The Vegan Threat to Bovine Welfare

c/o William g. Roberts MBA /MIS, CCP

Part One: Debunking Vegan Hype

Setting the Record Straight

As director of the American Vedic Association and a practicing Vegetarian I have embraced the tradition of honoring and protecting the cow as one's own mother for nearly 40 years. I therefore share with the Vegan community their outrage at the cruelty inflicted on commercial dairy cows. I don't however agree the Vegan gospel: "Thou Shall NOT drink Milk" is the most effective strategy for putting an end to the barbaric way the dairy industry exploits and abuses cows. In fact there is good reason to believe that Vegan Fundamentalists will be the ones responsible for perpetuating the torment of cows well into the future for endless generations.

Irrelevant, Misleading and Distracting

Vegans are well known for generating a lot of propaganda about the sins related to drinking milk. One of the more aggressive themes they are fond of promoting is the declarative: "Milk is Poison" ¹ campaign. To defend their agenda for abolishing the consumption of milk, vegans start by demolishing the reliability of USDA recommendations. They then make long lists of all the various hormones, vaccines, and wonder drugs that have become a standard part of what the large corporate dairy farms must do to stay in business because of the unnatural, confined, factory like environments they subject cows to use in order to stay competitive.

This makes some dramatic headlines, but informed people already know how various food industries, such as the cattle ranchers and mega dairies, have historically influenced the daily nutritional requirements recommended by the government. Attentive consumers also know that itemizing all the extra controversial ingredients that find there way into the milk supply is irrelevant to any serious discussion related to evaluating the relevance of what whole, unadulterated fresh milk has on our diet.

Vegans also generate a lot of hysteria about the fat content in milk and the lactose intolerant population. They consider these things as further "Proof" why humans should not consume milk products. However if we accept these claims as legitimate reasons to avoid all forms of milk, then we should also abandon the consumption of peanuts, wheat and hundreds of other types of foods that are fattening or may sometimes cause allergic reactions.

Failed Obfuscation

Most people agree that the excessive consumption of any single food has a negative health impact and this is also true for milk. However vegans often cite studies of people examined immediately after consuming a frothy milk shake or who are in the habit of eating way too many milk products. Studies also show that the body has a sever reaction to the consumption of hot chilies, but nobody gets alarmed about the capsaicin which causes those biological symptoms. Yet vegans act like they attained culinary nirvana and have been anointed with the great commission is to save the world from the evils of milk. Just how prudent is it to promote controversial, fear based, skewed propaganda if we really wish to put an end to the abuse of dairy cows?

Independent neurologists have confirmed the importance of vitamin B12 in our diet. This nutrient is available predominantly in dairy, fish, meat, poultry, eggs and shellfish. A deficiency in B12 leads to anemia, irritability, anorexia, regression, poor brain growth, cognitive problems and a failure to thrive,.. particularly in young developing children²! Vegans tend to obfuscate these important facts. They never mention the studies that conclude with the warning: "In order to reach favorable vitamin and mineral intakes, vegans should consider taking supplements…".³

It is therefore disingenuous for Vegans to prance around giving people the impression that it's easy for the average carnivore to just immediately cut all meat, fish, eggs, poultry, honey, and dairy out of their diet. The truth is that only a very small percent of the population has the fortitude to start the Vegan diet and even a smaller percent can stick to it. At least part of the reason why some drop out is because Vegans must plan their meals very carefully if they want to stay healthy and who has the time for that in a culture addicted to fast food and frozen dinner convenience?.

"Poorly planned vegan diets can be low in levels of calcium, iodine, vitamin B12, iron[7][8] and vitamin D. Various polls have reported vegans to be between 0.2%[4] and 1.3%[9] of the U.S. population, and between 0.25%[5] and 0.4%[10] of the UK population."⁴

Blowback from Fanaticism

When all the "Studies" are objectively considered, the so called "Scientific Research" used to buttress up the Vegan agenda is very limited, controversial, inconclusive, speculative and zealously misleading. For every questionable esoteric study Vegan use to attract new converts, there is a mountain of research that confirms the nutritional values of natural whole milk. Yet vegans are reticent about these medical reports and that's both embarrassing and bad publicity. By failing to acknowledge the gaping flaws in the vegan doctrine the whole vegetarian movement becomes stigmatized as unreasonable and radically out of touch.

