Why I have beef with Big Food
If you hadn't noticed, I don't wear hemp muumuus, dreadlock my hair nor perform ritualistic sacrifices involving brooms at Equinox. I keep my New Age tendencies firmly controlled. When it comes to scientific progress by and large I'm overwhelmingly supportive. For the most part, modern medicine, technology and engineering has increased lifespans and improved quality of existence. But there needs to be checks and balances. In a world where innovation is unbound, questions of morality, safety and long term impact must act as comprehensive safeguards to Men in White Coats playing God.
But there's one area where I am an arch Puritan. Like my Mum used to tell me growing up
Don't play with your food!
I'm old enough to remember BSE. And I bloody wish I wasn't.
The cattle crisis that struck Britain in the 80s and 90s will be firmly etched into the minds of anyone who lived through it.
The ghoulish funeral pyres of cows, blackened torsioned skeletal remains smouldering across the British countryside. I can still see the harrowing silhouettes of bones, skulls and hooves in sharp relief against green pastures, the news footage of woeful, disoriented heffers stumbling out of stalls. The supermarket shelves suddenly emptied of beef as panic set in.
Over four million poor creatures were slaughtered in an effort to contain the outbreak, where 178 people died after contracting vCJD from eating infected beef. It decimated entire farms and British beef was banned from export around the world, with many remaining in place even as late as 5 years ago.
You would have thought the lesson had been learned. These are ruminants. You do not feed other animals’ ground up brains to vegetarians.
You are what you eat
For a long time I have been a meat puritan, trying to only buy farm fresh organic produce where provenance is indubitable, where growth hormones and antibiotics have not been used, where the animal has had a natural and long life, frolicking in fields, munching on grass before a humane slaughter. It costs a lot more, but taking a life is a big deal, and not a bite should be wasted.
I try to always buy organic veg, eggs and unprocessed dairy products full of all the cholesterol conquering natural fats that are so vital to our own health as omnivores.
Not milking it for all it's worth
But milk was one of those things that, as long as it was full fat and organic, could be grabbed from a supermarket on the way home for the essential morning brew. When out in the wilds I endeavour to buy the white stuff at the farm gate, but in central London the cute little milk dispensaries where you pop your own glass bottle under a nozzle that are dotted around the countryside, don't exist.
Well, no more supermarket milk for me. Not since Bovaer came onto my radar.
Call me old fashioned, but I rather think mixing multisyllabic synthetic drugs into animal feed that require PPE to handle in order to stop cows belching to save us from Climate Crisis is a step too far.
Woke-Washing
But M&S and Tesco have proudly lauded their part in saving the planet by getting their dairy farmers to do just that. And Arla, who make a range of dairy based products - all made to look especially healthy - from Lurpak to LactoFree to Skyr yoghurt and Cravendale Purified milk, seems to be the exact company hellbent on treating beautiful dairy cattle like prisoners of war, incarcerating them in concrete concentration camps and feeding them on rendered mulch laced with neo-formulas to incapacitate their guts fron generating wind.
Just as Big Food told us that we should eat low fat and margarine, made in vats on Communist looking industrial estates from dubious emulsifiers now linked to the huge uptick in colon cancers in the young. It's always the ones who flog their wares based upon health fads and green imperatives that you have to watch. So busy are you trying to save your life and the planet, you don't realise you are being cynically coerced while inadvertently doing the exact opposite, just so some unscrupulous multinational can make billions in profit.
Cows & Gates
The most worrying part of Bovaer - a Bill Gates Inc creation (tin foil hats at the ready) is the fact that it doesn't seem to really be even remotely tested to an acceptable degree and as a product contains chemicals linked to human male infertility and cancer. And yet now, multiple farms across the country are whacking it in animal feed given to (I'm guessing) intensively indoor reared dairy cows from whom millions will drink the milk, on the premise of this somehow stopping climate change. Much of the guff around methane moo-farts and the climate crisis is graspingly tentative at best. And here we are mucking about with a dubious potential carcinogen in milk.
Holy Cow!
You probably know that in India, cows are sacred. But perhaps you don't know why. When working for The Hindu broadsheet while living in Tamil Nadu my editor explained. Much like you wouldn't eat cats and dogs, Hindus find the idea of eating cows grotesque, after all, humans have a very special and unique relationship with cows as we drink the milk intended for its babies. Few species essentially breast feed one another, yet (and Lord knows who first discovered it and made it so prolific) enjoying the produce of a lactating cow is deemed perfectly normal.
And that's the point. A pregnant human is advised not to smoke, have any alcohol nor even touch a prawn lest it delivers harmful toxins to the foetus. And those rules stay in place during breastfeeding too. For a reason.
Yet we are allowing Mr Microsoft to mix a dodgy cocktail of chemicals that somehow stop farting into British cows supper. A product that has had no long term tests, while every published internal recommendation be it to the FDA or EU suggests it could contain chemicals that may be of harm to humans.
Well Mr Gates, I won't be your Guinea Pig.
And for those who think I'm just crying over spilt milk?
Help yourself. I remember BSE.
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