Hugh Martin
I READ WITH amusement the report in the Gleaner of March 3 on the parliamentary committee examining the bill to establish the Jamaica Dairy Development Board.
The report entitled, 'Cow's milk not fit for human consumption" described the reaction of committee members to a submission from the National Consumer's League which was against the use of cow's milk for human consumption.
President of the league, Carlton Stewart, submitted that milk was ""no better than heroin or cocaine" and listed a number of health problems associated with its use.
INCREDULOUS REACTIONS
But legislators reacted with incredulity.
"When you have people who have these way-out views, man is saying milk is like cocaine, now these type of people will reduce the dignity of the House ... That milk is like heroin, you nuh see a mad man!" declared Senator Anthony Johnson in his inimitable style.
Another committee member, Dr. Neil McGill, said that the leagues' submission was a misrepresentation of the truth. "... This is all nonsense, rubbish," he said.
And Chairman of the Jamaica Dairy Farmers Association, Raymond Brooks, speaking albeit from a position of self-interest, was as dismissive as he declared, "That sounds ludicrous. How stupid can one get? Cow's milk has been around for ages ... I just don't understand their position."
The committee unanimously agreed to throw out the submission and that was that.
Well, not quite. As might have been expected the Gleaner's multi-award winning Health Page editor, Eulalee Thompson, took up the issue and sought some clarity on the question of milk's contribution to ill-health.
WELL-BALANCED TREATISE
She produced a well-balanced treatise that highlighted some of the disadvantages as well as some of the advantages.
To my way of thinking you could do the same for any type of food consumed by humans.
But Miss Thompson's intervention opened up what has now become a full-blown cow's milk debate and we begin to see how easy it is to manipulate people's choices in the types of food they eat.
My amusement at the legislators' responses to Mr. Stewart's opposition to the development of the dairy industry was really ephemeral.
Where did this come from? Who stands to gain if a local industry is destroyed from lack of support from the state which was instrumental in its development in the first place?
IGNORANCE
You begin to wonder when you see a question from a writer, Charmaine Harris, going like this: "I wish you would do another article to say what are the substitutes for milk, especially where cereals are concerned."
A whole generation of Jamaicans did not know the amazingly great taste that coconut oil gives to food because we were led to believe that it was bad for our health.
Taken in by the 'scientific evidence' provided by the American soybean oil producers, we abandoned the totally wholesome and immensely delicious coconut oil only to learn now that not only is it not bad for us, it is particularly good for our health.
So Charmaine Harris in her letter to Miss Thompson would like to know if skimmed milk is a good substitute for cow's milk. "Or powdered milk?" she asks.
This is the kind of ignorance that prevents us from ever accepting that we can do as well and better than others.
Let me assure her that skimmed milk and powdered milk are the dehydrated forms of cow's milk (with most of the goodies taken out) produced by farmers in other countries whose governments provide them with massive subsidies.
It is that milk that is imported into this country at much lower cost than our un-subsidised farmers can produce.
SELFISH INTERESTS
And in answer to Joseph Keon, Ph.D. who stated in his letter in the Gleaner of Wednesday, March 15: "Nature never intended for humans to drink the milk of another species. Which animals other than humans do?
Humans are the only species that 'nurses' into adulthood". Cats do. And dogs. And pigs. And they thrive on it so 'mash down that lie'.
Let us please not reproduce that inane Got Milk/Not Milk debate that has been going on the United States for some time now. And let us understand whose selfish interests we could inadvertently be advancing.
Hugh Martin is a communication consultant and farm broadcaster at human@cwjamaica.com.
