The Rise And Fall Of Dairy: Global Conquest And Domestic Downfall
Cows’ milk has been part of the cultures and cuisines of some societies for millenia. For others, consuming dairy is a relatively new practice. Cows’ milk has long been believed to promote human growth and strength, and campaigns by the dairy industry have further cemented this view. This perception, coupled with political motivations and technological advancements, led to a surge in the popularity of cows’ milk, first in the West and later in eastern regions where it had previously played a limited role. A changing health and cultural landscape is now weakening dairy’s hold on the United States, which could be a sign of things to come for the industry globally. This paper set out to analyze dairy’s changing role over time in the U.S., China, and India, drawing on scholarly articles and industry journals.
Milk For Growth & Early Attitudes
The association of cows’ milk with growth may have arisen in part because of parallels drawn with human breast milk and its ability to nourish infants through the rapid growth of their first months. Some scientific studies seem to show that consuming cows’ milk makes children taller, but others have failed to confirm this. The lack of conclusive evidence has not stopped the dairy industry from seizing on this existing perception and using it to great advantage. They claim that cows’ milk, by virtue of its high calcium and protein content, is essential to children’s growth, and they underscore this message with pictures of strapping European-American children and huge professional athletes. In regions of India and China where cows’ milk has not historically played a big role, it has come to be associated with Europeans and Americans, who are on average taller than Chinese and Indians, seeming to lend further support to the view that cows’ milk makes children big and strong.
People have been drinking cows’ milk in the United States since the colonial period. Because there was no way to reliably preserve fluid milk early on, it was usually consumed locally or processed into cheese for a longer shelf life. China, however, had little to do with dairy before modernity (apart from dairy consumption by northern nomadic peoples), and most Chinese do not have the lactose tolerance found in societies with long dairy histories. Post-Mongol Dynasty campaigns to denigrate “barbarian” food engendered widespread revulsion toward cows’ milk.
In India, meanwhile, cows have had deep cultural significance since Indo-Aryan herders first settled in the north. Cows feature prominently in Hindu scripture and ritual. Indians have historically consumed far less milk per capita than their counterparts in the U.S., but it has still figured into the cultures and cuisines of some regions of India, leading to localized lactose tolerance.
Increased Adoption
Fluid cow milk consumption in the U.S. surged in the mid-1800s. Mass production methods provided enough milk to meet the demand of growing urban populations. Increasing economic prosperity, and the impression crafted by the dairy industry that cows’ milk provided the means to raise strong, healthy children, created that demand. Pasteurization and refrigerated trucking enabled producers to distribute their product more widely and keep it on store shelves longer.
Around the year 2000, dairy in China began to pick up steam. The economy was growing and with it the middle class, with aspirations to give their children every advantage possible. In China, dairy’s promise of individual health has been combined with nationalist goals. Consumption of cow milk is seen not just as an individual status symbol, but as a way to improve “population quality” and become economically competitive with the West. Dairy producers in China have partnered with the NBA and feature tall Chinese athletes to strengthen this association. Widespread lactose intolerance and distaste might have been expected to block dairy from making inroads in China, but this has been somewhat circumvented by processing fluid milk into more digestible and palatable forms, like cheese and yogurt.
Similarly, India has followed in the footsteps of the U.S. with a huge uptick in dairy consumption, though most of India’s milk comes from water buffalo rather than cows. The increase there too was made possible by technological advances and was driven by a desire for individual status and national strength. Woven into the industry’s messaging were references to milk cows as life-giving and the mothers of India, drawing on cows’ revered place in Indian culture and history without being so explicit as to alienate non-Hindu Indians.
Dairy In Decline
After reaching its peak in the middle of the last century, milk consumption in the U.S. has seen a steady decline. This may be partly due to the displacement of cows’ milk by other beverages, with adults in the U.S. drinking eight times as much soda and fruit juice as milk. The rise in obesity is also a factor — parents of overweight children are not looking to promote additional growth. A third contributor to milk’s fall from popularity is the increasing age of the U.S. population. The dairy industry’s branding of milk as a growth-promoting drink for children, which has proven so successful worldwide, has perhaps gotten too strong a hold on the collective psyche. Now, the U.S. dairy industry’s attempts to repackage cows’ milk as a wellness drink for middle-aged women are failing to overwrite its earlier messaging. Furthermore, with contradictory evidence from different studies on whether or not milk delivers on its promise of strength and growth, consumers may be questioning whether milk deserves the high nutritional status it has long held.
As China and India have followed U.S. dairy consumption patterns in the past, the current decline in U.S. dairy consumption could be an indication of things to come elsewhere. For animal advocates, this may be an ideal time to conduct further research on whether cow milk really provides the health benefits it promises, and how well the same aims can be served by plant-based foods. From an advocacy perspective, perhaps it’s time to flip the script, and see what Western nations can learn from those that have gotten along without cow’s milk.