Exclusive: undercover inside the US dairy industry
With planning permission for Britain's biggest dairy at Nocton about to be re-submitted, The Ecologist travels to California to examine intensive milk production - and finds factory farms, conflict, intimidation, pesticides, pollution and small-scale farmers driven out of business...
‘You better get out of here or your gonna get your ass kicked or worse,’ the leathery-faced farmer slurred, picking his words carefully as we pulled up outside his milking parlour. It was coming to the end of our first day in the US, and despite our best efforts to persuade the farmers otherwise, it was clear that journalists are not welcome in this part of the world.
Far from the glittering lights and well trodden-tourist paths that people normally associate with California, the vast udders of America’s dairy industry run through the Central Valley, a rarely-visited arid plain that stretches down the state, wedged in between the Sierra foothills and the Californian coast.
This is the breadbasket of the USA, where almond farms, grapes and corn are carved out of the scrubby desert and grown on eye-wateringly large scales. It is also home to the largest dairies on the planet, a concentration of several hundred milk farms so vast, that in Tulare county alone, there are over 900,000 cows, producing in excess of a billion dollars worth of milk each year.
But as an Ecologist investigation carried out in conjunction with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has discovered, the Central Valley has also become a battleground for an unreported conflict, pitting community activists and family farmers against the might of mega dairy farms that have taken root here.
Factory or farm?
For a first-time visitor, the sight and scale of a mega dairy is overwhelming; enormous open-air sheds, mountains of feed, million-gallon pools of slurry and thousands upon thousands of listless cows. Granted access by disgruntled dairy employees, we were able to observe a mega dairy in operation. More akin to a factory production line than a farm long lines of cows could be seen stumbling over outstretched udders as they were driven back and forth to the robotic-like, rotary-milking parlours.
It is a continual daily cycle that stops only when the milk output begins to tail off, and the animals are either re-impregnated or sent off to slaughter; burnt out and discarded after only a few years of life on the factory floor. Animals in American mega dairies will never see a patch of grass in their life, and the only respite comes from shade in the dusty open-air lots where they wait between milking. Even here the animals will not get a chance to really rest; high-milk yielding cows suffer from chronic ‘negative energy balance’, where the cow uses more energy in making milk that she can physically take in by eating, losing body condition as a result.
The Holstein is the favoured breed of choice for most mega dairies, their towering bony frames contrasting wildly with bulging vein-filled udders swinging underneath them. Milk produced by them is of a lower quality with a higher pus content in the milk than that produced by other cow breeds, but what these freakishly-bred animals lack in quality, they make up for in quantity: milked three times a day and propped up with growth hormones to boost milk production, and Antibiotics to stave off frequent infections, milk output in the Holstein has doubled in the last 40 years alone.
It’s not just the animals that suffer. Tom Frantz is a retired schoolteacher and grew up in Shafter, a small town in Tulare County. ‘Until 1996, there weren't any dairies near me, then we got the first mega dairy situated close to here, followed by several others. Within a couple of years at the local school we had two big problems that have never existed before… the school was invaded by hoards of flies, nasty biting flies, clogging the water coolers and forcing the teachers to hang fly strips in the middle of each classroom. It changed things, changed the atmosphere of the school. Then nitrates in the water showed up. The school had always used water from its own well in the past, but suddenly the nitrate level doubled, then tripled, making it unsafe to drink,’ he told The Ecologist.
Thanks for reading and for your response in advance.
This all started about 1.5 years ago with lower back pain. The pain progressively got worse. I saw primary docs, chiropractors and physical therapists for the pain. After about 1 year of no pain relief, a back specialist did some blood tests and found out I was positive for the HLA-B27 gene. His early diagnosis was Ankylosing Spondolitis (an autoimmune disease), but this needed to be verified by a Rheumatologist. Around this same time, I also did biofeedback therapy and found out I was sensitive to gluten, dairy, soy and sugar.
Now I am currently working with a RA, but the process is slow. Still waiting to get an MRI to confirm AS.
I have had suspicions that I also had candida overgrowth, so 1 month ago I went on a strict diet. I have read candida can penetrate the gut and cause severe damage to the GI. The diet consisted of no grains, no sugars (no fruit), no dairy, and lots of low starch veggies, meat and some fish.
I also supplemented with ColonX (dr natura brand) Cleanser and the following anti-fungals: Olive Leaf
Grapefruit Seed Extract, Oregano Oil, Coconut Oil and occasional Pau'daurco Tea. My normal vitamins include a Multi, Vit D, Magnesium, Fish Oil, Pro-biotic and Curamed.
The first 27 days of the diet no effect on the candida. Day 28-32 (current day) have been insane diarrhea and just overall feeling awful and having an upset stomach. I've noticed small little white chunks in my poop. I have also lost about 30 pounds due to the diet and eating healthy. I used to weight about 175 and now weight 145. I am 32 yr male 5'10 and need to gain some of the weight back.
Here are a few questions...
