108 Reasons to Say No to Dairy Products By Will Tuttle, Ph.D.
1. Cow’s milk contains toxic pesticide and drug residues, dangerous growth hormones, allergenic bovine proteins, cholesterol, fat, pus, and, even after pasteurization, is loaded with bacteria and viruses, approximately 5 million per cup. For comparison, plant-based foods typically contain less than 100 of these pathogens per cup.
2. This pathogen load in dairy products may lead to sore throats, colic, diarrhea, flu, tonsillitis, and other illnesses. Some are serious, like intestinal diseases (e.g., E.Coli), yeast and strep infections, and certain flu viruses. Colds, rashes, and ear, sinus, and other infections may often be due to dairy-born pathogens as well.
3. The immune system may thus be continually distracted and overburdened by the pathogen load inherent in dairy products. The overtaxed immune system may then be unable to destroy the body’s naturally occurring cancer cells before they multiply, leading to a higher likelihood of cancer.
4. Over 30,000 different pharmaceutical drugs are currently used on farm animals, with very little regulation. The residues of these drugs run in the blood and into the milk of dairy cows. Their effects on people who eat dairy products, in the innumerable combinations possible, are unknown and may be serious.
5. Dairy products contain powerful growth hormones, both artificial, like Monsanto’s rBGH, and the natural ones that spur calves to grow so quickly. These growth hormones not only contribute to obesity, but also spur the growth of routine small cancer growths in people, making it difficult for the already beleaguered immune system to eliminate these small cancers before they grow too big to be contained.
6. Many people (over 50% of Americans—mostly those not of northern European descent) are allergic to lactose, galactose, and other substances in cow’s milk and this typically leads to bloating, gas, and chronic digestive problems.
7. The saturated fat and cholesterol in milk coat the arteries, contributing to heart disease, high blood pressure, heart attacks, arteriosclerosis, and strokes.
8. The fats and allergenic proteins in dairy products not only cause excess mucus, but may also contribute to people experiencing asthma and allergies to pollen and other substances. These allergies lead to more medication and toxic waste.
9. The basic protein molecule in cow’s milk, casein, is very greasy and heavy (it has a molecular weight of 233K, compared to 14K for human milk). Casein is the glue that is typically used to glue labels to bottles and to glue wood together in making plywood. It is hard to digest, stresses the liver, pancreas, stomach, intestines, and other digestive organs, and creates a sticky residue that is hard on the kidneys to remove. It coats and clogs the throat also. This all leads to more medications with their adverse side effects.
10. The casein in milk products may also contribute to kidney stones and kidney disease, as well as to arthritis, bursitis, and other joint ailments, with all the drugs and suffering these entail.
11. Countries with high dairy consumption have high rates of osteoporosis. This is because high animal protein levels in dairy products acidify the blood, thus leaching calcium from the bones in the body’s attempt to balance blood pH. This causes bone deterioration and much higher rates of osteoporosis. Milk and especially concentrated milk (like cheese) lead to constant calcium loss from the bones, and to elderly people shrinking, breaking bones easily, being confined to wheelchairs, using more drugs, financial pressures, and tremendous unnecessary suffering.
12. The casein in dairy products forms a heavy glue-like substance in the intestines, interfering with food absorption, possibly weakening the person and leading to colon cancer, constipation, and more medications, drugs, and toxic waste. The pathogens and casein may also lead to inflammation of the tonsils, adenoids, and appendix, especially in children. This leads to otherwise unnecessary surgeries.
13. For children, casein works against natural and harmonious development—it pushes against their system, forcing it to grow too fast (a baby cow in the first year of life goes from approximately 50 pounds to approximately 500!), and thus creates a toxic inner environment, leading to a compromised immune system and setting the stage for many childhood ailments. Colic, for example, is unknown where dairy products are not eaten, and childhood earaches and anemia are rare.
14. Modern dairy operations are extremely stressful to cows and mastitis (udder infection) is rampant, contributing to high pus levels in milk. Dairy cows are routinely fed high levels of antibiotics to combat mastitis and other cow diseases, and these antibiotics remaining in milk products kill the friendly flora in the body of the dairy-eater. This may further weaken the system and contribute to drug-use.
