There is nothing more shameful than #TheShamelessFund. As a gay person from Iran, a biomedical scientist who studies public health and the food system, and someone who cannot return to my home country due to my human rights activism, I’m writing to express my profound disappointment regarding your “Drink your milk” campaign.
Having escaped death for my activism, I am deeply troubled by a campaign that, on the surface, supports the LGBT community but in reality promotes violence and injustice. This campaign reduces a serious justice issue to mere corporate advertising and sexualizes it. No one behind this campaign has a genuine understanding of what injustice truly means, what it’s like to be threatened to lose your life for who you are, or what it means to be raped and have your babies stolen 6-7 times in a dairy farm.
This is extremely ironic as Jonathan sees his sexuality as a personal matter and has shown concerns that it becomes a “commodity and a currency”. Now he is a commodity of dairy, and promotes commodification of animals. This campaign is merely an attempt to exploit social justice movements for corporate and fundraising gain. It’s hijacking a movement that is about equality and justice, and turning it into a means to profit from violence, inequality, and injustice towards other animals. If you are pro-LGBT rights and not vegan, you are not seeking human rights and equality, you are seeking privilege at the cost of human wrongs. I grew up like many others, eating meat, egg, and dairy, and ironically fought for social and environmental justice. Once I learned about the connection between human and animal rights, and the amount of pain, cruelty, and injustice caused by our food choices, I changed my lifestyle. If I could go from being a big meat and cheese eater to a vegan, so can anyone else.
Please allow me to explain myself:
If the color of milk reflected the cruelty of dairy industry, it would run red, not white.
Here is why supporting the dairy industry contributes to animal cruelty, environmental destruction, food injustice, and public health issues.
Dairy = Animal Exploitation
Dairy causes immense suffering to cows, who are forcibly impregnated and violated, then separated from their babies so that their milk can be sold for profit.
Mother cows are treated as nothing but money-making, milking machines.
It’s ironic that you would support an industry that is fundamentally based on making profit from exploitation of cows and their reproductive system to promote equality and justice!
All cows, including females, are eventually sent to slaughter when they are no longer profitable. Male baby cows are killed too as they are not profitable for the dairy industry.
Dairy is Non-Essential and Harmful
Dairy can be detrimental to our health, as it contains saturated fat, cholesterol, lactose, endotoxins (+ saturated fat it can cause inflammation), mammalian growth factors, and antibiotics.
Cow’s mammary glands secretion is intended to nourish a baby calf into a full-grown cow, and its molecular makeup is not suitable for human consumption. In fact, consuming dairy may lead to health issues such as acne, hormonal imbalance, and some cancers.
While dairy does provide calcium and protein, it also comes with unwanted additives or harmful elements. Protein and calcium in cow’s udder milk can be easily obtained from healthy sources.
Indeed, I spent my doctorate and post doctorate work studying the structure and function of proteins and wrote this tread to show why plants are an excellent and better source of proteins:
Drinking milk for calcium is like drinking soda for potassium: it may have the nutrient, but it’s not the best source.
Dairy is Environmental and Public Health Disaster
The dairy industry is a significant contributor to environmental pollution, including GHG emissions, pandemics, and zoonotic diseases. The use of antibiotics in farm animals is a major cause of antibiotic resistance, which poses a severe threat to ALL of us!
Some of the zoonotic diseases that have come from cows include bovine tuberculosis, mad cow disease (BSE), brucellosis, anthrax, leptospirosis, E. coli, cryptosporidiosis, Q fever, cowpox and more.
Dairy Promotes Food Injustice
As infants, we can digest lactose because we are meant to have (human) milk, but as we grow up, we usually lose this ability because we are not supposed to have milk.
Caucasians often have an abnormal mutation that allows them to tolerate lactose in adulthood, this mutation, during a starvation period in Europe, served an evolutionary purpose which is no longer relevant today (this mutation does NOT make cow’s milk “healthy” for them).
70% of the world’s population cannot digest lactose properly in adulthood, with people of color being disproportionately affected.
By these misleading campaigns, lobbying, falsely framing dairy as a nutritious food, and adding it to @USDA dietary guidelines, the dairy industry causes food injustice.
Dairy lobbies also influence schools to force milk on all students, including those who become sick or fall behind due to lactose intolerance.
Please see this lecture we organized about the connection between cow milk, food injustice, cancer, and heart disease, presented in collaboration with scholars and doctors from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, and other renowned universities.
What next:
Big Dairy knows its end is nigh, which is why it must use celebrities to promote its lies.
Jonathan Bailey and @LoeweOfficial, in the eyes of myself and countless others, your reputation has been tarnished.
We all make mistakes, but what sets us apart is our willingness to acknowledge them and take action to make things right.
That’s why I urge you to apologize and join the movement towards an ethical, sustainable, and compassionate world by promoting a plant-based lifestyle that benefits all of us.
I trust that you will take appropriate action to address this matter and promote kindness and compassion instead of cruelty and destruction.
Dr. Faraz Harsini
Allied Scholars for Animal Protection