By Robert Cohen - [email protected]
www.notmilk.com
A few years ago, I purchased the 50-year collection of
Hoard's Dairyman magazine, the National Dairy Farm Magazine, from a
retired Rhode Island dairyman.
The February 25, 1972 issue contained an article
extolling the virtues of DDT and similar chemicals, attacking the true
enemy of the dairy industry, "environmentalists." Hoard's wrote:
"The current vicious, hysterical propaganda campaign
against the use of agricultural chemicals, being promoted today by
fear-provoking, irresponsible environmentalists has its genesis in the
best selling, half-science-half-fiction 'Silent Spring' that was
published in 1962."
Thirty-one years ago, Hoard's claimed:
"No chemical has done as much as DDT to improve the
health, economic, and social benefits of the people of developing
nations."
Hoard's warned:
"But DDT would be only the first of the dominoes. As
soon as DDT is successfully banned, there will be a push for the banning
of all chlorinated hydrocarbons; then, in order, the organic phosphates
and carbamate insecticides. Once the task is finished on insecticides,
they will attack the weed killers and eventually the fungicides."
The higher up one eats on the food chain, the more one
consumes concentrated toxins from flesh and body fluids of animals. Eat
one portion of broccoli or lettuce and you'll ingest one dose of
pesticides and dioxins. After all, these chemicals are in the
environment. Ingest body fluids from animals who eat thousands of doses,
and you deliver these same concentrated residues of poisons to your own
body.
Sixteen years after this Hoard's article appeared, an
FDA survey of milk samples from grocery stores in 10 cities found that
73% of the samples contained pesticide residues. (Environmental
Contamination and Toxicology, 1991; 47).
Hoard's asked, "What's next?" In 1972, chlorinated
hydrocarbons were considered to be as healthy as mom's apple pie and a
glass of milk.
In January of 1998, the Journal of Animal Science, (Jan,
76:1) reported:
"The majority of toxic dioxin is and has been derived
from industrial chlorination processes, incineration of municipal waste,
and production of certain herbicides. The lipophilic nature of dioxins
results in higher concentrations in the fat of animal and fish products,
and their excretion via milk secretion in dairy cattle may result in
relatively high concentrations of dioxin contamination in high-fat dairy
products."
Let us all give thanks to the "hysterical propaganda
campaign" of "irresponsible environmentalists."
Go on to Act Radio -
Animal Concerns of Texas
Return to 12 January 2003 Issue
Return to Newsletters
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material, use of which has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your
own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.