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Dear friend,
The federal “milk mandate” is an example of government tipping the scales in favor of a special interest group. It’s an unfair situation where Congress has historically put the interests of the national dairy lobby ahead of the interests of kids who receive nutrition assistance.
Under the current National School Lunch Program, the government denies local school districts reimbursement for the costs of the entire breakfast and lunch offerings unless the school places cows’ milk on the trays of every student receiving nutrition assistance, whether the child wants the milk or not.
What’s astonishing is that this program has operated year after year even though millions of kids in the program are lactose intolerant and cannot safely drink milk. They don’t feel well after they drink it. Some of them get downright sick if they put it in their stomachs. Drinking milk undermines their ability to learn in class.
But many of them eventually do learn one lesson: it’s important to toss the milk and not drink it for their own well-being.
According to the USDA’s own review, 29% of the milk cartons served in our schools are thrown unopened into the garbage. A 2017 study that focused on 60 schools in a medium-sized urban district concluded that “of the total milk offered to School Breakfast Program participants, 45% was wasted.”
What a shame to see this massive milk wastage!
And it adds up. All that spilled and tossed milk amounts to $400 million a year in squandered taxpayer dollars. Over 10 years, that’s a misuse of $4 billion in government spending raised by taxing people like you and me.
I’m half Italian, half Greek, and about 20% of people from these countries are lactose intolerant. The incidence of lactose sensitivity is even higher among non-whites, with up to 75% of Blacks, 65% of Latinos, and more than 90% of Asian Americans and Native Americans suffering the often-incapacitating effects of lactose sensitivity. The National Institutes of Health reports that the majority of all people have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy, and lactose sensitivity “is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent.”
What kind of crazy government program tries to force-feed millions of kids — whose alertness and concentration are required in a classroom learning environment — a food staple that makes them ill and sends them scurrying to the bathroom?
Would any food retail business survive if its food made half its customers sick? This is the antithesis of customer service, and it survives only because of political inertia and cronyism.
To remedy a rigged food-assistance program, Animal Wellness Action has teamed up with Switch4Good to introduce the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches (FISCAL) Act in both chambers of Congress. This legislation (S. 1236 and H.R. 2539) does one simple thing: it requires public schools to offer kids a plant-based milk option that meets USDA nutritional standards as part of the NSLP.
More than 200 organizations support this bipartisan, bicameral legislation, including the National Rural Education Association, National Urban League, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders, Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Connection Team, American Soybean Association, and Coalition for Healthy School Food.
The existing program makes kids sick. It impedes learning. And it wastes taxpayer dollars. And one more thing: it disregards the sacrifices made by cows.
Just a few decades ago, an average dairy cow produced no more than 4,000 pounds of milk a year (intended for her calf), but an average cow is now generating an astounding 25,000 pounds, with some cows producing upwards of 30,000 pounds of milk a year.
That unbelievable level of production taxes the cow’s system and leads to shortened longevity and productivity, along with various health problems — from inflammation of the udders to foot and leg problems resulting from the massive body mass the cow must support.
Most of the “downed cows” who land at slaughterhouses are spent dairy cows, broken down because of their enormous mass and weakened condition resulting from bodies that have been called up to produce so much milk. Cows should not be put through intense production only to have their yield of milk tossed away.
This week, the Senate Agriculture Committee is planning to take up a bill to offer MORE cow’s milk options to kids. That policy will take us in the wrong direction.
We need more non-dairy options to serve the millions of kids who cannot drink any kind of cow’s milk, whether it’s non-fat, skim, or whole.
So today, in the interests of government efficiency, basic fairness, and animal welfare, I hope you’ll write to your lawmakers and ask them to cosponsor the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches Act.
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