15 The average dairy eater has about one gallon of excess mucus in his or her body from the heavy fats and proteins in cow’s milk. This may contribute to fogginess of mind, lethargy, and a clogged system that requires frequent colds to clean itself of this excess mucus.
16. Mood swings, depression, and irritability have been linked with dairy consumption.
17. Most people are unaware that dairy cows, natural vegetarians, are forced to eat animal flesh mixed in with their feed because dairy operators have discovered that the cholesterol in flesh artificially stimulates milk production. Enormous quantities of rendered fish, poultry, slaughterhouse byproducts, and “junk meat” like road kill, cats, and dogs are fed to dairy cows to boost milk production. The fish, offal, and other meat byproducts concentrate toxic heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals, which then concentrate in the cow’s milk.
18. In order to provide bile and the salts necessary to digest the excess fats and proteins in dairy products, the liver may be distracted from its function of handling sugar. This creates conditions for hypoglycemia.
19. The pancreas may be compromised by this excess sugar load, and there are viruses in milk that can damage the pancreas. A damaged pancreas cannot produce sufficient insulin, and this may lead to fully developed diabetes. There is a well-established link between dairy consumption and diabetes.
20. The high estrogen levels in cow’s milk (dairy cows have high estrogen already, as all lactating mammals do, but they are injected with more estrogen to increase their milk yield) have been proven to be directly correlated with breast cancer in women who consume dairy products. Again, this leads to more suffering and expense.
21. Milk products are also very high in IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), which has recently been linked to cancers of all types, especially breast and prostate cancer.
22. Dairy products are very high in saturated fat. Cheeses derive an incredible 60-80% their calories from fat, and “2% milk” is deliberately misleading, since it derives 30% of its calories from fat. This high fat load contributes to obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, and damaged arteries.
23. Since dairy cows are pushed so hard to produce more milk than they naturally would by administering cholesterol and excess hormones to them like estrogen, prolactin, and progesterone, the natural hormone balance of the milk-drinker may be severely upset. The high-fat dairy products like butter, cream, and cheese are the worst offenders, since estrogen and other hormones ride in milk-fat.
24. This may lead to severe problems and suffering, since it forces boys and especially girls to reach puberty too soon. Their bodies are pushed to be ready to have babies before their minds are. Prior to heavy milk drinking, the age of first menstruation in women was between 16 and 18; now it’s common to be 11 to 13 years old.
25. Boys may develop breastiness and other problems because of the load of estrogen they are taking in with dairy products.
26. All this may lead to social and biological pressures that are unnatural and difficult to handle. Dairy products may thus contribute to high rates of teenage pregnancy since they push kids into early sexual development, and this can be seen as a driving force behind teen abortions (and teen births).
27. Puberty problems may also be exacerbated by milk products; besides unnaturally pushing breast growth, early sexual development, and unnatural hormonal imbalances, the fatty, clogging qualities of milk and its bacteria load contribute to embarrassing acne and body odor.
28. Dairy products are also major contributors to the hormone imbalance and excess dietary fat that can cause obesity. This may lead to self- esteem problems, and to more drugs and suffering.
29. Dairy products are linked with flare-ups of lupus erythematosus, ulcerative colitis, and rheumatoid arthritis. More people are allergic to cow’s milk than to any other food substance.
30. Pesticides concentrate in milk. It requires an exorbitant amount of silage and grains to produce just one gallon of milk. All the pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and fungicides used in growing the silage and grains naturally concentrate in fats and milk, and these toxic chemicals may cause damage to the dairy-eater, including cancer and other diseases. Again, the highest concentrations of toxins are in the high-fat dairy products like cheese, cream, and butter.
31. The microorganisms in dairy products aggressively attack tooth enamel and are responsible, far more than sugar, for cavities, rotting teeth, diseased gums, and the root canals, drugs, and surgery caused by weak, damaged teeth. Growth hormones in milk may cause overly large, crowded, crooked teeth and the need for braces.
