Mother’s milk is good for babies; cow’s milk is good for calves.
WASHINGTON D.C.––Yes, there was a “missing link” between the November 20, 2025 unanimous U.S. Senate vote to end the “milk mandate” in public schools, and the order to Centers for Disease Control & Prevention personnel to end experiments on macaque monkeys, issued by CDC deputy chief of staff Sam Beyda several weeks earlier.
(See “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” orders CDC deputy chief of staff.)
The missing link, apparently evolving millions of years before even the origin of politics among our simian ancestors, and probably only dimly recognized in either the U.S. Senate or at the administrative level of the CDC, is increasing scientific and medical awareness of the importance of mothers’ milk in infant diets––and recognition, as well, that cow’s milk is no more complete or healthy a substitute for older children than many other options.
Monkey milk study
The science came out of some of the only monkey research to yield immediately useful results for humans on record, mostly non-invasive studies conducted by evolutionary biologist Katie Hinde since 2008 at the Davis campus of the University of California, Harvard University, and now Arizona State University.
Both the way Hinde’s work has been done and the importance of her findings present a strong case against traditional vivisection-based animal research, using animals confined in highly artificial conditions, in favor of careful ethological observation of living subjects in at least semi-natural situations.
What Hinde discovered, initially by testing milk samples from lactating rhesus macaques kept at the California National Primate Research Center for other uses, is that mothers’ milk is custom-formulated in response to chemical signals in the saliva of nursing babies.
Bio-chemical signals
Beginning from discovering that sons get more fat and protein per ounce of milk, but daughters get more calcium, Hinde went on to learn that mothers’ bodies detect the antigens in sick babies’ saliva and produce the appropriate antibodies to help their babies fight off infection.
Later Hinde found that nursing mothers even chemically transfer some behavioral characteristics to their infants.
As children grow toward weaning, they need this biochemical transference less and less. After weaning at a normal age, children don’t receive it, or need it, at all.
Children who are not breast-fed never receive any of the help that mother’s milk conveys.
Post-weaning, cows’ milk does offer fat, protein, and calcium, but whatever antibodies and other biochemical signals a factory-farmed cow provides are seldom useful to human children.
Sometimes the biochemical signaling content of cow’s milk might even be harmful.
Subsidy for dairy farmers
The National School Lunch Program “milk mandate” originated in 1949 as a federal subsidy to dairy farmers, promoted in the belief that including cow’s milk in school lunches would improve childhood nutrition. Some children probably benefited. Many others, as is now known, did not. The major net beneficiary, as intended from the beginning, was the dairy industry.
Political opposition to the “milk mandate,” raised earlier by other organizations in a rather sporadic and desultory manner, has been rallied lately through a multi-year effort by Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy to pass the bill that eventually cleared the U.S. Senate as S. 222, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act.
S. 222 is now “held at the desk” in the U.S. House of Representatives. This means that instead of being delayed by assignment for committee review, it may be presented at any time by the Speaker of the House, currently Mike Johnson of Louisiana, for a decisive yes-or-no vote by the House as a whole.
Bill is expected to clear the House soon
Explained Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle to ANIMALS 24-7, “The compromise negotiated on this bill, fusing key elements of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act and the Freedom in the School Cafeterias & Lunches Act, appears to be solid and bicameral.
“I expect the House to take up S. 222 and consider it under suspension of the rules in early December,” said Pacelle, noting that “suspension is an expedited House floor strategy strictly limiting debate––usually just 10 minutes divided between the two sides––and barring any amendments. A two-thirds vote is required for passage.
“The Senate,” with a Republican majority, “passed S. 222 as amendment without dissent,” Pacelle reminded, “and I would expect an overwhelming vote in the House,” also with a Republican majority, “though definitely not unanimous.”
The current concentration of more than half of all U.S. dairy production in just five states, including solidly “blue” California and New York while “red” states dominate Congress, means that the dairy states have relatively weak Congressional representation.
