DAIRY IS SCARY!

Understand your points of view. I too ate meat for a long time. I too defended that position with same ferocity you do. But I was wrong to do it. And you're wrong on too many points to discuss it at full - sorry, no space here, also have family to feed and work to do. My bookmarks folder about dangers of animal products/agriculture has hundreds of items. I'll cherrypick just few of them to get you started. You'll find several of your viewpoints discussed here: [link] Want to learn more? (pun intended) Movies: - I'd recommend Dominion movie again, but you won't probably see it, and even if you do, i don't think the suffering of animals/horrors of the meat production will be enough to change your opinions, so I'll talk about it from different angle. - Cowspiracy - Seaspiracy [link] - This man makes you think [this video] - Dairy is scary Health: [link] - Dr. Michael Greger | How Not To Die [link] - Foods for Protecting the Body & Mind: Dr. Neal Barnard [link] - What the Health! (2017) Impacts on biodiversity / climate change: [link] [link] [link] [link] OK, I'll react to few of your points. > "never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response" So avoiding killing is a neurotic, narcissistic response? Like, really? > "to avoid ice cream to spare dairy cows who are clearly, if you meet them, quite happy with their jobs" Are you sure? I've met a lot of them, when i was a child. You know that cows giving milk are mothers, forcefully impregnated/raped eve

> India ... has one of the lowest consumptions of animal protein and yet low life expectancy False cause fallacy. > You don't have to eat a lot, but you have to eat some Because you say so? Or do you have a source for your claims? > Breast milk is animal protein, or you'd have to include dairy too Vegans have a saying: "not your mother, not your milk". It's one fallacy after another. You really should read the article I've linked, it's all there. Read it. At least skim it. It's not that hard. > You can justify it for animal cruelty reasons, but not for health reasons You think that adult humans have to drink cow milk to be healthy, do I understand you correctly? Not dog milk, not lion, giraffe, rat, pig milk, but cow milk specifically? You don't read, so let's try youtube. [this video] Dairy is scary [link] Milk: The White Lie We've All Been Sold [link] How big government helps big dairy sell milk

> and is unhealthy and worse than full cream milk Dairy is scary: [this video] Derived from a bovine's udder, cow milk is essentially a white, viscous secretion containing fats, hormones, bioaccumulated pesticides and herbicides, and sometimes pus and blood from infected teats, all filtered through a mammary gland that often comes into contact with dirt and feces during the extraction process. Cow milk, routinely touted as a wholesome beverage, can legally contain up to 400 million somatic cells (often referred to as pus) per milliliter in the U.S., and traces of blood, all originating from inflamed and possibly infected bovine udders, making one wonder about the purity of the seemingly innocent white liquid. Cow's milk also naturally contains hormones, including Insulin-like Growth Factor-1, estrogens, progesterone, prolactin, and oxytocin; also some cows receive artificial hormones like rBST to enhance production; when consumed regularly, those hormones may impact the growth and reproductive functions of consumers. In the relentless cycle of dairy production, cows endure forced impregnation and a shortened lifespan — typically 5 years instead of the potential 25+. The record lifespan for a cow is 48 years. Newborn males are typically culled immediately, while females are separated from their mothers shortly after birth, crying for each other usually for weeks. And we haven't addressed the land needs and environmental impact of dairy production. This includes deforestation for pa

This is great! Pricing in externalities is exactly what regulation is supposed to accomplish in a functioning market. The meat production industry is full of unpriced externalities[0], and decades of propaganda[1] convincing us that everything is fine and dandy[2]. Not to mention the current (now-historical) market solution isn't an efficient allocation of resources by any means[3]. Livestock account for only 18% of global calories and only 37% of protein! It's a myth that eating meat is the way we get protein. To boot, 45% of crop yields go towards feeding that livestock[4]. I have nothing against eating meat as such, and I'm all for using grazing land for grazing. But the fact that we waste good crop land on highly inefficient food/nutrient/protein production is not good. We have to use regulation to price in these inefficiencies and allow the market to deal with realistic pricing levels for meat. [0] (graphic, but short and info-dense) [this video] [1] [link] [2] <this is fine>.jpg [3] [link] [4] [link] (not thrilled about posting Vox links but they're just the tip of the iceberg if you start reading about this stuff properly)