What's particularly disturbing about the Vegan dogma is the potential for irreversible damage in the development of innocent babies born to naive Vegan parents. When the evening news starts interviewing pediatricians for children that were never allowed to drink cows milk and now suffer with underdeveloped brain tissue⁵,,, the whole vegetarian movement will suffer a huge public relations catastrophe! Then the dairy industry will not only go unchecked, but we can expect that even more slaughterhouses will get built!

If we listen closely to moderate Vegans, they sometime reluctantly acknowledge under their breath that there is a lot of hyperbole being spewed to leverage the public into denouncing milk. When confronted with long-standing facts, some vegans quietly acquiesce that there really isn't anything wrong with a diet that includes a moderate amount of milk products.⁶ The Vedic rule of thumb is that one can safely enjoy the equivalent of one cup of milk a day, be it in the form of butter, gee, farmer's cheese or home made cultured yogurt etc. Objective experts confirm this ancient wisdom: "Our study does seem to show that a bit of what you like (milk) does seem to do you good." - Dr Andy Ness, Bristol University ⁷

Manipulative Ethics

When the issues related to health are debunked and exposed, Vegans take up an ethical assault against those who dare to patronize the dairy industry. One popular guilt-generating tactic is to dramatize the plight of a thirsty calf getting dragged away from its mothers utter. Large commercial dairies no doubt do that at some point to maximize their harvest, but this overly dramatized event is not an honest reason to indict the consumption of milk for the rest of eternity. Such emotionally charged arguments may temporarily convince uninformed people to stop purchasing milk for a little while, but once the public realizes how their sentiments have been maneuvered they will resent giving up the occasional pleasure of cottage cheese and pineapple for absolutely no reason.

After giving birth a cow will offer approximately 100 lbs of milk a day. It is ridiculous for anyone to assert that a baby calf weighing somewhere between 40-100 lbs. could possibly drink that much milk! Furthermore dairy people know that if that excess milk isn't removed from the utter of that cow in a timely fashion, it will be painful to the cow. When that happens a biological message is sent to the cow's milk producing organs to start shutting down. By regularly milking the cow, both the calf and the person tending to the health and safety of the cow are provided with an abundant supply of fresh wholesome milk. This is actually the reason why the cow is so highly respected in agrarian societies, most particularly in India. The cow has the miraculous ability to eat dry straw, grass, and kitchen scraps and convert these uneatable things into one of the most nutritious, versatile and good tasting foods long after humans are weaned from their birth mother.

Pushing someone into the deep end of the pool when they don't even know how to swim is the best way to traumatize someone so they never want to be around a pool again. Our first task should be to educate the general public about the benefits of a Vegetarian diet, not terrorize them into following fanatically austere eating habits they are completely unprepared for and will probably abandon. The purpose of this paper is to show how this aggressive strategy is counter-productive.

The one ethical argument that is legitimate is in relation to all the business driven cruelty corporate dairies inflict on cows during their short lives. When the white-gold milk-wells run dry, these innocent animals are sent off to the slaughterhouse to be processed into USDA approved 50lb boxes of frozen fast-food burger patties. This is the epitome of ungratefulness and an atrocity no sensitive individual would ever condone. Determining how to effectively put an end to this barbaric arrangement brings us full circle back to the opening question. "What is the best way to alleviate the suffering of cows abused by commercial dairies?"

Part Two: How Best To Prevent Cow Abuse

How Does One Civilize Barbarians?

