Dear John,
Just last week, 18,000 dairy cows perished in a fire sparked by an explosion at a massive factory farm in the Texas panhandle.
The animals hemmed in on factory farms are especially vulnerable to human-caused and natural disasters, and that’s just one reason why we should rethink the way we overcrowd animals on some massive complexes in American agriculture.
One reason we overcrowd dairy cows is because the government is artificially boosting demand for milk.
The most glaring example of the misuse of government power is the milk mandate in the National School Lunch Program.
On Thursday night, April 27, the Center for a Humane Economy is hosting our
inaugural event in a webinar series on animal issues and this one focuses on the dairy industry’s monopoly on nutritious beverages in the public schools:
Ending the USDA's 'Milk Mandate' in Schools and Providing a Plant-Based Option for Kids.
It is unacceptable that our federal government puts a carton of milk on 30 million lunch trays every day even though perhaps 15 million of the recipients are lactose intolerant. Ten million kids choose to throw away the milk in the carton, burning $300 million in tax dollars a year and rendering the suffering of thousands of dairy cows meaningless. And millions of other kids drink the product and get sick, compromising learning in the classroom and making kids ill.
This webinar is for you. We hope you’ll register today.
It takes place April 27, 2023, at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT, and is free, thanks to the generous sponsor of this Claudia Miller Ignite Series on Animal Welfare.
Each year, the USDA spends $1 billion to reimburse school districts for buying cow’s milk, but one study from the agency estimates that 30 percent of the kids toss the cartons unopened. Add in the kids who sip and then toss the remainder, and it becomes easy to accept another study that estimates about 45 million gallons of milk each year are dumped down the drain in schools.
The National Institutes of Health
reports the majority of all people have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy, with especially high rates among African Americans and Asian Americans. Lactose intolerance “is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek and Italian descent.”
The factory farms that deliver a good portion of this milk have engineered each cow to produce an extraordinary and unnatural amount of milk, as much as 25,000 pounds per cow! An enormous percentage of the animals, with their bodies taxed in extraordinary ways to produce so much milk, have inflammation of the udders, foot and leg problems, and other health issues that compromises their well-being. Then there are occasional calamities at dairy factory farms, including the death of 18,000 dairy cows overcrowded at a single mass production facility in Texas and who all perished in a fire just a few days ago.
At the webinar, we’ll discuss how the
ADD SOY Act gives kids food choices in the schools and also reduces the enormous demands on cows to fill so many milk cartons every day. We’ll also debunk many of the common myths about soy milk that critics are using to impede this reform.
The interactive event will feature Congressman Troy Carter, D-Louisiana, the lead author of the ADD SOY Act. You’ll also hear from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy; Dotsie Bausch, Olympic athlete and president of Switch4Good, a health-and-wellness advocacy group; and Dr. Lakshman Mulpuri, chief executive of PlantsNourish.
Please register for this event today, and please forward this email to friends and family who have a vested interest in the well-being of our school children.
Participants can learn more and register free at https://bit.ly/MilkMandate.
