"Pssst ... don't drink the milk ... it's spoiled" ~The Little Rascals

I see it everywhere.  Have seen it at most of my workplaces.  I notice it when I'm in public on my days off. We are a people who are obsessed with dairy.  We almost have as big a boner for anything Dairy as we do for anything Alcohol.  I even overheard a co-worker congratulating a young customer for choosing milk over pop.  She said, "Well aren't you the healthy one".  It was all I could do to bite hard on my tongue.  At the time, my co-worker didn't know the milk secret.  Now she does.

Mmmmm ... I'm enjoying some right now.  Creamy white half & half.  Every single day I use it several times. I open the plastic carton I've purchased at the store.  It's so easy to pour into my coffee, I don't even have to get my hands dirty.  Thank Goddess someone else has done the work!  But who?  What work?

We as a society are obsessed and somewhat addicted to a product that comes from an animal to whom we give absolutely no rights or respect.  Oh there are still some farmers out there like the ones I grew up knowing. They're the ones who still let their eye fatten the cow, so-to-speak, watching the herd and knowing each member well.  But those farmers are few and far between nowadays.  Even most of the good 'ol farmers in my small town have sold out to Monsanto, spraying that toxic Roundup shit all over the fields.  And wondering why they get cancer so early.

But let's get back to that animal.  She is known as Cow from the family Bovidae.  Some may call her Bovine and still some may call her property, chattel, thing.  Yet ... we rely on this 'thing' to feed us.  Or at the very least the most innocent and fragile of us.  Do you know what lengths some breast feeding women will go to simply to produce the best, safest, cleanest breast milk for their young?  Sheer selflessness that's what lengths.  I've even read about women who fry up their own placenta and afterbirth to eat it. Talk about your organic eh?  I know a woman who gave up drinking anything but herbal tea and water for two years just to breast feed successfully. So much is done for the good of the child.

And yet next door a bottle is being filled to be warmed to be fed to that innocent little future Doctor or Scientist.  What lengths do we humans go to in order to ensure that the milk from that other udder is clean, safe, healthy, and plentiful?  That's where the shudder comes in.

We've made the Cow a factory in and of herself.  And every factory has policies and guidelines.  For instance, the right to daily exercise is no longer allowed for this living, breathing, profitable factory known as the Cow.  We cannot risk her harming her udder or spilling the milk.  Shameful you say, since the dairy cattle of our youth used to graze all day and then gladly line up to be milked when they knew the time of day was right.  Well, these are not your grandfather's udders we're talkin' about here.  These are udders whose capacity is made to increase.  The udders that used to hold a few gallons of raw milk, now must hold more.  According to my trusty google search engine, the average Cow in California produces eight gallons of the precious nectar every single day.  And she never bitches about getting a raise, or taking her breaks on time.  If only we were all cattle eh conservatives?  I mean, THAT is some work ethic I if ever saw it!

So here's the dirty little secret of the Dairy industry.  It's not enough that the Cattle produce the milk for free. Oh no ... we must make them produce MORE.  So stimulating and growth hormones are fed and injected. The udder filleth ... and then some.  What happens when you over fill a balloon with liquid?  If we could watch that process in slow motion, we'd see that the balloon itself would stretch even more.  Amazing stuff that latex, it can stretch like nobody's business up until the point where the fibers begin to rip and tear.  How can they not? The sheer volume of liquid inside itself is just too great.  And the internal structure of this furry, breathing factory's udder is precisely this way.  Rips and tears in the flesh simply welcome infection.  The body amazingly sends a team of white blood cells to fight off the infection, as would our own bodies.  Yet there's a problem with that team.  Like Hotel California, once they're in, they can never leave.  So the white blood cells, cellular debris, and necrotic tissue simply come out and into your milk.  The nectar of the Bovine that you feed your children and babies contains pus.  I've even read that the milk used to make the Chocolate and now the Strawberry (coincidence?) flavored varieties is the inferior milk that has been discolored by blood and leukocytes ... aka pus.

What happens next is simply laughable to some of us.  Like that chef who kept amalgamating soups each day of the week, by Friday he has no idea what to call it.  He only knows he has to boil the shit out of it to kill any potential for food-borne illness.  Once again, yum.  Ah yes ... because the polymorphonuclear leukocytes, necrotic tissues, microorganisms, and  tissue fluids can't kill you when the shits been boiled out of it.  Okay, not exactly boiled, the act of Pasteurizing milk occurs at 154.4 F for 30 minutes. And sure ... the thought of drinking dead and cooked pus cells is so much less grotesque. Yet for the factory herself, according to another online dictionary, pus in milk indicates complete destruction of the mammary secretory tissue.  But don't worry, it doesn't sting that much, and remember her great work ethic?  No stinging teat is gonna slow her down!  Besides, she's likely being fed appetite stimulants as well so that she just keeps on eating eating eating so she can keep producing producing producing.

Yet of course, the capitalist pig also known as the Factory Farmer knows about her work ethic.  He knows about udder stretching, tearing, and infection.  So he feeds or injects this money-making genius with antibiotics, pain killers, hormones, and stimulants every single day.  Injections who's remnants your innocent child or baby drinks.  And we all scratch our heads and wonder why we have antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 2014.  It is said that the average milk cow is slaughtered by the time she's four.  That's the first time I ever thought that maybe the factory farmed chickens are the lucky ones for only having to live through an average of 36 days of torturous life.

According to USDA data from 2010 here the American milk supply from factory farms averages 224,000 white blood cells per ml.  Or about 5 million cells per cup.  Even Cheese Connoisseurs are up in arms because it seems pus in the milk changes the taste of the cheese when compared to that made to higher European standards. No doubt!  And finally, when raw factory farmed milk is compared with raw organic milk, the raw organic milk shows far fewer cells, pathogens, or blood.  Proving that the act of pasteurization has become less of a wee cleanse, and more of an absolute necessity for public safety measures.  It seems like it's become a fix-all band-aid to Big Dairy where anything goes because the end product will be almost completely sterilized before packaging and sale.  The reason Big Dairy is so against the sale of raw milk, is because if you were to drink raw factory farmed milk, you'd likely be a very sick puppy.  But Organic farms are held to a much higher and stricter standard which quite often looks a lot like what we used to do before capitalism ran the show.  Cow health is raised simply because she is allowed to graze on grass and exercise in the sun at her leisure rather than being kept inside and fed a grain that likely gives her chronic stomach pain.

Look around you for the next few days.  See just how dependent we are on this animal.  Don't you think she should be treated better for the short time she's alive?  I mean, when it's all shaken out, this animal was wet-nurse to a vast majority of the population.  We owe her a wee bit more respect in my opinion.