What are the small off-white chunks in my poop? They look different than anything I have seen before. Is that candida, parasite, or something else?
How long should I be on the anti-fungals going forward? I am taking a 6 day break currently from anti-fungals and just taking my normal vitamins and pro-biotic. There is a 6 day break in the Colon Cleanse I am using. Just taking the fiber portion of it right now.
If it is Candida that I have could that be the cause of the Autoimmune issue?
If anyone has gone through this before how long does the die off period last? It has been hard to manage all the pain and constant trips to the bathroom.
How do I gain weight back while I'm on the candida diet?
If the diet you are on is/was the solution for your EC, you would have felt a significant improvement already after 5-10 days.
I takes max 5-10 days to stop inflammation of the skin, when it is triggered by eliminated food.
I takes max 14 days to stop lip peeling, when it is triggered by eliminated foods.
There are several possibilities here:
1. milk and grains are not your problem, not something that is triggering inflammation, but some other food still may be the problem.
2. milk and grains are your problem, they are something that is triggering inflammation, but they are not the only problem, you are hypersensitive to several other things, you also react to something else, something like laundry detergent , SLS , or cat dander, dog dander, pollen , eggs , meat , tomatoes , strawberries , peanuts , hazelnuts , walnuts , soy , corn oil , raspberries , bananas, food additives , or whatever else ... and because that something else is still inside of you or in touch with you, your EC did not improve.
3. Your EC has nothing to do with what you eat, it has some other trigger or other cause like liver congestion ...
One way to make sure food has nothing to do with your EC is to try Water Fasting for 3-5 days. If no improvement in your lips, that would be a strong indication that food has nothing to do with your EC.
In case you do have some improvement, , that would be a strong indication that food may have something to do with your EC.
In that case follow the Elimination-Rotation Diet to find out what you react to ...
Several people reported cure on gluten free diet (paleo is even more strict than gluten free) and several people reported cure on candida diet, (paleo is as strict and as low carb as many different candida diets )
Hi everyone! I am discouraged because I finished the 10 day master cleanse and only lost 2 pounds. I wanted to know why this could be? Before master cleansing I ate fairly healthy and went to the gym 3x a week. Pre-day I drank juices all day, Day 1- 10 I would do SWF (Salt-Water-Flush) every morning and drink the lemonade (grade b syrup, cayenne pepper, purified water, organic lemons) 8-12 cups a day. Day 11 I drank orange juice, next day OJ and soup, next day soup, juices, salads... I also started a vegan diet to see if I would lose more weight and started going heavy at the gym. I have lost 1 pound after a couple of days going vegan and I have been extremely sore after the gym (muscle strain). I am 5'0 and weight 107 (fat % 23) before The Master Cleanse I was 110 and 26% body fat. My ideal goal is 18% body fat and 100 pounds in weight.
Also has anyone else gone through a similar experience?
You probably don’t need to fast 5 or 6 days...
Fasting at most 3, maybe 4 days per week is probably safest...
It also means that you don’t have to push your willpower so hard either...
....
So I have been going through something for about a year now. So during winter or late fall my heart started racing real fast after I would eat some meat. Sometimes so fast it seemed dangerously fast and for up to half an hour.
In real bad cases it could be at 150 for about half an hour but thats real bad. In most cases I have experienced it has been like 110 or 120 for 15 minutes.
This made it so I looked to legumes for protein but I was reacting to that as well. So I ended up eating little bits of meat over the day but still that wasnt a lot and due to the issue I was losing weight.
I thought it was a heart issue but heart tests came normal. Someone suggested it might be something wrong with my digestive system. I looked up information on digestive stuff and I read something about chewing food until it becomes a liquid.
I started doing that with the meat and my heart didnt race as much.
I think it might be that my stomach is damaged and so when the gastric acid is produced to break down the meat there is an inflammation response due to the damaged stomach but if I chew it up to a liquid the stomach doesnt have to break it down as much and so less gastric acid is produced.
So this past month and a half I have been putting chicken in the blender with a little bit of water(and other stuff) and this has enabled me to be able to get more meat into my stomach during the day without having to deal with heart issues on the same level as it was before.
My stomach may have been damaged for a number of reasons. I was eating raw habanero peppers often, eating multiple bags of goji berries at once(they are a medicinal berry and I guess people aren't supposed to have hundreds of them at once) and I was eating lots of beans every day and those can be rough on digestive system. But I would multiple bags of goji berries a couple times a week so I think maybe that had something to do with it.
But lets face it it feels kinds weird eating this blended chicken stuff for my meat. Does anyone have any ideas about any of this?
I eat mainly blended chicken, guacamole(a lot) and rice crackers now along with v8 juices and pears. My weight is back to a normal weight. Between 170 and 180 is normal for me. I am about 6ft. During the winter/spring my weight fell down to about 150 because of all the difficulty I was having with tolerating the foods I was eating.
So I have a good weight now. But I don't know where to go from here. Should I experiment with new foods in my diet? It has been nerve racking put stuff in my mouth not knowing if my heart will start racing.
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