Pus is a whitish-yellow thick substance that can be found in regions of bacterial infection, including superficial infections, such as pimples, and deeper infections, such as abscesses. Pus is made up mostly of a special kind of white blood cell called NEUTROPHILS. Their main job is to eat and digest invading microorganisms such as bacteria. In the process of fighting off infection, they die. So, pus is a battleground full of soldiers, living and dead. It also contains bacteria and dead cells from the surrounding tissue. Pus means your white blood cells are attacking infections in your body. Another name for white pus cells are Somatic Cells.
The dairy industry all over the world knows that there is a problem with pus in milk. It uses the Somatic Cell Count (SCC) to measure the amount of pus in milk and gauge milk quality as a general gauge of a cow's well-being. A higher white blood cell count indicates an infection in a cow, which the white blood cells are fighting. These indicate that a cow is sick and should not be milked. The higher the somatic cell count, the more pus in the milk.
Would you like a glass of pus to drink? You may say no, but every time you drink milk, you drink bags of pus. If you don’t believe me, ask the US, British and European governments. They have a law allowing pus in milk. America allows the highest amount. India doesn’t allow or disallow pus – it ignores the problem totally. Why is there pus in milk? Because any cows/buffaloes that are milked several times a day will develop mastitis or infection of the udders. All dairy cattle are milked several times a day – and mostly in India with unclean and rough hands and their udders get all cracked and infected. Blood and pus accumulate and end up in the milk.
One culprit causing the hundreds of millions of pus cells in every litre of milk is “bovine growth hormone,” the Monsanto Company’s growth hormone marketed as Posilac. Posilac is now widely used by dairy farmers to increase the amount of milk that cows produce. This genetically engineered recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) is injected into cows every other week to force them to produce more milk than their bodies normally would. Because cows are not built to produce this much milk, they are prone to a painful udder infection called mastitis. When they are milked, pus and bacteria from the infection flow right along with the milk.
The journal Nature reports that Posilac increases somatic cells—pus—in the milk by a whopping 19 percent! Monsanto's own data show a 79% increase in mastitis and a 19% increase in somatic cell counts. In fact, the warning label on Posilac explicitly states: "Cows injected with POSILAC are at an increased risk for clinical mastitis. The number of cows affected with clinical mastitis and the number of cases per cow may increase.... Use of POSILAC has been associated with increases in somatic cell counts [pus & bacteria]." Any milk with a somatic cell count of higher than 200 million per litre should not enter the human food supply, according to the dairy industry. Unfortunately every state in America, supposedly with the highest cleanliness levels, is producing milk with unbelievable pus levels.
The 2004 issue of Hoard's Dairyman, the National Dairy Farm Magazine, reported one litre of Californian milk contained 298 million pus cells in 2003, 11 million more pus cells than it contained in 2002. Alabama 's has 444 million cells; Nevada 's has 443 million. Florida's milk has the highest count: 548 million pus cells per litre, or 130 million per 8-oz glass. (These could be even worse, as concerns have been raised about the efficiency of cell counting techniques). Even that is well below the USDA's allowable U.S. standard of 750 million pus cells per litre.
In 1993, the same time they were introducing a new hormone (RbGH), which would unnaturally expand the cow's udder, causing ulcers, both on the interior and exterior, the Dairy Council unexplainably increased the amount of pus cells allowed per litre by more than 300%. Most of the top executives in the United States Department of Agriculture come straight out of the cattle industry, and return to lucrative jobs in that industry after their stint in the USDA where they make regulatory rulings favourable to cattlemen, instead of protecting consumers.
The EU, UK and the Canadians allow for 400,000,000 pus cells per litre. In 2006 UK newspaper headlines reported “Time to Come Clean About the Pus in Milk”. A 76 page report by Dr Justine Butler with 200 scientific references showed that because of illnesses in cows, up to 400 million pus cells were allowed in every litre of milk and dairy products. “That’s two million pus cells in every teaspoonful. The government should ensure that milk cartons are labelled with the pus content.” Can the pus level come down? No.
Any animal that is continually milked will eventually develop mastitis, an infection of the teat. There is no difference between the pus count in pasteurized milk and raw milk, large dairies or two cows owned by a villager. Hormone treated cows, in confined spaces, over-bred for production and over-milked several times a day, are going to be stressed, have mastitis and this WILL mean far inflammatory cells in the milk. Cows, under normal conditions, would supply about ten pounds of milk a day. Now they have to produce up to a hundred pounds of milk a day! Whether handled by a man milking the cow himself or by machine when metal clamps are attached to the cow’s sensitive udders, the udders become sore and infected. Pus forms and is excreted into the milk..
All dairy owners and researchers say that mastitis is a widespread condition affecting 30-50% of cattle. SCC varies monthly, peaking during the summer months when high temperatures and humidity increase stress on cows and provide conditions more favourable for bacterial growth. Mastitis is treated with antibiotics injected directly into the udder. These drugs can also end up in the milk.
Pasteurization or boiling does not clear pus cells. India has NO standards or checks for SCC which means that almost 90% of the cows have mastitis.
According to the papers presented at the International Dairy Federation in Vienna, mastitis cannot be eradicated from dairy herds. So there is need to establish a world standard for SCC or pus levels. How much pus do you agree to pay for and drink every day? Would you feed your child milk, if you knew that a glass contained 500 pus cells? Most people answer that they would not accept milk with any pus in it at all for their own children.
Maneka Gandhi
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