32. The high fat content of milk (and especially cheese, butter, and cream) leads to the clogging of the fine capillaries around the eyes, and may thus cause vision impairment and vision loss of many types. This often leads to corrective lenses, medication, eye surgery, and unnecessary suffering.
33. When women use cow’s milk-derived infant formula for nursing babies instead of their own milk, this decreases the mother-child bonding, and increases the likelihood of anemia, sinus infections, and other infant ailments.
34. Dairy products are devoid of fiber, which is essential for healthy digestion and the elimination of toxins, and low in iron, thus contributing to anemia.
35. Milk also contains natural sedatives that may cause stupor and fogginess of mind.
36. Dairy products contain many cow hormones and substances that don’t belong in the human body, especially children’s, bodies, and which some studies suggest lead to attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and hypo- activity. This often leads to more drug use and suffering.
37. Milk is the intimate food for a cow, a herd animal, and may thus cause diary consumers to unconsciously adopt this herd mentality in which they are unable to think clearly for themselves.
38. Milk is a product of enormous suffering in the body of the cow—it contains this suffering and may therefore be very toxic. Consuming this suffering in the form of dairy products may lead to psychological problems.
Cows are all slaughtered after only 4-5 years, have their babies repeatedly snatched from them; are dominated, abused, and manipulated, and in the milk-drinker, this can easily translate to anxiety, restlessness, fear of losing those close to oneself, fear of or craving for domination or submission, abusive behavior, automaton conformity, self-destructive behavior, unaccountable sadness, and violent thoughts and actions.
For the Cow:
39. Cow’s pain—she’s denied a family experience with a bull; instead she’s artificially inseminated by a semen “gun” inserted deep into her vagina on a “rape rack.”
40. She is forced to be continuously pregnant and lactating. In the wild, she would allow herself to become pregnant only every 3 to 4 years.
41. She is forced to produce 90-110 pounds of milk per day for 11 months, continually, rather than 10-25 pounds for 3-5 months, every 3-4 years.
42. She’s confined her entire life (90% of dairy cows in U.S. today are housed indoors).
43. Her babies are stolen from her by force soon after she bears them, the deep, natural mother-bond cruelly broken.
44. She is routinely injected with a package of hormones that severely disturb her body chemistry.
45. She is forced to be carnivorous, which is totally unnatural for her. Ground-up fish, pigs, sheep, and poultry are routinely mixed into her feed to boost milk output. She may be forced to be a cannibal as well, eating even baby cows (perhaps her own), which are killed and ground up, and mixed back into the cow feed. Although recent regulations prohibit this because it spreads mad cow disease, regulations are scarcely enforced or taken seriously.
46. Her body may be painfully mutilated by branding and de-horning.
47. She is forced by machines, drugs, and an unnatural, high-cholesterol diet to become nothing but a milk machine.
48. She is physically and emotionally traumatized by this abuse, and sent to slaughter after 4-5 years, rather than fulfilling her natural life expectancy of 25 years.
49. She has to face the brutality of the slaughterhouse, perhaps being skinned and dismembered while still conscious.
50. Her children are mostly slaughtered young, either after a few months, as veal, or immediately, to go back into the feed and for calfskin leather, or they are sold off to be grown and slaughtered after 2 years as beef. Only about one in five calves remains as a slave on the dairy. Both male and female calves are veal.
51. Her baby, the young veal calf, cannot move in its tiny pen, where it lives its entire short miserable life, a direct by-product of the excessive number of cows produced by the necessity of impregnating dairy cows every year to keep their lactation high.
52. Her babies that are to become beef are castrated, branded, fattened, and slaughtered brutally as mere objects for consumption.
53. She is denied a family experience with her children and with her herd; her natural emotional, maternal, social, and familial drives are unfulfilled and ignored.
54. She forced to eat huge quantities of antibiotics and endure hormone injections.
55. She is forced to bear the weight of a massive and unnatural udder.
56. She is pushed to produce so much milk that she is milked by machines 3 to 4 times per day for virtually her entire adult life. These machines can shock and hurt her.
57. She is pushed unnaturally early into pregnancy so that she can begin lactating early, in only her second year of life. (Ironically, this also happens to young human dairy-eaters.)