When the points listed in Part One of this study are carefully scrutinized, it appears the Vegans have made milk the scapegoat for their frustrations. It is understandable how this happened, but if left unchecked the vegans will make rescuing the abused dairy cows ever more bleak by insisting that everyone essentially toss the champagne out with the cork. Milk is NOT the problem! The problem is with the huge corporations that spend millions of advertising dollars herding the general public into feed-lot supermarkets to purchase products they glean without regard to the suffering of innocent animals.

Forty years ago less then 1% of the US population was vegetarian. Fruitarians, vegans and advocates of raw food diets were even harder to find. Yet what everyone who abstained from meat had to contend with was being treated as if they were strange, fanatical, or brainwashed by some type of cult-like, religious indoctrination.

Today the US vegetarian population has grown to around 3% and some studies show numbers as large as 10% in Canada.⁸ The stigma of not eating meat is slowly dissipating. However the confrontational tactics often practiced by PETA and the extreme dietary restrictions suggested by Vegans, Raw Food advocates and Fruitarians tends to portray the larger Vegetarian community as orbiting in the clouds of eccentricity.

The human body is remarkably resilient and can absorb a lot, but studies indicate that more then half of the population in this country has a weight problem. This statistic reflects how badly people have become enslaved by unhealthy eating habits which damage their organs, arteries, and digestive tracts. Some people may be in such dire medical trouble that a highly restrictive diet may be appropriate just to unwind years of harm accumulated by smoking, eating too much cheese, or a reliance on fast food for meals. It is also well accepted that an occasional short term "Cleansing Fast" can be very beneficial.

However the fact that some individuals have abused there bodies so badly they now have virtually no choice but to follow very restrictive diets doesn't mean the rest of the population needs to do so. When recovering from certain medical procedures penicillin is also prescribed, but it would actually be harmful to take it all the time. It is also ludicrous to suggest we never eat again because fasting is sometimes very helpful!

Managing Public Opinion

Nobody likes being lied to or manipulated. For years we all believed that we must eat animals to get enough protein in our diet. Eventually some of us learned how that was not true, Now we know the origin of that myth, and many others related to our burger supply, was perpetrated by the USDA certified "safe" meat industry. With the release of movies like "Super Size Me", "Fast Food Nation", "Food Inc." and "Earthlings", the public is slowly beginning to wake up. As they realize just how badly they have been misled about the source, quality and hidden costs of the foods they purchase, a more favorable environment for the Vegetarian lifestyle will continue to unfold. But we have a long way to go.

At best approximately 10% of the population is not insanely attached to stimulating the nerve cells on the end of their tongue with the flesh of animals found nearly everywhere food is sold. The reckless eating habits still popular with the majority are yielding dire consequences, which, if left unchecked, will continue to grow exponentially. Seasoned vegetarians understand what's at stake and realize how difficult it is to rally the public against the ways cows are abused. They know if that is to be achieved, great care must be taken not to do anything that could turn the public against a more sustainable, healthy, and ethical way to nourish the body.

Marketing experts identified that when a new product comes out only a small percent of the population are adventurous enough to try it and they refer to those curious individuals as “Early Adopters.” Whole industries rise or fall based on the impression these pioneers have about a new product. Compact disks, microwave ovens and personal computers are found in nearly every home because of the endorsements of early adopters. Conversely the Ford Edsel, the Sony Betamax, and the Apple Newton never got past the introduction stage because they failed to get that approval. The vegetarian lifestyle has yet to earn the endorsements of the "Middle Adaptors." One of the quickest ways to loose the current favorable momentum is to evangelize specious arguments that later prove to be as deceptive as the protein myths spread by the big meat-heads. The bourgeoning "Vegetarian Movement" simply cannot afford to have a public relations meltdown because of the many spurious things that haunt the Vegan movement.

Loose Integrity = Loose Credibility = Loose the Cows!

Unfortunately it appears that vegan credibility is already under fire for stretching the boundaries of scientific scrutiny. This is particularly evident with the inflammatory, embarrassing, and ridiculous propaganda generated by Robert Cohen. Mr. Cohen is one of the biggest contributors to the "NOT MILK" hysteria as is evident by the eccentric collection of exhaustive titles found on the home page of his controversial website: www.notmilk.com.