> To industrialized abuse ... I don't know, 95+% ? > That you don't see a problem to solve ... You can solve it by not participating. > Go look at the Wikipedia page for the film ... The film is (mostly) compilation of the responses of health professionals, some passages are debatable, and i'm not ready to defend the work. I haven't linked any scientific sources, because those are biased as well - you can always find sources from both camps. I've linked this film because it's easy to digest and covers some of the areas where you're so off. But you haven't looked (i'm pretty sure) at any link i've provided previously. > The explanation that was given to me for this practice was to protect the calfs, which makes sense to me ... Beef calves are kept with their mothers. Where there is a profit motive (milk), calves are taken away. Where there isn't, calves are kept with their mothers. Hmm. Maybe just milk cows are horrible mothers? > That's part of their job! Job? You're surely joking. > Animals. Aren't. People! They don't talk (as we do). They don't think as we do. But they have intelligence, and are capable of suffering. Isn't it enough? > ... also nowhere close to true. Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled ... Absent farming needs, cows have a typical lifespan of 15 to 20 years. That lifespan could even understate their longevity. Guinness World Records lists the oldest cow as 48 years and nine months old. [link] > Producing milk does not leave the cow

You'd still get pus, blood, endotoxins, hormones (like estrogen), pesticides/herbicides (organic farms still usually use them), etc. Only 40% of consumers in UK [0] know that a cow has to give a birth to a calf to be able to give milk. Male calves are usually immediately killed these days, or sold for meat in a few months (together with 25?% of female calves). In dairy industry calves are removed from their mothers the day they're born (only 27% of consumers know this), in beef industry they're usually kept together. The saddest story I've seen is a mother cow who gave birth to two calves. Because she was not first-time mother, she prepared. One calf was immediately taken away, the other she managed to hide somewhere in the fields. Of course when the farmer found about it (insufficient milk output), he located the calf and took it away. I can't find it, but here is a similar story. [1] All dairy cows are forcibly impregnated every year, are spent after 5-6 years to the point where they often can no more walk [2], and instead of a normal life which would be 20-48? years (upper number is the record) they're taken to the slaughterhouse [3]. > humane conditions for the cows That doesn't exist, not even on small local farms. Humane? It's an oxymoron. [0] [link] [1] [link] [2] [this video] - Dairy is scary! [3] [link]

> To call other things "cheese" that aren't cheese is torturing the very definition of the word, much like "milk" Yes, if it doesn't have torture, blood, puss, pesticides, antibiotics and estrogens in it, it can't be called milk or cheese. Why torture? How else would you call forced impregnation, year after year, and forced separation of mothers and calves? Just to shorten the cow's life from 25+ years to 5 and then turn her to burgers. [this video] > has been traditionally understood, inconveniently for you, as excretion from mammary glands Inconveniently for you, soybean, almond, coconut, rice, oat, hemp, even poppy milk was used for centuries, millenia even, all over the world. > and my eyes alighted on "gypsum" [link] So you probably don't drink beer, eat baked goods or farmed mushrooms too. Got it. Btw, there are other coagulants, like nigari, epsom salt, calcium chloride, lemon juice or vinegar ... Not everybody is scared of 1 tbsp of gypsum in several kg of tofu, so that's why they probably use it. In my view it's much better than contents of someone's stomach. But I'm me. I wonder what other poisonous chemicals were there. Do you have the list? :) Btw, do you know, that there's l-cystein in most flours on the market, and that's often made from human hair? [link] Our food industry is so ingenious.

I didn't say your claims were wrong. I said that they were poorly supported and that you ignore the two much larger reasons that large numbers of people avoid dairy. As an example of the lack of support: > igf1 and cancer [link] I read the abstract. It suggests that circulating levels of IGF-1 may be related to cancer. It does not say that drinking IGF-1 is related to cancer or that milk contains absorbable IGF-1. In fact, I found one study that determined that IGF-1 in milk is broken down during digestion and that mechanism by which various dairy products might impact blood IGF-1 levels are unknown. So I maintain my claim that all the reasons you listed are poorly supported. In contrast, the fact that most people do not have the lactase persistence trait and end up lactose intolerant as adults is very well supported indeed. Similarly, I know people who have done genuine lab tests and determined that they have bona fide IgE-mediated milk allergies. Apparently some people also have non-IgE-mediated immune reactions to milk. Of all of these, among adults, lactose intolerance is far and away the most common issue with dairy products. BTW: > the industry and how cruel it is [this video] If you want to drink milk or eat cheese that is cruelty-free, there are quite a few purveyors in Northern California that have cows that are very happy indeed. If you ever want to feel jealous of a cow's living conditions, just drive near any of the dairies in Point Reyes. Some of them offer tours, and