͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

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Dear John,
I am disappointed to report that last night, a handful of Republican Members of the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives decided not to allow a vote on an amendment (the ADD SOY Act Amendment) that would give kids in schools a nutritious plant-based milk option at mealtime and end ongoing, high-volume food and fiscal waste.
It's the Rules Committee members who decide which bills and amendments can come to the House floor and be considered. Big Dairy has been pushing a bill to give kids whole milk offerings, and we wanted to give kids a soymilk option, too. That’s why we worked with our allies in the House to tee up an amendment to that larger bill.
Why did we push for the Carter-Mace-Barragan ADD SOY Act amendment? It’s simple: 15 million of the 30 million kids in the National School Lunch Program are lactose intolerant. They cannot healthfully drink the milk, but because of the “milk mandate” in the law since the 1940s, that’s the only nutritious beverage they get on the lunch tray. Because of that, the kids throw away more than 50 million gallons of milk a year.
If that policy continues, it will translate into a $5 billion loss of taxpayer dollars over the next decade. That’s more than spilled milk. And it means that cows endure very arduous and often painful production, often in industrialized facilities, for no good reason. A single cow can produce up to 25,000 pounds of milk, and that incredible yield of milk also produces documented foot and leg problems, along with serious and painful inflammation of the udders in half of the cows.
The lawmakers aligned with the dairy industry said they want to give kids more of “a choice”— adding whole milk to the skim milk option now available to students. But isn’t giving kids a soymilk option also “a choice”—an especially relevant one given that half of the kids in the program cannot healthfully digest milk? Under the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, soymilk is the only plant-based milk that is judged as nutritionally equivalent to cow’s milk when it comes to protein content and micro-nutrients.
A Milk Mandate in Our Public Schools
Each year, the USDA spends $1 billion to reimburse school districts for cow’s milk for the National School Lunch Program—a familiar program for those of us who attended public schools. For eight decades, the federal government has required milk on every tray, and it provides no nutritionally equivalent option to cow’s milk for the kids getting nutrition assistance.
The problem is, up to 75 percent of African Americans, 65 percent of Latinos, and 90 percent of Asian Americans and Native American are lactose intolerant—causing diarrhea, nausea, cramps, bloating, and in severe cases, vomiting. The National Institutes of Health reports the majority of all people have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy, and lactose intolerance “is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent.” Even 15 percent of people of European descent are lactose intolerant.
This kind of food waste of money would never be tolerated in the private sector. But this is a government program on autopilot, and it’s easy for Dairy industry-aligned lawmakers to toss away your tax dollars without much of a second thought.
We were trying to fix this broken system by passing the ADD SOY Act amendment and to bring relevant and real beverage choices to the National School Lunch Programs. It will also relieve the burden on the cows, especially if their milk will just be thrown away by the kids. [[link removed]]
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Giving Kids a Choice, Giving Cows a Break
We’ll now have to find a different legislative vehicle to secure a policy that’s good for kids, good for taxpayers, and better for the cows.
We are by no means giving up.
But we’ll need your continuing work on the issue. We must educate lawmakers about a government program that is badly broken. The Whole Milk bill to be considered on the floor tomorrow doesn’t do a thing to fix the problem. It’s just a bigger subsidy for Big Dairy.
I hope you will make a call to your lawmakers at 202-225-3121 and urge lawmakers to support the Carter-Mace ADD SOY Act, H.R. 1619. And you can also reach your two U.S. Senators and urge them to support the Senate companion bill—S. 2943, the ADD SOY Act, led by Senators John Fetterman, D-Penn., John Kennedy, R-La., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss.
I also hope you’ll send a letter to your Representative and your two U.S. Senators urging them to support the ADD SOY Act proposal. This Congressional contact tool allows you to send that letter in seconds. [[link removed]]
WRITE TO YOUR LEGISLATORS [[link removed]]
Let’s never forget about the sacrifices forced upon animals at the front end of our supply chains. What a disgrace that we put them through the labors of production and even confinement and then allow the product to be tossed into the trash because kids who consume it get sick. Remember, all animals matter, including those raised for food.
For smarter government and better outcomes for animals,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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