No product has been as heavily advertised at every level as milk. Using religion, science, doctors, teachers, bureaucracy, film stars and whoever else can influence the sale, the Indian Government has tried in the last 50 years to make sure that , rich or poor, everyone buys milk or any of its forms.
The fact that no Indian can digest it and that the health fallouts are alarming Ranging from acne to kidney failure, diabetes and cancer has been ignored and well concealed from the public. In some cases the omission has been inadvertent no medical students are taught nutrition in medical colleges so they simply do not know the relationship between food and disease and continue to parrot what they have learnt from their parents who learnt it from their parents.
In some cases the industry and informed scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence in order to promote milk drinking the same way as the cigarette industry which discovered that nicotine was addictive and cancer causing in the 1930s and suppressed the reports by researchers, and in many cases deliberately hounded these scientists and besmirched their reputations, till finally the evidence kept piling up and they had to admit it 50 years later. The same thing is happening in India with the pesticide industry which has now named itself the “crop care” industry going viciously after any scientist who tries to expose the damage they are doing.
Anyway, to come back to milk, India now calls itself the planet’s largest milk producer and second largest exporter. Inspite of this, the per capita availability of milk is one of the lowest in the world. There simply is not enough milk and with the hundreds of licences given to meat exporters and the thousands of unlicenced meat factories ( Delhi has 11,000 illegal butcheries ) buffaloes and cows are now been sold in their prime in the thousands to be killed for meat which is being exported. In Mumbai, the Muslims only want to eat the meat of pregnant and milking buffaloes and cows and every second truck that goes into Deonar illegally carries these animals who are cut and the meat sold with the teats attached so that it can be shown that the animal was a mother. I have a documentary taken secretly in Deonar showing a buffalo being milked by the butcher before her throat is cut.
So, as a result, milk production in India is not increasing – it is declining. But the demand , thanks to advertising, is growing. So a huge industry of fake milk has stepped in to fill the breach.
Milk sellers have, for years now, produced synthetic milk. It costs Rs. 3 per litre and sell at Rs. 14 to 18 per litre. Synthetic milk is prepared by using urea, caustic soda, refined oil, detergent, starch, glucose, sugar and pond water. Cheap refined oil is used as a substitute for milk fat. Caustic soda is added to the blended mixture of chemical and natural milk to neutralize the effect of increased acidity, thereby preventing it from turning sour during transport. Detergents are added to emulsify and dissolve the oil in water, giving the frothy solution the characteristic white colour.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, chemical or synthetic milk looks like natural milk but it is harmful to the point of causing cancer. Urea destroys the kidneys. Caustic soda which contains sodium, acts as a slow poison for those suffering from hypertension and heart ailments. It is especially harmful for fetuses and pregnant women.
Synthetic milk is an excellent imitation of natural milk. The mixture is so expertly prepared that the specific gravity of the concocted milk is the same as natural buffalo milk. This mixture is then mixed with natural milk in varying proportions. Such milk is also turned into curd and paneer.
There are some ways to make out whether your milk has synthetic milk in it.
Natural milk has no pronounced taste but is slightly sweet. Any pronounced taste is abnormal. Synthetic milk is bitter. Milk should have no smell but “mixed “milk smells. Natural milk is not soapy if rubbed between the fingers. Synthetic milk is soapy. Real milk remains white on boiling. Synthetic turns yellow. Real milk doesn’t change colour when it is stored. Synthetic milk turns yellowish. Natural milk with urea in it comes to you with a much more yellow colour than natural milk. Real milk is acidic (a PH value of 6.8). Synthetic milk is alkaline. If fresh milk is tested with litmus paper then blue litmus paper turns red and red litmus paper turns blue. This doesn’t happen if the milk is mixed.
In a study done by Aligarh Muslim University in 2002 on synthetic milk identification, researchers found that most natural milk was adulterated with synthetic milk. According to the study, the government and industry taking the milk only checks fats and solids using chemical and physical analyses. Since all the other checks : estimating the sediment, the bacterial count, the freezing point ( which changes after artificial milk is added) etc , are expensive and time consuming, a few samples are taken now and then and sent to the laboratory – while the rest of the milk is allowed to be sold. Even when the milk turns out to be “mixed” no action is taken against the dairy that sold it.
No government organization, least of all animal husbandry whose job is to make sure you drink milk and eat meat or the Ministry for Consumer Affairs, pays any attention to the huge and open sale of mixed milk. In Jammu , for instance , even after repeated complaints from hundreds of consumers, a year ago and a racket exposed by the Regional Research Laboratory of CSIR, no effort has been made by the state or the Jammu Municipality to prevent the sale of synthetic milk or take action against its manufacturers. It is the same story in every state.
