Educating people about milk myth

In one of my previous articles (VT46.18) I wrote about a meeting I had addressed where I had been asked about feeding antibiotics and hormones to dairy cows.

I was concerned I had been asked the question and concerned that, despite my assurance to the contrary, my audience clearly didn’t believe me. I have to do this sort of recap because, since my mother passed away, I’m not sure if anyone reads these articles.

Since then I have come across a similar incident that is, in some way, even more concerning. A friend has had a serious cancer issue. He’s had major surgery on his digestive tract and is nowhere near a solution to the problem. Because it was such major surgery, his ongoing diet has to be very different to what he is accustomed to. He attended an appointment with a dietician to discuss what he could eat going forward and what foods he was to avoid in case they upset him.

It was during this discussion he informed the dietician milk now caused him problems. He was told he would be much better off without milk anyway as it was full of antibiotics and hormones.

You, as I, have to give some thought to that statement; any professional would, or should, know it is not true. Therefore, why did the dietician say it? It could be I am a paranoid farmer, but what was said was a terrible slander on the dairy industry. Did the dietician have another agenda? How often was it said to patients?

Because of the dietician’s professional status, his or her word would have a credibility that would give the view a gravitas of its own. And, like a “Chinese whisper”, it would spread and gather momentum, until it was brought up at the type of meeting I addressed. It could well be why they didn’t believe me: “He says there’s no antibiotics or hormones in milk, but he would say that, wouldn’t he? Anyway, he’s only a farmer, what does he know? I’ve a friend whose dietician told him milk is full of nasty stuff.” There you go, damage done.

Crowing enterprise

I know full well there’s no antibiotics in milk, you put them in or make a mistake at your peril. I know very little about hormones. I do remember using them when I was a schoolboy. I used to rear about 12 cockerels for Christmas. The success (or otherwise) of this enterprise depended a lot on getting them up to a good size.

But with size in cockerels comes sexual maturity, and with that comes aggression; with a month to go you could see your cash flow disappearing before your very eyes – there would be blood and feathers everywhere. The worst scenario was if one cockerel fell behind the others, as it would soon be viciously attacked. Before you knew where you were you didn’t have 12 cockerels – you had 11 – and, left to their own devices, they soon became 10 and so on.

But help was at hand; you could insert a hormone pellet under the skin at the head end of the neck, and red combs and aggression would disappear and your cockerels would get on with growing, which is why you had them in the first place. This practice was called caponisation and it was so widespread it led to a class of table poultry all of its own called the capon. It’s been illegal for years as sometimes the pellet would remain intact and find its way into the food chain.

Hormonal issues

I don’t know much about hormones. I’m not writing as a farmer who knows so much about veterinary matters he is a vet in all but name and brass plate; I’m a farmer who knows a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about anything specific. However, somewhere in my memory – of the same era as when I used to caponise cockerels – comes the faintest recollection you could buy cattle feed with hormones in it. Clearly, it was used as a growth promoter, but how it would, I’ve no idea. Its use was the subject of fascination in our village. Older boys – those who were old enough to go into the pub – told us one farmer was using hormones to feed his cattle.

This farmer had told an audience in the pub cattle feed was having an effect on him and his wife – to such an extent when they were outside feeding, they could hardly keep their hands off each other and sometimes had to “partake” before they got back into the house.

I don’t know how or who the hormones were affecting, but for boys of my age at the time, well, we were fascinated by the idea. We were just at the age when the only sign of masculinity we had was one or two little hairs on our upper lips and the piece of cardboard we fixed to our bikes with a clothes peg, which, in our imagination, made a noise like a motorbike as the wheels turned. We were on the cusp of learning about life, and to hasten us along that journey we used to regularly cycle past the farm of that farmer very slowly, all in the hope of seeing something “going on” as a result of cattle hormones.

So, what’s to be done about it, this perception milk contains antibiotics and hormones, and just how widespread is it?

Well, I still think the vegan agenda plays a part, because its supporters’ letters regularly turn up in local press. There are also local people who believe my cows are housed all year round and need that sort of treatment to survive.

My cows have been outside since the beginning of March and will be outside until winter turns up, and they are there for all to see. The perception could be because antibiotics and hormones are used in feed elsewhere in the world, so we get lumped in with that. It’s really an educational issue, but it’s made more difficult because it seems the people that need educating want to believe the worst.

How does it go: “There’s none so blind as those who don’t what to see?”

• If use of antibiotics is normal in husbandry, something is wrong