Horses were once ubiquitous; as precombustion-engine cities grew, so did the number of horses require for transport of all kinds. Farmers committed vast areas around cities to growing horse food, which had to be harvested and transported by still more horses. All that water, hay, and oats passing through the digestive tracts of over a hundred thousand horses in a city like New York produced more than 2 million pounds of manure a day, along with 25 thousand gushing gallons of urine. Horse manure was piled up to four stories high in vacant lots. Flies abounded, disease rampaged, and the dust blown from these piles coated everything outside and inside.  Dinner plates were laid on tables upside-down to avoid a dusting of dehydrated horse poop — city dwellers, often in their evening suits and dresses, negotiated streets reeking with fresh and stale horse excretions with raised hems and careful steps. 

The combustion engine liberated cities from horses, and equally importantly, it released horses from cities. While it seems contrary to our experience, the air became fresher, the streets cleaner, and the city more sanitary. It is interesting to note that electric vehicles hold out the same promise.  Still, as if we’re still stuck in 1897, horsepower as a measure still lingers. 

How does this relate to consumer package goods, circa 2021? Well, the idea that cow’s milk is the nutritional gold standard for humans also still lingers in some consumers’ memories yet is as antiquated a measurement as horsepower.  The gold standard for calves is cows’ milk, just as the mother’s milk is the gold standard for her baby, be they mother elephants, whales, or humans.   

Whole industries are developing around the lingering effect. Laboratory concocted “meat” is one of these. They anticipate the idea that animal flesh is a vital protein source and will be as durable as the term horsepower. However, the horse has already bolted, plant-based food choices and protein sources are off and running. 

Millions are enjoying the adventure of new foods. Vegetarians, vegans, reducetarians, and foodies of all kinds are creating interesting, nutritious, tasty meals – they are not longing for, or referencing back to, flesh and blood; they seek instead fresh, clean-ingredient, natural foods from plants.  

Maybe it’s because horses can’t fly that NASA has abandoned horsepower; they rate rocket power in millions of pounds of thrust. The investors in Lab-meat are rating that opportunity in billions of dollars of profit. They are betting the concept has the horsepower, or pounds of thrust, to overcome its Dr. Frankenstein style lab origins. It is alive; it is alive! 

But is this lab-flesh alive in any sense? Is it fully animal, fully plant-based, or just the undead? If you prod it, does it twitch? Is it bovine, equine, canine or porcupine – all we know so far is it’s clandestine?  

Our current food all originates with life from the natural world.  Foods labeled plant-based are clearly and exclusively from plants.  What is the correct category for mystery lab flesh? Before galloping along and putting this gift horse in our mouths, we at least want to know, is it horse?  Does the concept make good horse sense? Or is it simply a Trojan horse masquerading under the plant-based banner? 

The post The Linger Effect first appeared on milkadamia.

The post The Linger Effect appeared first on milkadamia.

What do YOU stand for? And what will YOU not stand for? It is the values we express and act upon that are the building blocks of our civilization. They sculpt and shape our shared future.
Jewel-Osco was congratulated for acting decisively after being made aware of the pernicious and systematic cruel treatment of cows and calves at Fair Oaks Farms. Theirs was not a financial decision; it likely cost the retailers significantly, added complexity and created some chaos. Theirs was an ethical decision and that is heartening and encouraging.

The question is, can factory farming of animals survive the social media age?

The dairy industry has a large and well-funded PR machine. They employ multitudes of political lobbyists who will soothe and assure Washington and us too if we allow. The workers in the video will be made scapegoats, it will be declared an isolated aberration, the industry will march on.
Dairy cows and their newborn vulnerable calves have no PR agency and no lobbyists, and they can’t speak for themselves – they have only our voices guided by our values. For any who chose to signal their values to corporations like Fair Oaks and Coca-Cola, here’s a tip – they listen most attentively to their sales volume, profit and market-share.

#ItsRChoice

Read more on our belief that moo is moot.

The post Anything But Fairlife first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Anything But Fairlife appeared first on milkadamia.

Originally, during England’s medieval period, moots (meets) were assemblies where important points of local government were vigorously debated. In these sometimes impassioned assemblies, items that were put up for discussion were said to have been mooted. Today the word “moot” is almost always used in conjunction with the word “point.” As in “it’s a moot point” or “I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot…I wish that I had Jessie’s girl.”

