Indians have been drinking milk for
centuries. Why all of them did not fall sick?
It depends on what you call illness.
Most people disregard arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma, headaches, and
indigestion as normal for the body and cancer as an act of God.
By looking at milk as evil, are we
not turning our back on our tradition and culture?
For thousands of years people thought
the sun went around the earth. Copernicus was the first person who said it
did not. There was a huge backlash against him. In the past in India there
exist tradition of sati (cremating widow with her husband�s dead body) and
thugee and opium eating. Should they be legal now?
I have written a book on Hindu names
for which I had to read every single Hindu scripture (shastra). Nowhere is
there any milk drinking mentioned. There is ghee (liquid butter) mentioned
and that too for havans (fire used in Hindu ritual). Unfortunately our
memories are short and the things we are most adamant about are those we
know the least about. Dr Spock was the guru for child nutrition, now
apologizes for having advocated milk and says that children must be kept
away from it.
Cruelty to Cows
Dr Kurien has described the dairy
industry as the gentle industry. You claim it is just the opposite?
The dairy industry is not gentle. The
fact that supplies cater to demand makes the cow the ultimate victim. It
may have been gentle when each household had its own cow and treated it as
a member of the family. This is no longer true.
How is milk produced now in India?
The cow is forced into yearly
pregnancies. After giving birth she is milked for 10 months but will be
artificially inseminated during her third month so that she is milked even
when she is pregnant. The demanded of production of milk is more than her
body can give. So she starts breaking down body tissue to produce milk.
The result is an illness called ketosis.
Most of the day the cow is tied up in
a narrow stall usually wallowing in her own excrement. She gets mastitis
because the hands that milk her are rough and usually unclean. She gets
rumen acidosis from bad food and lameness. She is kept alive with
antibiotics and hormones. Each year 20 per cent of these dairy cows are
sent illegally by truck and train to slaughter houses. Or they are starved
to death by letting them loose in the cities.
It is no secret that the slaughter
house in Goa was constructed by Amul Dairy. No cow lives out her normal
life cycle. She is milked, made sick and then killed. Even worse happens
to her child. The male calves are tied up and starved to death or sent to
the slaughter houses. It is not by chance that a calf is no longer called
bachda in India. It is called katra, which means one who is to be killed.
Even Dr Kurien admits that in Mumbai every year 80,000 calves are forcibly
put to death.
But milkmen (doodhwalas) love their
cows. They live off them.
Have you seen how cows are milked? In
the villages they practice phukan, a method of milking a cow. A stick is
poked into the cow's uterus and wiggled, causing her intense pain.
Villagers believe this leads to more milk.
In the cities they are given two
injections of oxytocin every day to make the milk come faster. This
gives her labor pains twice a day. Her uterus develops sores and makes her
sterile prematurely. Oxytocin is banned for use on animals but it is sold
in every cigarette shop around a dairy. Every illiterate milkman knows the
word. In human beings, oxytocin causes hormonal imbalances, weak eyesight,
miscarriages, and cancer.
Recently, government of Gujarat
started raiding dairies for oxytocin. In one day, they found 350,000
ampoules in just one city Ahmedabad!
Pollutants in Milk
You mentioned pollution in milk. What
does that mean?
The ICMR did research on milk for 7
years and took thousands of samples from across India. What did they find?
Large amounts of DDT, poisonous
pesticides called HCH. Under the food adulteration act only 0.01 mg/kg is
allowed of HCH. They found 5.7 mg as an average!
They found arsenic, cadmium and lead.
This causes kidney damage, heart disease, brain damage and cancer.
Their findings were based on 50,000
samples and the report was released at a press conference. What did Dr
Kurien and the Operation Flood people have to say? More samples should
have been taken!
Other things put in your milk is
sewage water, vegetable oil, and liquid soap. In some cases earthworms are
put in because they excrete slime which increases the density of the milk!
You have said that drinking milk is
drinking the cow's blood?
Milk and blood come from the same
source; the body cells of the cow. Every time you drink a glass of milk,
remember it comes from a sad, suffering mother whose own child was killed
before her eyes and who herself will be killed when she dries up.
Won't the stoppage of milk lead to
thousands being unemployed?
A large number of people are
dependent on smuggling, thievery, begging, drug pushing, gun running and
terrorism. Do we buy their products to help them?
What is the substitute for milk?
What is the substitute to a placebo?
Anything else such as Soya bean milk, all green vegetables, and lentils (dal).
My son has never drunk milk in his life. He is 6 feet and has never been
sick a single day!
