Want to know how much power the dairy industry still has? Despite being a significant contributor to climate change, they have a stranglehold on the USDA. Schools are required to provide cow milk and no other beverage, even water, despite the fact that many students (68 percent globally, especially those with Asian or Native American heritage) are lactose intolerant. It’s as if the peanut growers demanded that peanuts be offered at every lunch, even though some students are allergic!
Under federal law, public schools participating in the National School Lunch Program — a child nutrition program established in 1946 — must offer two kinds of unflavored, low- or nonfat “fluid milk,” meaning skim or 1 percent, with every meal. Students can get a nondairy substitute, but only with a doctor’s note saying they have a “disability” restricting their diet.
Last fall, Marielle Williamson, a high school senior in Los Angeles, set up a table to educate students about the benefits of alternatives. The students flocked to her table. But this year, the school stopped her from having a similar display, saying she could only do it if she promoted the benefits of cow milk, defeating her purpose.
USDA’s dairy rules are designed to obstruct students’ access not only to plant-based alternatives, but to any beverage that isn’t cow’s milk. Indeed, schools cannot even offer bottled water in the lunch line, or in any manner that “interferes with or appears to substitute for” cow’s milk.
Deborah Press, associate general counsel for the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
So Williamson is taking the USDA to court, not to eliminate dairy milk but to push schools to offer alternatives.
“It’s ridiculous that a condition that affects 68 percent of the world would be considered a ‘disability,’” said Deborah Press, associate general counsel for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that helped Williamson file her lawsuit. Press says the USDA’s dairy rules are designed to obstruct students’ access not only to plant-based alternatives, but to any beverage that isn’t cow’s milk. Indeed, schools cannot even offer bottled water in the lunch line, or in any manner that “interferes with or appears to substitute for” cow’s milk.
Unfortunately, some of the proposed legislation appears to focus on soy milk as an alternative, rather than oat or almond milk. Some health professionals worry that soy milk, which naturally has estrogen-like chemicals (isoflavones), could affect child development. (Learn more about concerns around soy and childhood development.) Soy is a big crop grown in the US but is also responsible for deforestation of the rainforest.
For now, getting cow’s milk out of school cafeterias is a political nonstarter; many legislators are loath to challenge the dairy lobby, or risk angering farmers. But Williamson, Raven Corps, and others have submitted comments to the USDA and endorsed federal bills that would at least add soy milk to the lunch menu — without the need for a doctor’s note. These bills include the Addressing Digestive Distress in Stomachs of Our Youth (ADD SOY) Act and the Healthy Future Students and Earth Pilot Program Act. Both would require school districts to provide nondairy milk to any student whose parent or guardian makes a written request.
https://grist.org/food/this-la-teen-is-suing-her-school-district-and-the-usda-to-promote-nondairy-milk/
What you can do
Write your Congressional representatives and school board, asking them to provide plant-based milks to students as standard practice (not requiring a special note from a parent or doctor) and support the bills mentioned above. Also share any concerns about soy milk in particular. Here’s an NIH article about soy which indicates that studies have been small, there may not be an effect on puberty, but that some children are allergic to soy (which many outgrow.)
Darcy Hitchcock 