Mr. Cohen is so fanatically besotted that even John Robbins, author of "Diet for a new Planet" and the Board of Directors for EarthSave International were driven to ask:

"Are we so desperate to convince others to become vegetarian that we don't care if someone advocating vegetarianism is a charlatan? Do we believe that those who claim they are "activists" should be given a free pass to act outside the boundaries of human decency? Must we keep quiet about abusive people whose moral and ethical principles run counter to our own, simply because they are "on our side" in some debate about food choices?" – Jeff Nelson ⁹

Mr. Neson and the EarthSave organization does not stand alone. The Vegan Community of the United Kingdom further confirmed that:

"Robert Cohen, author of the publication 'Milk - the deadly poison,' seems to have slipped from exaggeration, to poetic license, to libel." ¹⁰

After the roaring twenties the habit of smoking marijuana began infiltrating the white, middle class population. In 1936, conservative Americans became so fearful about the moral impact this might have on society that a church group funded the production of the now historic Exploitation Film "Reefer Madness." The objective of the filmmakers was to quash the rapid spread of marijuana use, but by the mid-70’s college graduates would get high and laugh hysterically as they watched how the movie portrayed the way a person would descend into insanity if they smoked pot just once.

By overstating their case, quacks like Robert Cohen and all those who perpetuate his bogus vegan propaganda are making the same mistake. However, in this case, the stakes are much higher. We are not talking about a recreational drug that is easily managed and rapidly outgrown by a well adjusted citizen. We are campaigning to change the eating habits of a civilization that is firmly cemented into the psyche of the overwhelming majority of the world's population!

There is a lot of truth in the saying: "Don't mess with another person's rice bowl." Nothing turns public opinion against a new idea faster than when they discover that they were misled, regardless of whether it was by a mentally-ill charlatan, or a whole cult of egotistical, dinnertime martyrs incapable of seeing the folly of their ways.

Already those disgusted with the prima-donna attitude of vegans are finding ways to undermine their holier then thou claims that vegans do not use or exploit any animal dependent products. They charge that vegans who use plastic, nylon, oil, gas or any petrochemical by-product are hypocrites because those things came from decomposed diatoms and other creatures that died long ago. They also point out that if vegans eat fruit, nuts or even some vegetables pollinated by bees rented from bee keepers who truck them around to farms on demand, then they are guilty of enslaving the bees in their service.

Good Advice for Good Health

Everyone knows that an important part of staying healthy requires that we exercise regularly. Some people do that by running. Yet only a few highly-trained individuals, who practice rigorously, can run a mile in less than four minutes. Professional athletes can do it in less than five minutes, and virtually anyone who participates in a running sport can do it in less then six minutes. However, the average person will require ten minutes or more to run a mile and it will take considerably more than 15 minutes for the elderly and those with severe physical handicaps to traverse a mile unassisted.

The family doctor doesn't recommend that one strive to run the mile in even five minutes because he knows that most people can't do it and would hurt themselves trying. Nonetheless, running is an excellent way to exercise if one builds up to it progressively and learns how to avoid twisting an ankle, tearing a ligament or provoking a cardiac overload. Ambitious runners who fail to heed this advice often end up on crutches, a wheelchair, a respirator or worse. When that happens, they are forced to stop running and then many get so discouraged that they loose the ambition to ever exercise again.

Similarly there is only a small percent of the general population that will ever seriously consider adopting the extremely austere demands of the Vegan diet. I admire the fortitude of the Vegan community but they seem to be out of touch with the fact that the average person is accustomed to following an unrestricted feeding frenzy when they eat, often in a car after visiting the abominable drive thru. To ask that individual to not only give up any form of animal flesh, poultry, fish, eggs AND all the tasteful wonders that are derived from milk is unrealistic, unnecessary, unsubstantiated and borderline crazy. Yes! Some super performers will be able to do it, but it's myopic to not also consider all the casualties that will occur when overly ambitious naive individuals are too immature to successfully change their diet. Those individuals need a good "dinner coach" on par with someone from the local gym, not a food czar equivalent to an Olympic trainer.

