk this year, with most people still believing that drinking milk is a natural, healthy habit. And why wouldn't they? After all, milk is sanctioned by the FDA and heavily promoted by the Milk Advisory Board (subsidized by the taxpayer) who constantly advertise that milk is wholesome, healthy and a prime source of calcium. Well, if you want to go on believing that, don't read the rest of this article.

Because the truth is, many believe the dairy industry does not make milk safe to drink, and that much of our milk supply is contaminated with a genetically modified hormone. Twenty years ago, the FDA approved the selling of recombinant bovine somatotropin (called rBST or rBGH) to dairy farmers, resulting in an increase in controversial milk production techniques. Unfortunately, rBST has helped cause an epidemic of pus-producing mastitis in our dairy herds, which has become a plausible link to human illness and disease.

Is milk safe to drink with rBST?

Since November of 1993, rBST has been injected into a majority of our dairy herds, stimulating the cows ability to produce milk, thereby increasing milk production. Nothing wrong with increasing production and the farmers bottom line, right? Well no, as long as the increase in production gives you a healthy result. And that's where the problem starts. By stimulating 'normal' milk production, the rBST causes the dairy cow to overstress itself in making milk, resulting in an udder infection called mastitis. When infected cows are milked, milk in pus, and remnants of the anti-biotic used to treat their infection, goes right into the milk being processed.

Infected cows milk production is added to the milk supply, and milk with rBGH is the milk you and your family are drinking. Plus, some antiseptics used on cow teats to fight mastitis infection contain iodine, which boost pus levels higher, still. Thank goodness the milk is pasteurized before it goes public, but the fact is, you're drinking dead pus cells, and ingesting residual content of the anti-biotics that were in the cows system. Many of our dairy cows are not healthy, and that can't be good for milk drinkers.

Is milk safe to drink because the Milk Board says so?

You be the judge. The dairy industry is aware of the pus in milk problem, because they've developed the somatic cell count, a system to measure the amount of pus in milk. The higher the somatic cell count, the higher the pus count. By law, milk with a somatic cell count that exceeds 750 million parts per liter cannot enter the public milk market. 750 million per liter? Is it just me, or should we expect the dairy industry to get the pus count closer to zero? Why is the milk from mastitis in dairy cattle, being added to the public milk supply in the first place?

And the problem seems to be getting worse. According to the USDA, 1 in 6 dairy cows in the United States are infected with mastitis, which in turn is responsible for 1 in 6 dairy cow deaths on US dairy farms. Sounds like an epidemic to me. What's being done to address the problem of udder-infected stock? Anti-biotics. There is an organization in the dairy industry called the National Mastitis Council, and it's their mission to make recommendations on how to 'control' mastitis, but not eliminate it. So the NMC recommends drugs to fix a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Oh, that's just great. Sounds like western medicines approach to sickness and disease, doesn't' it? For goodness sake, don't fix the problem, just treat the symptom.

Is milk safe to drink because the Dairy Industry says so?

All of this brow-raising information on milk is public record. Yet our US Dairy Industry insists that there is no safety risk, that even if there is pus in milk and cheese, it's a minimal inconvenience that is sanitized through pasteurization. Well, the pus cells are not removed from the milk, whether they're dead or mutating. Common sense says that a pus cell... living, dead or just present in milk... is not a good thing to be putting into your kids, your family, your friends or yourself. Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia agree, because those countries and many others have banned milk produced from rBST injected cows.

This is not a concern that's going away, because our dairy industry won't admit to a problem. So, there are choices to be made. As a society, we can continue to drink genetically modified milk, pus and all, or choose an alternative. Look at the label of the milk you buy. If it includes rBST or rBGH, consider milk that doesn't. Organic milk is a great way to go, but so are other choices like almond milk or rice milk. Comes down to trust, doesn't it? Is milk safe to drink from a dairy industry that compromises it's milk with hormones, pus and anti-biotics? And if they're willing to sell you compromised milk, what else are they fudging on that they're not telling you about?

Thanks for reading. I enjoy writing on a wide range of interesting topics, and they're posted at http://www.glenhawke.com

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Is-Your-Milk-Safe-to-Drink?&id=7660517] Is Your Milk Safe to Drink?