US government’s sneaky strategy – Posted in: Uncategorized
#*Jan 4, 2011 — USA (SUN) — * Domino’s Pizza’s domestic sales were falling
last year. Then an organization called Dairy Management offered to help.
They developed pizzas for Domino’s that contained 40 percent more cheese,
and then devised and paid for a $12-million marketing campaign.
But Dairy Management is not a private business — it is a creation of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA helps helm a government
anti-obesity program that discourages some of the very foods that Dairy
Management is vigorously promoting.
The New York Times reports:
“… [I]n a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture
secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.”
Sources: New York Times November 6, 2010
Dr. Mercola Comments:
You’re likely familiar with the “Got Milk” advertising campaign that
encourages you to drink more milk for its array of health benefits. Perhaps
you also saw the ads a few years back stating that eating more dairy could
help you lose weight.
Both of these marketing campaigns were created by a nonprofit corporation
called Dairy Management — an organization that not only employs 162 highly
skilled product developers and marketers but also is largely funded by the
U.S. government.
As the New York Times reported, Dairy Management’s $140-million annual
budget comes in large part from a government-mandated fee on the dairy
industry along with several million a year from the Agriculture Department.
But this government-funded organization is not simply interested in getting
the word out about the potential health benefits of dairy i they primarily
appear to be interested in doing whatever it takes to sell more dairy,
including using up the surplus of whole milk and milk fat that exists since
many Americans have switched to low-fat products.
Their solution? Team up with fast-food giants to sell more cheese.
The U.S. Government is Working Alongside Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Other
Fast-Food Giants
Dairy Management, which also includes the National Dairy Council, has been
aggressively marketing cheese to restaurant chains in efforts to increase
sales. Most recently, they took part in a $12-million marketing effort for
Domino’s latest pizza creation, the Wisconsin, which has six cheeses on the
pie and two in the crust.
Dairy Management not only generated and tested new pizza concepts for
Domino’s, they’ve provided banners and special lighting at fast-food
drive-throughs geared at promoting more cheese consumption.
They’ve also held development meetings with Pizza Hut and were instrumental
in developing the chain’s 2002 “Summer of Cheese” promotion that sold an
additional 102 million pounds of cheese.
As the Times reported, Dairy Management has also been involved in the
development of:
* Pizza Hut’s Cheesy Bites pizza
* Wendy’s dual Double Melt sandwich concept
* Burger King’s Cheesy Angus Bacon cheeseburger and TenderCrisp chicken
sandwich (both of which contained three slices of cheese plus a “cheesy
sauce”)
Dairy Management even works with grocery store chains to advise grocers how
to arrange their dairy aisles for optimum sales.
What are Dairy Management employees getting in return for acting as
champions for the dairy industry? At least in the executive arm, they’re
very well compensated i the organization’s chief executive earned over
$633,000 in 2008 while other top officials earned more than $300,000 each.
Advertising Campaigns Continued Despite Flimsy Research
The dairy industry has been heavily advertising the weight loss benefits of
drinking more milk for years i but the study upon which this claim was based
was not supported by additional research.
In fact, Dairy Management actually paid another researcher to look into the
effects of dairy consumption on weight, but when her study failed to produce
any such evidence they threatened to audit her work and then proceeded with
their advertising campaign anyway.
Years went by before the Federal Trade Commission put an end to the campaign
until additional research could be conducted. But not to worry i Dairy
Management has other tricks up their sleeve to keep dairy consumption up.
As the New York Times reported:
“Meanwhile, Dairy Management, which allotted $12.4 million for nutrition
research in 2008, has moved on to finance studies on promising
opportunities, including the promotion of chocolate milk as a sports
recovery drink and the use of cheese to entice children into eating healthy
foods like string beans.”
Do You See a Connection?
The U.S. government is clearly in cahoots with the commercial dairy
industry, even going so far as to fund marketing campaigns for fast-food
restaurants to increase sales.
Folks, this is likely one of the major reasons behind all the raids on the
raw milk farms recently — they are viewed as a threat to the commercial
dairy industry.
