I’ll begin by saying I woke up this morning wondering about milk.  I did this because we were out of yogurt and I had my heady hippie granola with 2% milk.  It was not satisfying.  This sent me into a nostalgic haze, to a time when I couldn’t leave for school until I consumed a bowl of cereal filled to the brim with milk.  These days it makes me want to throw up.

Milk has become more an accessory than a staple.  I throw a dash into my black tea or coffee but I never want it THAT MILKY.  It’s gross.  With that, I Googled “milk industry America” to learn the fricking hell out of milk.

WHY IS MILK SO FAMOUS?

Milk is famous because of  brilliant modern day ad campaigns springing out of nowhere.  Milk makes money appear out of thin air.  They used this magically-appearing-money to hire a fantastic advertising agency and made one of the most lasting advertisements of my childhood.

Growing up I never really thought of milk advertising as sinister.  Most school officials told me I needed to drink milk every day in order to improve my bone health among other things.  Most hippies and annoying vegans will remind you that every other animal in the kingdom stops drinking milk past infancy.  The milk industry would like you to ignore this salient notion.  Just like those horrific, “What’s wrong with high fructose corn syrup?” shitshows…er…commercials, milk just throws money at celebrities and continues with one of the most successful ad campaigns…ever.

IS THERE AN EVIL MILK MAFIA?

The mafia came into power during prohibition by providing the masses with alcohol.  While criminals, they were fantastic businessmen.  This is the way many people feel about Big Milk at this point.  There are a couple huge scary groups that buy up large numbers of farms and have been known to fix the prices of dairy products.

Yes, and one of these ogres is Dean’s.  I never buy Dean’s because I hate its packaging and there is just something so unsettling about its brand. It’s always the quiet unassuming types that end up allegedly controlling 40% of the dairy industry and 57% of the processed milk in the greater Chicago area.  If you asked Dean’s, they think this is just a simple misunderstanding.  And by that I mean they’re really pissed the Justice Department is calling them a trust who drives down prices, thereby destroying all competition in the area.  Oh, and by simple misunderstanding I mean that Dean’s really wants this anti-trust suit to go away.

Most of this isn’t common knowledge, as most people shrug their shoulders and don’t take the title of that Smiths’s album too seriously.  However, as more and more farms become industrialized and efficient, the cost of milk just keeps getting fiddled with.  Small family-operated farms then have to sell their milk at a lower rate in order to compete with bigger milk conglomerates.  Which leads us to the next question…

DOES THE MILK MAFIA HATE FAMILIES?

Yes. Milk wants your mom and dad to divorce, your sister to go goth and your little brother to fall into a grain silo.  According to most sources, the industry of milk has destroyed the idyllic family-farm situations most of us grew up coveting and rich kids grew up mocking.  More and more of these tiny farms are bought up by conglomerates.  That’s not to say there isn’t a place for organic farms producing hormone-free milk.  Do you know who supplies a great amount of organic milk to our country?  Walmart.  Yet they and Aurora Organic Dairy are accused of not allowing cows to graze and of feeding them grain instead of grass.  Oh yeah, and they methodically drive down prices of organic milk.  With every keystroke, I get more depressed.

So yeah.  The dairy industry seems to hate your family.

IS THE MILK MAFIA TRYING TO TURN US INTO MILK MUTANTS?

Not really, but they LOVE screwing with cows. Certain cows are injected with a substance called rBGH.  This is a hormone known to make cows produce more milk, something like 10% over 300 days.  Cow steroids are terrifying.  Think about the steroids hearings for baseball players.  They were long and annoying and a huge waste of money.  Now think of the fact that 90% of U.S.  beef is injected with some kind of growth hormone.  Cows are pumped up and have been since about 1937.  All we know in the U.S. are mutant cows.  Now remember that our grandparents grew up eating and drinking cow by-products and they begot our parents, who in turn begot us.  How are we not super-pumped up mutants at this point?  The fact that I can’t fly or don’t have any extra arms is miraculous (and yes, I’m VERY disappointed I can’t fly).  One day the mutant cows will rise against us.  Will we be ready?  Hopefully I’ll have ESP and extra arms by then.

INSANE THING I LEARNED

Most milk in America is full of vitamin A.  That is of course introduced to the cows in their feed.  I’d rather have a doctor wander up and shoot me in the neck with a syringe of vitamin A while I drank my glass of milk.  Especially if it was Doogie Howser, because having a child doctor would be AWESOME.

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Cary

9 Responses

  1. thomas

    I hate evil corporations that make milk affordable for poor people like me.

    Reply
  4. Jessica

    Milk is only one commodity that is controlled…corn (besides being genetically modified as well) and beef are two that spring to mind at this late hour. There are more though…

    Reply
  5. Chef Mike

    I worked in the grocery business years ago. Milk prices are fixed by the government, meaning that you’ll never see milk on an extreme sale in a store (there are things called “loss leaders” and milk is regulated to never be one). There’s also theories going on now about adolescent girls having larger breasts because of the hormones that are put in milk. I’m not joking (for once)

    Reply
  6. Capitalist Lion Tamer

    This evil Dean’s conglomerate didn’t stop milk prices from reaching record highs in 2007 and 2008. Understandably, these smaller farms purchased more equipment and cattle, but now that prices have shifted back down, it’s somehow all the fault of a milk cartel.

    The government has been propping up their milk prices for years (as Chef Mike stated). Perhaps it’s time to realize that when you’re making a product that consumed by 300 million people in a country as large as the US, a smaller operation just may not be the most efficient way to do it.

    There’s always local coops and stores that will buy your product, but if you insist on charging what you think it’s worth rather than what they can sell it for profitably, it’s all going to end badly.

    Maybe these smaller farms could do something as selfishly short-sighted like their brethren in Europe, who sprayed thousands of gallons of perfectly usable milk onto fields as a protest against low prices. Way to go, small farms. Nothing shows a complete disrespect for your customers and people without enough food worldwide than a collective eff-you made out of wasted food.

    Other than my disagreement here, I really dig this blog. I’ve been a steady reader for the last 6 months or so, after hopping over from Eat Me Daily (I think). I’ll try to chime in with something more supportive periodically to make up for this rant. Keep up the stellar work!

    Reply

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