According to the white man, I am, as an Indian, a coloured person. So is an African, an African-American, a Latin American a Chinese or any indigenous person from the continents of Asia and Africa and South America. The milk industry in America has now been taken on by anti-racists.
First, let me tell you a few facts about the milk industry here: it did not come in with Krishna. It was actually started by the British government in India. The first person to start it was my own grandfather, Sir Datar Singh,
who was knighted by the British for his services to the dairy industry and the mainmilch cow in India, Sahiwal, is named after his estate in Pakistan. When he came to India after partition, he named his estate in Bhopal “Dairy Farm” and became advisor to the government. The Karnal centre and the people who started Amul worked with him. Today India prides itself on being the second largest milk producer in the world, after America. All our advertising and government positions on milk are taken directly from America. I held him in the deepest respect and I wish he were still alive today so that I could battle with him on this monster that we have produced that is destroying so many lives.
But since the industry runs on vast political patronage and it is impossible to convince politicians of something that is so patently obvious that just a little learning will immediately convince a normal person, I would like the doctors and bankers (who give free funding under various schemes to the unemployed to open dairies) to understand what they are doing and how much foreign influence has corrupted us.
Both the American and Indian governments declare that milk is essential to good health, subsidizes the milk industry to the tune of billions. In America each public school has to give milk in its lunch programs. And, there, as in India, celebrities come on screen to tell us that milk is rich in proteins and calcium—and a “cool” liquid to drink
They forget to tell you the downside. Forget the enormous environmental damage to water and the animal suffering involved, the health effects of milk are being decried by mainstream doctors. All medical research shows that you are likely to get anaemia, migraine, bloating, gas, indigestion, asthma, prostate cancer, and a host of potentially fatal allergies--especially if you are a person of colour. Chairman of Paediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Frank Oski, M.D. even has a book called Don't Drink Your Milk which blames every second health problem kids suffer on milk. Sixty percent of ear infections in kids under six years of age are milk-induced, and milk consumption is the number one cause of iron-deficiency anaemia in infants today according to the American Association of Paediatrics Dr. Benjamin Spock, the U.S.'s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding "cow's glue" to children, saying it can cause anaemia, allergies, and diabetes and in the long term, obesity and heart disease, the number one cause of death in America.
Most of milk's much-vaunted protein is contained in casein--which is also a raw material for commercial glue. Undigested, it simply sticks to the intestinal walls and blocks nutrient absorption. Harvard studies show an increase in osteoporosis and bone-breakage in people who consume milk. Not one of the 1,500 papers listed in Medicine that deal with milk points to its goodness-only to the pus, blood, antibiotics, and carcinogens in milk, and the chronic fatigue, anaemia, asthma, and autoimmune disorders that it causes.
Milk has now become a racial issue. I went to a site called “MooMilk.com” which is run by the milk industry (“a fun and educational site for kids to disseminate cow ledge”). In question and answer form, clearly written in 12 point type it tells you all the wondrous things that milk does and gives you patently wrong statistics on practically every issue – including the amount of water taken to produce one glass of milk. (It reluctantly agrees that you can get enough calcium and protein without drinking milk – but gives the comparison with eating broccoli and turnips, the two vegetables that they know are the most disliked by children in America). But when it comes to the question about whether “coloured” people are intolerant to it, the answer is in 6 point type, barely readable – and this is what it says. I have enlarged it so that you can read it.
“Milk allergies are an abnormal response by the body to milk protein. Lactose intolerance is the body's inability to digest lactose, the sugar in milk. Allergies to milk are rare, while lactose intolerance is not. A food allergy is an abnormal response of the body's immune system to ordinarily harmless foods or ingredients -- in this case, milk protein. An estimated 1-3% of infants and young children have milk allergy, but usually outgrow it by two or three years of age. If milk allergy is suspected, consult a board-certified allergist for diagnosis. Those diagnosed with milk allergy should avoid consuming dairy foods. Dairy food consumption can resume when and if the allergy is outgrown.
Lactose intolerance refers to the symptoms experienced by individuals who have low levels of the enzyme (lactase) necessary to break down lactose, or milk sugar. Some who have low levels of lactase are unaware of it and never experience any symptoms. It is most prevalent in African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Fewer Caucasians have a problem digesting milk sugar. Infants are born with high levels of lactase, enabling them to digest the lactose in human milk.
90% of African Americans, Latin Americans, Asians, and Southern Europeans lack the genes necessary to digest lactose, the primary sugar in milk. The milk industry's response is classic: they have launched new campaigns arguing that non-whites can digest milk if they take in small sips during the day! The pharmaceutical industry is the only beneficiary - $450 million a year worth of products are sold to minimize the effects of lactose intolerance.
Lactose intolerance is the most common "food allergy," but to call it an allergy is to take a white-centric view that trivializes the fact that most of the world's people are not biologically designed to digest milk. For the vast majority of the world's people--people of colour—milk is a public health disaster. The mainstream media and the government ignore the medical studies showing that milk is a serious health threat, in part because people of colour are the main victims. The institutionalisation of racism is highlighted by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statement on milk, that the government's recommended milk is intended for "the majority of Americans. It doesn't communicate to all Americans." The dairy lobby in America is extremely powerful and lies to ensure its profits. It benefits directly from the exaggerated support prices the government shells out for this “health food”. The government pays to buy its excess butter and purchases dairy products of several billion dollars a year for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and school lunch programs--milking the taxpayers and actually getting them to pay for endangering the lives of 26 million schoolchildren. The lobby buys its way with politicians – Staffers under Richard Nixon were indicted for accepting $300,000 from the dairy lobby for making milk part of the school lunch program.
It is no less powerful in India. When I spoke against it a few years ago in a small meeting of Jain munis in Gujarat, I was hauled in the same evening by the Prime Minister on an official complaint made by the Gujarat Chief Minister saying that I was hurting the milk industry. What happens to “coloured” children when they have to take the milk that the American government has decreed must be served in poorer schools? Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board has studied the schools in New York and has written a report that the dramatic 52 percent rise in asthma deaths among minority children in New York coincides with the milk, cheese, and butter pumped into them under the free school lunch and breakfast giveaway programs.
There is also a direct link between milk consumption and prostate cancer among African Americans, who have the highest incidence of this disease in the world. A study in cancer has shown that men who drank milk daily had a higher risk for prostate cancer than men who reported never drinking milk. A fight back by the “coloured” against this racism is beginning. Coloured protesters picketed New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's planned milk promotion campaign with a photo of the mayor wearing a milk moustache over the caption, "Got Prostate Cancer?" Giuliani (who, like his father, has prostate cancer) dropped the campaign. Doctors from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine persuaded Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams not to declare May 11 as "Drink Chocolate Milk Day" by presenting evidence that milk is harmful, especially to people of colour. Leading doctors in the U.S have campaigned extensively to stop forcing coloured children to drink milk. The campaign is supported by a number of prominent civil rights organizations and leaders, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, Martin Luther King, III, Jesse Jackson, Jr the National Hispanic Medical Association, and former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders. They have also demanded that the milk industry to face the kind of scrutiny that the tobacco companies face today.
Is there no one in India who understands that we are coloured, that our government and dairy industry also knows that Indians get the same diseases? That milk hurts our children and puts a burden on the health system?
That the milk industry is merely out to make profits and couldn’t care less about the consequences? And that you are a victim of fake and dangerous advertising.
Maneka Gandhi
