Dear Friends,

China has launched a nationwide campaign to persuade children to drink
milk and grow up bigger and stronger than their "rivals" in Japan.

Chinese have traditionally regarded milk and dairy products with
disgust. Communist rulers have been given evidence that the Japanese -
dismissed for centuries as "dwarfs" by the Chinese - are growing up
taller and heavier than their own young people.

The official China Daily newspaper, quoting Zhang Baowen, vice-minister
of agriculture, said last week: "The only solution to the problem is
drinking more milk."

The United States has sent trade missions to Asia's largest nation with
the stated purpose of introducing American biotechnology to China's
1.25 billion people. Democratic Governor Ed Shafer (friend of Monsanto)
of North Dakota visited China this past year to promote the genetically
engineered bovine growth hormone. Win or lose...Gore or Bush...watch
for Shafer to become a member of the new president's cabinet.

THE JAPANESE EXAMPLE

In Japan, every year since 1946, tens-of thousands of persons have been
interviewed and their diets carefully analyzed along with their weights
and heights and other factors such as cancer rates and age of puberty
(the last measured by the onset of menstruation in young girls). This
study includes detailed personal interviews and is well respected and
accepted by scientists. In 1975, 21,707 persons from 6,093 households
were included in the sampling. The results of the study were published
in a respected scientific journal, PREVENTIVE MEDICINE (Yasuo Kagawa,
Department of Biochemistry, Jichi Medical School, Japan, 7, 205-217,
1978).

According to this study, the per-capita yearly dietary intake of dairy
products in 1950 was only 5.5 pounds. Twenty-five years later the
average Japanese ate 117.4 pounds of milk and dairy products.

While milk and dairy consumption increased by twenty-one times, from
1950 to 1975, cerebral vascular disease (strokes) increased 38 percent.
Heart disease increased 35 percent, Breast cancer rates increased 77
percent. Colon cancer increased 77 percent. Lung cancer increased by
three hundred percent.

What happened to young girls and the impact of milk consumption on
puberty is even more dramatic. In 1950 the average twelve-year old girl
was 4'6" tall and weighed 71 pounds. By 1975 the average Japanese girl,
after guzzling a daily diet of milk and dairy products containing 59
different bioactive hormones, had grown an average of 4 1/2 inches and
gained 19 pounds. In 1950 the average Japanese girl had her first
menstrual cycle at the age of 15.2 years. Twenty five years later,
after a daily intake of estrogen and progesterone from milk, the average
Japanese girl was ovulating at the age of 12.2 years, three years
younger.

Is early sexual maturity a good thing? Girls who mature earlier also
have higher rates of uterine and ovarian cancer later in life. Is
taller better? Bone growth is genetically pre-determined to support
a body's growth. Growth hormones promote growth, and the skeleton may
be unable to support such unnatural growth.

Farm animals have been bred to experience enormous growth. Turkeys
cannot breed in captivity as a result of such weight. Pigs and cows
have trouble supporting their weight. Slaughterhouse workers have no
trouble identifying cows that have been treated with genetically
engineered hormones. Pelvic bones easily break in renderers hands.

China would do well to carefully analyze the effects of milk and dairy
products on Japan. A once healthy nation, having adopted the American
diet, also adopted higher rates of American diseases. GOT MILK?
Got heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancer.

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com