58. She has sore and swollen ankles from standing in one place so much, usually on hard cement, and having to support so much unnatural milk- weight.
59. She has no opportunity for exercise, is often forced to stand in her own excrement, to endure extreme temperatures and the roughness of transportation to slaughter; her entire life used, and then thrown away.
For the Earth:
60. The antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs used in dairies all end up going into rivers and streams, with damaging effects on the environment and on humans. The human drugs used because of dairy all end up in the water eventually also.
61. Enormous amounts of land are used to raise the feed crops for dairy cattle. These millions of acres of soybeans, alfalfa, corn, wheat, oats, and other grains are treated with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides that contribute directly to water pollution, excess algae growth, dead and diseased fish, and human sickness.
62. Forests have been and continue to be destroyed to raise grain to feed dairy cattle. This severely reduces habitat for many species of plants and animals, and decreases biological diversity, weakening the earth’s ecosystems.
63. The pesticides used in dairy feed production kill birds, butterflies, bees, and fish.
64. Dairy operators have taken and continue to take an active role in killing wildcats, coyotes, foxes, groundhogs, and other supposed “pests,” setting traps and using poison, which pollutes the environment and also kills innocent animals and causes tremendous suffering.
65. Massive amounts of cow manure from dairies flow into streams and aquifers, polluting both surface and ground water, and causing de- oxygenation of rivers and lakes, killing fish and causing excess algae growth. The fish serve an important place in the ecosystem, ingesting decaying organisms, and their loss amplifies the disease level, also leading to fewer birds. Dairy manure also causes air pollution when it dries and blows. The smell of modern dairies is toxic and offensive.
66. Milk is extremely water expensive: it takes 360 gallons of water to make one gallon of milk, and 2800 gallons of water to make one pound of hard cheese. This is enough water for six months of daily showers! This leads to loss of water resources, depletion of groundwater reserves, and contributes further to water pollution.
67. Wetlands are lost as land is drained and used for agriculture for dairy cows. Bird and fish populations are reduced as habitat is lost.
68. There is an enormous energy expense in housing millions of dairy cows and running the machinery of dairies, as well as in transporting and refrigerating millions of pounds of dairy products. This requires petroleum, coal, and nuclear power, resulting in significant air pollution and toxic waste, and contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect.
69. The huge medical establishment needed to treat all the diseases caused by milk requires an inordinate amount of energy to run, creating more pollution and greenhouse gases. Besides requiring vast amounts of energy, hospitals and drug manufacturers generate huge amounts of extremely toxic pollution that is expensive and difficult to dispose of.
70. The medical and dairy industries demand enormous amounts of metals and plastics. Mining aluminum, iron, copper, and other metals to create hospital buildings and technical instrumentation, as well as for dairy buildings, machines, pasteurization equipment, and so forth, is extremely polluting to the air, water, and land.
71. So-called organic dairy operations still kill the babies, push and kill the mothers, pollute air and water, waste valuable grain, and create products that may perhaps be healthy for calves, but are inherently unhealthy for human consumption.
72. The methane gas emitted by millions of dairy cattle is a significant contributor to global warming and the greenhouse effect.
73. The CFC’s used for all the refrigeration required for dairy contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
74. Huge numbers of animals suffer horribly in the drug testing done by researchers looking for “cures” to the diseases brought on by dairy consumption.
75. The increased acne, body odor, tooth decay, vision loss, obesity, sinus infections, earaches, arthritis, colds, flu, staph and strep infections, digestive problems, and other health problems caused and exacerbated by dairy consumption fuels an enormous production of packaged goods that fill the shelves of drug stores. These products and their containers must be disposed of, as well as the contents themselves, which are toxic to the environment and always end up in the water. A further major source of pollution!
For All of Us:
76. Cow’s milk contributes to starvation of people, because it takes about 35 pounds of grain and silage to produce one gallon of milk. This grain could be fed to people. About 25,000 people die of starvation in our world every day, while dairy cows eat millions of tons of grain. Eating cheese, butter, and cream products increase this waste of valuable grain even more, since they require more milk to make: up to 8 gallons for just one pound of cheese.