“Clearly lifts the cows’ milk mandate”
“This bill,” Pacelle detailed, “while acceding to the dairy industry’s decade-plus-old demand to allow schools to offer whole milk if they wish,” contrary to dietary guidelines mandating low-fat milk in effect since the 2012-2013 school year, “also clearly lifts the ‘cow’s milk mandate’ and opens up possibilities for plant-based offerings by two means.”
First, Pacelle said, “just as with whole milk, schools will be allowed to offer a nutritionally equivalent plant-based milk option for all students, if the school administrators wish to offer it.
“At this point,” Pacelle suggested, “soy milk, given its high protein content, is the only plant-based milk option that matches milk on some of the key nutrient measures, although I understand that oat milk companies are getting close.”
Second, Pacelle explained, “a National School Lunch Program participant child can secure a note from a parent, doctor, or guardian and ‘shall’ be provided with the plant-based milk of his or her choice, whether or not it is nutritionally equivalent.
Bill will need follow-up
“We plan to work with [the anti-dairy organization Switch4Good,” Pacelle continued, “and to do a post-enactment campaign to alert students, parents, school administrators, and nutritionists to the prevalence of lactose intolerance and the new choices enabled by the new milk policies.
“Just as with the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, where we eliminated the animal-testing mandate for drug development,” Pacelle said, “we’ll need follow-up to drive practical acceptance of the alternative offerings.
“As you well know,” Pacelle detailed, “plant-based milks have won greater acceptance among consumers and a more substantial market share than any of the other plant-based offerings” produced as alternatives to traditional animal products and byproducts.
“It won’t be self-executing”
“We can see movement on plant-based milks,” Pacelle said, “because the school-setting use is less than one percent, whereas in the marketplace, it exceeds 15% and climbing.
“But it won’t be self-executing,” Pacelle warned. “We’ll have to work at it, pointing out that milk causes a major array of health problems for children, especially adverse digestive reactions based on lactose intolerance.
“But it’s an entirely different situation than with meat,” Pacelle noted, “given that two-thirds of the people in the world are lactose intolerant, and perhaps one-third of people living in our ethnically diverse nation.”
“Alerting them to the rigors of life for modern-day cows”
Earlier, Pacelle mentioned to ANIMALS 24-7 that educating parents, students, and schools about the anticipated end of the “milk mandate” would also include “alerting them to the rigors of life for modern-day cows, so large and hyper-productive that their feet and legs and the rest of their bodies readily break down under the weight and strain of it all.
“Due to selective breeding for high yields,” Pacelle recounted, “the average Holstein dairy cow on an industrialized farm now produces six to seven times more milk annually than in the years before the ‘milk mandate’ was written into law.
“This unnatural yield causes physiological and physical problems for cows, lameness and other leg and joint problems. Dairy cows are susceptible to become ‘downers’ and are often ‘spent’ at a young age and sent to slaughter.
$300-$500 million thrown away
In campaigning for the Freedom in the School Cafeterias & Lunches Act, parts of which are now incorporated into the pending Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, Pacelle pointed out that, “According to USDA statistics, 29% of milk cartons served in schools are thrown away unwanted and unopened. The resulting cost to taxpayers is estimated to be between $300-500 million a year.
“Lactose intolerance among kindergarten through grade 12 students in the National School Lunch Program explains much of that waste: lactose intolerance rates reach 60–80% among African Americans; 80–90% among Native Americans; 90–95% among Asian Americans; and 50–70% among Latinos.
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
(See The USDA “milk mandate”: a black-&-white issue on school lunch trays.)
“It also has high prevalence among individuals of Greek, Italian, Jewish, and Arab descent,” including Pacelle himself, who is of mixed Greek and Italian ancestry.
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This is excellent news and I look forward to learning more about this important bill. I have been using OAT milk for some time now and find it more than acceptable. Thanks too to Animal Wellness for their good work on this issue.
When I was a wildlife rehabilitator, I couldn’t give cows’ milk to fawns or they would get severe diarrhea – they did OK on goats milk Many other wild babies can’t tolerate cows milk either.
Sharing with gratitude and the hope that we move beyond the dairy industry’s pushing cows’ milk on us. Severely lactose intolerant but raised on this mistaken protocol.