Over time the meaning of the word “moot” devolved from describing a meeting for meaningful debate to a description of insubstantial pointless noise. This change followed the introduction of moot courts, in law schools.

Moot courts are sessions where law students train by arguing hypothetical cases. That is, they create and then dispute moot points. The impossibility of any substantive outcome from these hypothetical cases has led to the unimportant/irrelevant/not worth discussing meaning of “moot.”

When milkadamia declares “Moo is Moot” on our packs we are voicing the opinion of the millions who have switched out dairy foods from their diets. Dairy milk is moot, irrelevant within and to the lives, aspirations, health and eco-desires of millions.

The significant eco-cost of dairy may be more tolerated if cow’s milk was necessary. However, thousands of vegan athletes are clearly demonstrating robust health, vitality, long life and vigor don’t require dairy. That they are better in every way without diary.

They demonstrate our bones don’t crumble, nor do we suffer the protein deficiency the dairy industry attempts to scare us with. They prove that its oft-repeated claims that dairy is critical to human nutrition are false. Millions have removed dairy from their diets (billions never included it) and have happily moved on.

Meanwhile the dairy industry is acting like the rise of plant milk is the end of all civilization (Dear Mr. Dairy). It is in reality only the end of us financially supporting the dairy industry’s uncivilized treatment of sentient animals. The end of us supporting its commercial exploitation of the act of motherhood (Anything But Fairlife). Mostly it is we common folk responding to the astonishing inefficiency and equally astonishing and disheartening eco-cost of the unnecessary dairy industry.

Eventually the dairy industry’s histrionic death throes will be a footnote in the history of our times, if even that. More than its own food production revolution, its own social movement or its own fact, plant-based diets and regenerative farming are set to be part of something much bigger, more dangerous and more important.

A righteous groundswell is building. A global eco-rights idea is taking shape. Common folk are spontaneously rising to the defense of the natural world. This is where the moral energy comes from, a sense of an interconnected natural world and natural order to rediscover, to rescue, bring back to life, to win. To live beyond simply creating no further harm, but to actively heal the harm already done.

Many, faced today with the knowledge of human-generated expansion of global eco-misery and want, are choosing to rise up and resist. To behave selflessly. We are inspired by such people whose personal choices, made for future generations, are beginning to measure at this moment in history as moral grandeur. They are mitigating as far as they are capable the impending crisis. They are active but are not motivated by activism; rather it’s an irresistible expression of their internal desire for our home.

Many are revealing humanity’s best spirit. Generations unborn may owe the opportunity to breathe a little extra humanity into the human experience, to the actions taken today. So much of what is yet to come is our choice.

To plant-based people, the lack of any possible substantive outcome from the dairy industry’s scare tactics, nutrition nonsense, bullying, lobbying, censoring of language and especially its energetic striving to continue polluting our land, water and sky, makes them, at this point of Earth’s history, the very definition of the word “moot.”

Moo is moot.

Jim Richards,

CEO milkadamia

The post Moo Is Moot first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Moo Is Moot appeared first on milkadamia.

Catra is just one of the amazing athletes working with Switch4Good.org. Switch4Good is a coalition made up of dairy-free athletes, trainers, doctors, nutritionists and influencers who “have learned that cow’s milk is not a health food and understand that ditching dairy is a straight path towards living a longer, more fulfilling life.”

milkadamia is proud to once again partner with Switch4Good for the their 10 Day Plant Milk Challenge. Learn more at switch4good.org or join the challenge HERE on Facebook.

The post switch4good Take 10 Day Plant Milk Challenge first appeared on milkadamia.

The post switch4good Take 10 Day Plant Milk Challenge appeared first on milkadamia.

And who is leading the way but millennials. Those constant disruptors.

Nearly a quarter of millennials identify as vegan or vegetarian (note: for the general population the number is under 5%). That’s 9.8 million people, each having a major, positive impact on the environment.

Businesses are taking note. TGI Friday’s has a Beyond Meat burger. Nestle is launching a plant-based burger. Pepsico introduced an oat milk. And dairy farmers are switching to become plant-based farmers.

Sometimes we look at the word “consumer” with disdain. But, we all consume and because of that we all have power to create seismic shifts. We don’t and can’t wait for others to help the Earth breathe. We do that by voting with our dollars…en masse. It’s our choice to be change agents. Just look at the change we’ve already forced by being different “consumers.”

The post Good On You, Millennials first appeared on milkadamia.

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