46% of the milk produced in the country is consumed as liquid milk with the average percapita intake more than 168 ml. The trade in artificial milk is as large
The fact that no Indian can digest it and that the health fallouts are alarming Ranging from acne to kidney failure, diabetes and cancer has been ignored and well concealed from the public. In some cases the omission has been inadvertent no medical students are taught nutrition in medical colleges so they simply do not know the relationship between food and disease and continue to parrot what they have learnt from their parents who learnt it from their parents.
In some cases the industry and informed scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence in order to promote milk drinking the same way as the cigarette industry which discovered that nicotine was addictive and cancer causing in the 1930s and suppressed the reports by researchers, and in many cases deliberately hounded these scientists and besmirched their reputations, till finally the evidence kept piling up and they had to admit it 50 years later. The same thing is happening in India with the pesticide industry which has now named itself the “crop care” industry going viciously after any scientist who tries to expose the damage they are doing.
Anyway, to come back to milk, India now calls itself the planet’s largest milk producer and second largest exporter. Inspite of this, the per capita availability of milk is one of the lowest in the world. There simply is not enough milk and with the hundreds of licences given to meat exporters and the thousands of unlicenced meat factories ( Delhi has 11,000 illegal butcheries ) buffaloes and cows are now been sold in their prime in the thousands to be killed for meat which is being exported. In Mumbai, the Muslims only want to eat the meat of pregnant and milking buffaloes and cows and every second truck that goes into Deonar illegally carries these animals who are cut and the meat sold with the teats attached so that it can be shown that the animal was a mother. I have a documentary taken secretly in Deonar showing a buffalo being milked by the butcher before her throat is cut.
So, as a result, milk production in India is not increasing – it is declining. But the demand , thanks to advertising, is growing. So a huge industry of fake milk has stepped in to fill the breach.
Milk sellers have, for years now, produced synthetic milk. It costs Rs. 3 per litre and sell at Rs. 14 to 18 per litre. Synthetic milk is prepared by using urea, caustic soda, refined oil, detergent, starch, glucose, sugar and pond water. Cheap refined oil is used as a substitute for milk fat. Caustic soda is added to the blended mixture of chemical and natural milk to neutralize the effect of increased acidity, thereby preventing it from turning sour during transport. Detergents are added to emulsify and dissolve the oil in water, giving the frothy solution the characteristic white colour.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, chemical or synthetic milk looks like natural milk but it is harmful to the point of causing cancer. Urea destroys the kidneys. Caustic soda which contains sodium, acts as a slow poison for those suffering from hypertension and heart ailments. It is especially harmful for fetuses and pregnant women.
Synthetic milk is an excellent imitation of natural milk. The mixture is so expertly prepared that the specific gravity of the concocted milk is the same as natural buffalo milk. This mixture is then mixed with natural milk in varying proportions. Such milk is also turned into curd and paneer.
There are some ways to make out whether your milk has synthetic milk in it.
Natural milk has no pronounced taste but is slightly sweet. Any pronounced taste is abnormal. Synthetic milk is bitter. Milk should have no smell but “mixed “milk smells. Natural milk is not soapy if rubbed between the fingers. Synthetic milk is soapy. Real milk remains white on boiling. Synthetic turns yellow. Real milk doesn’t change colour when it is stored. Synthetic milk turns yellowish. Natural milk with urea in it comes to you with a much more yellow colour than natural milk. Real milk is acidic (a PH value of 6.8). Synthetic milk is alkaline. If fresh milk is tested with litmus paper then blue litmus paper turns red and red litmus paper turns blue. This doesn’t happen if the milk is mixed.
In a study done by Aligarh Muslim University in 2002 on synthetic milk identification, researchers found that most natural milk was adulterated with synthetic milk. According to the study, the government and industry taking the milk only checks fats and solids using chemical and physical analyses. Since all the other checks : estimating the sediment, the bacterial count, the freezing point ( which changes after artificial milk is added) etc , are expensive and time consuming, a few samples are taken now and then and sent to the laboratory – while the rest of the milk is allowed to be sold. Even when the milk turns out to be “mixed” no action is taken against the dairy that sold it.
No government organization, least of all animal husbandry whose job is to make sure you drink milk and eat meat or the Ministry for Consumer Affairs, pays any attention to the huge and open sale of mixed milk. In Jammu , for instance , even after repeated complaints from hundreds of consumers, a year ago and a racket exposed by the Regional Research Laboratory of CSIR, no effort has been made by the state or the Jammu Municipality to prevent the sale of synthetic milk or take action against its manufacturers. It is the same story in every state.
46% of the milk produced in the country is consumed as liquid milk with the average percapita intake more than 168 ml. The trade in artificial milk is as large
Maneka Gandhi