77. Starving people, besides experiencing enormous suffering, are a driving force behind world disharmony, unrest, uprisings, armed confrontations
and war. The horrors and brutality of these ongoing conflicts are enormous. Precious resources are diverted into making weapons.
78. Cow’s milk also contributes to war through the violence and abuse inherent in its production, for this energy of violence and domination is consumed and enters into people’s bodies and may become part of their way of thinking and acting.
79. The energy of violence, domination, and abuse may also work on the fine physical levels of our world. The field of thought-feeling is believed by many people to directly affect all of us in powerful ways, since it is the subtle energy environment in which we live and move. The fear, suffering, and agony of the cows, calves, and other animals abused by dairy production contribute massive negativity to this energy field, as does the suffering and frustration of people who are sickened by dairy products, those adversely affected by these peoples’ sickness, and those involved in the horrors of dairy and veal operations and slaughterhouses.
80. In an insidious way, the dairy industry falsely poses as a benefactor, with multi-million dollar advertising campaigns claiming that cow’s milk “does a body good,” “builds strong bones and teeth,” and so forth, making it even more dangerous.
81. To the extent mothers substitute cow’s milk for their own to infants, milk weakens the mother-child bond, perhaps weakening family structures and individual psychological self-esteem and health, with the social costs that this entails.
82. Milk exacerbates the abortion issue, which severely splits our people, by pushing children to develop sexually too fast. This early sexual maturity has severe social costs, requiring counseling for pregnant teens, abortion facilities, and litigation.
83. Producing dairy products perpetuates the domination of the feminine and the maternal: female cows are imprisoned, raped, dominated, and abused, all for the economic value of their maternal milk, which was never intended for humans.
84. Dairies support the new state legislation that criminalize any criticism of dairy and meat products! To date, about 15 states have passed these types of laws.
85. There are particular psychological problems that may be contributed to by eating dairy products, since they are saturated with the suffering, pain, and feelings of the animals. A vague fear of the future, a sense of being trapped and/or confined, a sense of deep frustration and hopelessness, a nameless sense of grief, a state of stupor: all these feelings and states run in the blood and into the milk of cows, and the energy of them carries into those who partake of them through the most intimate act, which is eating the flesh or bodily secretions of another individual.
86. Dairy products may thus contribute to the abuse of prescription drugs like Prozac, which mask psychological problems perhaps exacerbated by milk. The documented side effects of Prozac are legendary, including aggressiveness to the point of killing sprees. Dairy products may thus encourage not only prescription drugs like Prozac and Ritalin, but also illicit drugs.
87. Dairy products also contribute to the abuse of prescription drugs for the physical illnesses they cause, and to the drug mentality underlying the use of illicit drugs.
89. Dairy desensitizes people; it’s a powerful “dumbing down” agent to keep people easy to control and “in line.” It contains natural sedatives and sleep-inducers.
89. Cow’s milk thus decreases creativity and independent thinking, and may encourage a mentality of conformity. The social costs of this are truly daunting to ponder.
90. The daily practice of ignoring the horror in dairy products reduces people’s ability to make connections. Intelligence is the ability to make connections.
91. Dairy products are an integral part of the mad-cow disease syndrome, since dairy cows are routinely forced to eat the flesh, manure, and offal of other animals.
92. Milk products contribute to the loss of fish in oceans and lakes, since 40% of all fish are fed to cattle. Dairy cows are forced to eat fishmeal to increase cholesterol intake, thereby unnaturally boosting their milk production.
93. Taxes support the dairy industry, and government subsidies artificially reduce the price of cow’s milk products. A vast, long-standing web of dairy influence and corruption in government and educational institutions forces dairy products on disadvantaged children and the general public through school lunch programs, other government programs, price supports, and regulations that one-sidedly promote dairy. Thus we all must pay for dairy, even those who don’t consume it.
94. Health insurance rates are much higher because of the increased disease rates caused by dairy. Again, we all pay— both directly in higher insurance premiums, and indirectly, in the prices of all goods and services we buy, since employers pay for health care policies and pass the cost on to consumers in higher prices—another hidden cost of dairy products!