Seasoned vegetarians have heard everything when it comes to what people dream up for why they are not willing to stop eating meat. I find the most disappointing stories come from those who say they were once a Vegetarian but simply could not sustain it. Many blame it on their spouse or their doctor. Others become passionate about claiming that they now only "occasionally" eat chicken, fish, and/or "on rare occasions" red meat! No matter how they try to excuse it, the fact remains, they lost the commitment to stick with one of the most wonderful things they can do, not only for their own health and well being, but also for everyone else with whom they share this planet.

The dogmatic Vegan would do well to spend some time reviewing all the material available at the "Beyond Vegetarianism" website because it offers numerous studies, stories and personal testimonies about people who, at one time, were persuaded to give up eating meat but don't feel that way any longer.¹¹ They were once our companions in the evolution of consciousness. Now they are fatalities in that effort and liabilities to the cause.

Sanguine Strategy to End the Suffering of Dairy Cows

There are already a lot of casualties in the Vegetarian revolution. At one time these "Early Adopters" were so convinced about the negative impact that a carnivorous diet has on everything that they actually gave up eating meat,… at least for awhile. Yet, for any number of unfortunate reasons they fell off the hay cart and somehow ended up back on line for low-fat turkey nuggets or worse.

Because the Vegan diet is even more restrictive, the losses from those aspiring culinary super athletes will be even worse. After the initial vegan epiphany wears off, meals start getting pretty bland and it's virtually impossible to go out to a restaurant. Those who are attached to seeing their name on the Vegan JumboTron may be able to earn bonus endurance days by discreetly caving in to the temptation of eating products with butter, cheese or sour cream, but doing so comes at the loss of personal integrity. Then those individuals become yet another dubious statistic that compromises the credibility of the Vegan community because NOBODY likes a hypocrite. As that credibility erodes so does the hope for shutting down the slaughterhouse and rescuing cows from the horrible abuse we all want to see come to an end. Therefore Vegans would do the whole vegetarian movement a great service if they were more honest and simply told people they were a Vegetarian and not perpetuate the fraud desperately used to prop up the vegan agenda that appears to be based more on egotistical reasons then scientific ones.

Therefore we need not petition the average person to run the equivalent of the five minute mile when they sit down to eat. Doing so is a huge disservice because it is unreachable by many. If is far more prudent to set our agenda towards educating the public about what they could realistically integrate into their eating habits and stick to. After nearly four decades of staying true to the "cause", the prescription that is best suited to save the plight of the dairy cows is a well rounded, sane, tasteful and relatively convenient lacto vegetarian diet. It worked for thousands of years in India, where the cow was not mistreated, and it is also the most realistic way to shift a carnivore away from their destructive eating habits.

The meat and dairy industry are markets which exist simply to serve the demands of the consumer. When people make the effort to break free from the jaws of the meat industry, those who have already done so must do all they can to help the "Middle Adopters" adopt a statistically sustainable lacto-vegetarian diet. Over time, as their new eating habits set in they will naturally become more civilized, sensitive, and sane. When that happens, they will automatically be inspired to join in the cry against the horrendous way the dairy industry treats the cows. This evolution of consciousness will be very similar to the way people are now campaigning against chemical-based fertilizers, toxic insecticides and Genetically Modified Foods.

It will be a strong sober vegetarian community that will eventually rescue the cows from their torment, not those who are endorse the inflammatory propaganda from aberrant radicals who write things like "Milk is Poison." Many of them will later drift away into some other fashionable trend that captures their fancy. Meanwhile it is simply unrealistic to expect everyone to run the mile in less than five minutes. When the Vegans stop demanding that, then the odds of things getting better for the dairy cows, the earth, and our fellow humans will be much greater.