Milk is Milk Blog by Alex Avery
I was pleasantly surprised recently to get a call from Andrew Pollack of the NY Times. He is apparently working on a story on the Milk is Milk debate and wanted my input. Despite my certainty of the direction the article will ultimately take, I was more than happy to share my knowledge of the issues and our role in the debate. I talked about the many companies who are using fear to mislead consumers into paying more for a product that they believe is safer and healthier when in fact it is neither. I referred him to prior blog posts, where I point out that groups positioning themselves as defenders of family farms are really only defenders of the market share for one corporation. I told him about our various campaigns, billboards, advertising, store checks, regulatory complaints, all carried out so that consumers know the truth about their purchases. But there was a disturbing aspect to our conversation: each time I attempted to explain the science that guarantees that milk is milk, Mr. Pollack repeatedly told me he was not interested in the science, only the politics. I tried to explain that the lack of attention to the science is precisely what has led to the misleading marketing of dairy products; that there would be no politics if the science was the basis for the debate! Yet nothing I could say appeared to dissuade him from his pre-determined mission to ignore the science and write solely about the politics. It is like discussing the Soviet Union without mentioning communism. I am extremely disappointed that a talented writer like Andrew Pollack, writing for a paper read by millions of Americans and others around the world, would be so shortsighted. I gave Pollack the names and numbers of some dairy farmers; I hope they will have better luck convincing Mr. Pollack that milk is indeed milk.