THE recent scare about chemicals in baby milk formulas will certainly alarm parents. There are, however, many greater risks associated with feeding children formulas based on cow's milk.

Clinical evidence shows that cow's milk is not a natural food for human children (or adults) and is actually linked to many common childhood health problems such as runny noses, allergies, ear infections, asthma and recurrent bronchitis. Dairy products contain large quantities of bovine protein which increase mucus production and can cause membrane in the lungs to become swollen and inflamed.

Cow's milk also contains accumulated pesticides that have been sprayed on the grains fed to cattle, as well as female hormones (oestrogens, etc) given to the cow to increase her milk production.

It is also estimated that 20 per cent of milk producing cows are infected with leukaemia viruses which pour out in their milk. Not surprisingly, the occupational group with the highest rate of leukaemia is dairy farmers.

Human children have no nutritional requirement for cow's milk and grow up healthy and strong without it. In fact, 20 per cent of Caucasian children and 80 per cent of black children cannot digest lactose in cow's milk and suffer cramps, diarrhoea and dehydration when they drink it.

Our unnatural consumption of cows' milk not only hurts us, but causes suffering for millions of day-old calves who are torn from their mothers and locked in veal crates.

How else could we drink the milk that nature meant to nourish them? Surely new mothers will not want to feed children this product which causes such harm to babies of both species.

TONI VERNELLI, UK Representative, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

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