Comin' Out Swingin'
Comin’ Out Swingin’
I got an interesting phone call the other day. It was from a consultant working for an overseas dairy processor that was interested in U.S. dairy market trends that might be headed their way. (Funny, I always thought it was their trends, like probiotics and functional ingredients, that came to us from over there.)
This consultant was particularly interested in
negative trends for milk, and he rattled off a series of anti-dairy books
he’d discovered that claim milk causes cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis
and a host of other things that will ultimately kill you. And, he
continued, he wanted to know if the dairy industry had offered any kind of
rebuttal to these “studies.”
Well, in addition to the ongoing shellacking we mete
out to the anti-dairy fringe in this space and our blog, the industry has
been systematically countering the attackers with sound science, carefully
gathered over time, that for the most part reverses their outrageous
claims.
But the idea that this fellow was unaware of any
attempts by the industry to defend itself suggests to me that maybe the
industry isn’t doing enough, saying it loudly enough or capturing as
many ears in the media as the rock-throwers and blood-spatterers.
A while back, I wrote about a speaker at the 2006
Dairy Forum who heads up the Center for Consumer Freedom, a gonzo marketer
and veteran of big tobacco who preaches a “they pull a knife, you
pull a gun” philosophy in taking on the food police. At the time, the
feeling of industry advocates was a “slow and steady wins the
race” approach, backed by science. Those of you who favor using
rBST see how well that’s worked.
I think we need to be trumpeting our sound science
more loudly (the latest: milk is better than soy for building muscle mass;
visit our Web site for the whole story) and more creatively than the other
guys are shouting their shoddy studies.
It may not look like much now, but just as personal
freedoms can be eroded incrementally, the anti-dairy crowd’s
perpetual braying may ultimately do some real damage. We want the goodness
of dairy to be shared by all, and to sustain a thriving market for the
hundreds of new products being developed by a vibrant, optimistic dairy
industry.
You can start reading about it on page 16 in our 2007
State of the Industry report.
Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!