95. Dairy use increases the slaughtering of animals, both by the rendering house and the slaughterhouse. This increases human insensitivity in those who must do the awful deeds, and increases suffering, conflict, and negative energy in our world.
96. The fisheries kill turtles, dolphins, and many other ocean creatures besides fish for cow feed. Dairy is one driving force behind the rape of the oceans, which are become ecologically much weaker.
97. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” How can our society, and how can we as individuals, ever expect to be free or happy while massively sowing the seeds of enslavement, domination, cruelty, abuse, and suffering to helpless sentient creatures?
98. Spiritual evolution: it can be seen that the destruction of consciousness is the greatest impediment to spiritual unfoldment. Supporting dairy by voting for it monetarily supports this destruction of consciousness in a massive and violent way.
99. Criminality: in any court of law, it is the one desiring the death of another person and paying a “hired gun” to kill that person who is more guilty than the “hired gun” himself. The same may be true for milk products.
100. Responsible behavior: we should not “cause our brother to stumble.” Yet when we buy milk products, someone must kill all the cows unnaturally born on dairies.
101. Spiritual sensitivity: through buying and consuming dairy, we may lose the sensitivity that we are working for through meditation, prayer and kind actions.
102. In buying and consuming cow’s milk products, we cut off our harmony with nature and the natural world. On deep levels, we may be unable to relax in nature, or be truly comfortable with animals, nor can they are comfortable with us. They know.
103. Drinking milk as adults is extremely unnatural. Humans are the only creatures who refuse to go through the weaning process. This perhaps fosters adult children who cannot take responsibility for their lives.
10 Drinking the milk of another species is also extremely unnatural. Humans itself is a form of stealing from the children. Who knows what gross and subtle unbalancing this causes?
105. The social costs of eating dairy products are staggering. Hospitals must be built and paid for. Dairy, in contributing to psychological instability and aggression, as well as illicit drug use and the domination of the feminine, can be seen as one driving force behind sociopathic behavior. The suffering in all this is incalculable and unnecessary.
106 The Dairy Council and milk producers spend millions of dollars annually, and are aided by agencies of the U.S. government, in advertising and school “education” campaigns that manipulate both children and adults into believing the falsehood that milk is a friendly, healthy food.
107. The Dairy Council and milk producers also aggressively promote expansion of their markets into the non-industrialized and non-Western countries, to the 75% of the world’s population which is allergic to cow’s milk, thereby increasing disease, trauma, and death in these countries, and increasing profits for the U.S. medical/dental/optometric/pharmaceutical complex, as well as promoting the agribusiness, petrochemical, and military-industrial complexes.
108. Dairy products require the consumption of vast amounts of antibiotics by the cows, leading to the development of drug-resistant strains of bacteria and viruses that are increasingly deadly to humans and require increasingly toxic drugs to dispatch.
These are but some of the reasons to avoid purchasing or ingesting cow’s milk. Cheese, cream, ice cream, and butter are more damaging, since they concentrate fats, hormones, and toxic pesticide residues, and also require and pollute many more resources.
It is good to understand the consequences of buying and eating dairy products, and to choose alternative plant-based products. While some of these non-dairy alternatives like soymilk, almond milk, and non- hydrogenated butter may seem a bit more expensive than cow’s milk products because of the massive government subsidies that the dairy industry receives, in the long run they are far less expensive.
The author would like to thank Tom Rodgers, a lifelong dairy operator turned vegan, for providing some of the information contained herein on the treatment of dairy cows, and environmental and health consequences, in an interview in August, 1998.
Dr. Will Tuttle may be contacted through Circle of Compassion, 1083 Vine Street, Healdsburg, CA 95448. 800.697.6614; 707.723.1005.
This pamphlet is not copyrighted. Feel free to copy and distribute in whole or in part for education and to help, in some small way, counteract the flood of misinformation propagated by the dairy industry. May all beings be free of unnecessary suffering.
Thinking of Drinking Cow’s Milk? Think Again!
Circle of Compassion, 1083 Vine Street, Healdsburg, CA 95448 1.800.697.6614