The FDA and CDC have been aggressively raiding raw milk dairies in their
efforts to crack down on raw milk production. This is done under the
pretense of public health safety — but the truth remains that not only is
raw milk a health-promoting food, it is oftentimes safer and many times
healthier than the pasteurized varieties both state and federal governments
are rallying behind.
It is very apparent that the regulatory agencies have put blinders on to
these statistics as they carry on with their ruthless crusade to ban raw
milk and make it illegal for you to drink — all while dedicating millions
to boosting commercial dairy sales, even in the form of fast-food!
Why?
Because they are looking out for the interests of Big Dairy produced in
factory farms.
Raw milk has been gaining popularity for years now. The conventional dairy
industry, realizing this, has redoubled their efforts to make sure that raw
milk sales are not able to grow, and certainly not able to become
mainstream, where they could begin to threaten their very own livelihoods.
If raw dairy really caught on, you would think that the dairy industry would
simply follow suit and begin producing raw products to meet the demand. But
this would be virtually impossible.
A factory farm cannot compete with a small organic, free-range farm because
their entire business depends on the milk being pasteurized. They simply
cannot afford to reproduce the conditions required to produce safe raw milk,
such as allowing all the cows to pasture and graze on grass, for starters.
So, since big business can’t produce what consumers want, they’re simply
seeking to eliminate the raw milk market altogether. This is why Big Dairy’s
powerful lobbyists will stop at nothing to persuade government agencies to
keep raw milk bans in full force — and agencies like Dairy Management will
continue their brash crusade to push pasteurized, processed cheeses and milk
upon the American public.
If You Want Truly Healthy Dairy, Choose Raw
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that raw milk can carry
disease-causing bacteria, what they completely overlook is the fact that
these bacteria are the result of industrial farming practices that lead to
diseased animals, which may then in turn produce contaminated milk.
They make no distinction whatsoever between disease-riddled factory farmed
milk that commercial dairy operations produce and the milk from clean,
healthy, grass-fed cows. The former MUST be pasteurized in order to be safe
for consumption. The latter does not.
Further, not only does raw milk contain good bacteria that are essential for
a healthy digestive system, raw milk also offers protection against
disease-causing bacteria!
Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the largest raw dairy in the United
States, performed the following test: He inoculated pathogenic contaminants
such as E. coli, Listeria and Salmonella into his raw milk, and into
pasteurized milk.
In the raw milk, none of the pathogens survived because the natural bacteria
were able to protect the milk. In the pasteurized milk, however — in which
the bacteria and enzymes have been destroyed — the pathogens were able to
take over.
To think that pasteurized milk is safer (even if you don’t believe it’s
healthier) than raw milk from a healthy, grass-fed cow is simply not true.
Raw milk also contains vitamins, which are virtually eliminated by the
pasteurization process of commercial milk. But it’s the presence of
beneficial bacteria that make raw milk such an outstanding food source to
promote the growth of healthy bacteria in your intestine, which in turn has
a significant, beneficial impact on your overall immune function.
Other health-promoting ingredients in raw milk include:
* Valuable enzymes that are destroyed during pasteurization. This
includes phosphatase, an enzyme that aids and assists in the absorption of
calcium in your bones, and lipase enzyme, which helps to hydrolyze and
absorb fats.
* Natural butterfat, which is homogenized or removed in pasteurized milk.
Without butterfat, it becomes very difficult for your body to absorb and
utilize the vitamins and minerals in the water fraction of the milk.
Butterfat is also your best source of preformed vitamin A, and contains
re-arranged acids with strong anti-carcinogenic properties.
* Healthy unoxidized cholesterol
* Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which fights cancer and may help reduce
your body fat.
* High omega-3 and low omega-6 ratios, which is the beneficial ratio
between these two essential fats
So if you enjoy dairy products, do your health a favor and choose raw milk
and raw milk cheese over the commercial varieties that are so heavily
advertised. By joining the fight to make access to healthy raw milk a right
for all Americans, you are not only standing up for raw milk; you’re taking
a stand to protect your freedom of food choice.
You can locate a raw milk source near you at the Campaign for Real Milk Web
site. You can also look here to find out the legal status of raw milk in the
U.S. state or country where you live.
*Source:
Mercola.com<http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/31/us-go
vernment-sneakily-subsidizes-milk-industry.aspx>