More about A2 milk & various issues surrounding it
Jan 30, 2015 18:20:27 GMT -5
pcerikson, steven888, and 6 more like this
Post by zephyrhillsusan on Jan 30, 2015 18:20:27 GMT -5
I'm figuratively ducking my head here as I post this because I'm afraid I'm going to have people throwing rotten eggs at me from both ends of the A2 spectrum! I don't know if this puts me in the middle or makes me wishy-washy or an idiot or all of the above, but I thought that I would start a new thread to discuss A2 milk and "various issues surrounding it." I'm just opening the door, so please don't shoot me!
I first heard about the A2 issue early on after we got our first Dexter cow in Dec. 2009. I eventually tested our animals (as mentioned in the A1/A2 milk poll thread) and found our foundation cow was A2, but I never got to taste her milk due to a personality conflict between us. Her heifer tested hetero (A1/A2, but that's harder to type!)
Then I thought I ought to read the book, Devil in the Milk. It was a slog, but I got through it. I'm a nurse with some scientific background, but I don't gobble it down for breakfast like some people I know. However, and pleeeeez don't kill me, I actually thought it made some sense. As I understood the book, it was not so much about an "allergy" (think hives, sneezing, etc.) to A1 protein as it was about the way A1 is broken down during digestion and forms BCM7 (this is from memory, so bear with me). BCM7 acts as a narcotic, among other things, which I found interesting because I had always found that if I had trouble sleeping, all I needed to do was eat a bowl of cereal--forget the proverbial hot milk, even cold cereal worked. When I read the narcotic bit, a little light bulb went off and I thought, well, duh, that makes sense. I'm certainly not going to buy into A2 because of that, but I'm just telling you my story.
As I remember from the book (and this was some time ago), there have not been any comprehensive, double-blind studies conducted to "prove" the entire A2 hypothesis. However, the author does extensively cite studies that were done on various aspects related to the issue. One of these that caught my attention was the list of countries where the incidence of heart disease and Type 1 diabetes correlated with whether the majority of the country's milk supply was largely A1 or A2. Apparently, and who knew, such statistics existed. There were other studies cited, and the author of the book is fairly clear that more studies need to be done. A main focus of the book was how the commercial dairy companies made concerted efforts to stop test results from being published when they related to A2 milk. What I got from the book was that the author was trying to present the story behind the story, pulling things together from various countries and sources, and was pretty much saying, "Here are some things for you to think about and evaluate. It's not definitive, but you should be able to read this stuff for yourself and draw your own conclusions."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find scientific research articles a bit much to wade through sometimes, and I personally appreciated the more accessible way he presented various studies and their conclusions. I thought he was fair-minded and very clear about the difference between quotes and his own analysis. Although he has an obvious, and openly stated, bias, I did not feel as if he was ever asking his readers to just take his word for it. Having been raised in a "conspiracy theory" family (yep, my dad believed pretty much every theory Mel Gibson spouts at his taxi passengers at the beginning of the movie!), I am perhaps more ready than most to believe that agribusiness, the milk industry in this case, has a LOT to gain by keeping the A2 issue as quiet as possible and as marginalized as possible.
So much for the book, it left me feeling like I wanted to know more, but interested in the topic.
Then my little granddaughter developed a milk intolerance. She suffered from colic if my DIL consumed any milk products. My DH has suffered from intestinal colic for years, unable to be diagnosed by any of the numerous medical procedures he has undergone. By process of elimination, we came down to thinking there was a link to milk, and he almost had to stop consuming any store-bought milk products, cheese, etc. That is about when I found out that Sara was A2 and Siobhan was hetero. I began milking Siobhan, and we learned that my DH could tolerate raw milk! It was certainly not an A1 issue for him, since Siobhan is hetero for the A2 gene. At the time our granddaughter still did not drink any milk, and I wondered whether A2 milk might prove to make a difference for her.
We ended up selling A2 Sara and bought her A2 granddaughter, Ebony, in her place. This has all occurred over several years, and DH and our granddaughter have now both drunk our raw A1/A2 milk and our raw A2 milk, with no noticeable difference in the two. My DIL gets raw milk from a herd share in TN, and the whole family drinks it with no problem. So our "need" to have A2 milk has not been an issue in the end. We love the milk from both our cows.
Now on to another of the "issues" around the whole A2 issue, and that's breeding. When we decided to buy a bull, I decided I wanted to buy an A2 bull, among a list of other qualities. The top one of those was temperament! Another was beefiness, milking bloodlines (his dam's udder got a perfect score when she was qualified and she has exceptional milkfat and protein content), conformation, etc. I also wanted a polled bull, and I would definitely have preferred a homo polled bull, but that was where I decided to take very good instead of perfect. There MAY be a "perfect" Dexter bull out there, but I knew we couldn't afford him!
So, did I do the "wrong" thing by buying an A2 bull? He was young and unproven, and there may have been some really good hetero bulls I passed up. I did talk to breeders about some of them and was tempted by a couple of them. But they were mostly not halter broken, not handled, and were mature bulls with one or more previous owners. This bull was halter broken, handled, dam-raised, his breeder arranged shipping, etc., etc. So for many reasons in addition to the A2 factor, this is the bull we ended up with. A lot of Dexter breeders could care less about A2 because there are still a great many who don't milk. This is one difference to the pure dairy market. There are still people looking for Dexters who don't care about A2, they just want beefy calves.
One thing I feel no guilt whatsoever about, is adding our bull to the Dexter gene pool! He is really nice in SO many ways that have nothing to do with his A2 status. He is the first animal on this page, and I've included a quote about his dam's milking capability. On the surface, it looks like I've jumped on the "A2 polled red" bandwagon that so many "traditional" Dexter breeders decry, but the purchase of this bull was very carefully thought out. If you knew my first cow, the "polled" part would be obvious. I really did like her, but just sayin'. The red was purely the color he happened to be! It was icing on the cake that our 2 black cows carry red. Honest! The A2 was intentional, but here is my logic . . .
I don't know for sure where I stand on the A2 issue. I love my hetero cow and have no intentions of getting rid of her just because she didn't hit the genetic lottery. However, the fact of the matter is, A2 is not going away any time soon, so . . . if I'm looking to buy a bull to breed my cows, and if I'm interested in breeding milking Dexters, why NOT go A2? I did not cause any hetero or A1 bull to be butchered or make him unavailable for someone else to purchase. I could not possibly have bought every worthy bull that was for sale; I could only buy one. It was my money to spend if I was willing to pay the price that the breeder put on this bull for whatever reason--milking genetics, temperament, A2, polled, red, pedigree, cute habit of licking people . . .
When we have calves for sale, I'll evaluate them and price them according to the market. Will I get more for any red, polled, A2 ones? Sure, that's the market. Will I have to eat the black, hetero polled, hetero A2 ones? I haven't had to yet; I've bred and sold three of them! Will we eat a red polled A2 calf? If we can't sell it, sure! Will I get more for halter-trained heifers? Yep, that's the market, too.
There's not a lot I can tell you for sure about A2, but the one thing I think I can safely promise you, the A2 Corporation is not going to come over here and take your A2 cows, a concern I have heard mentioned in relation to the A2 issue. UCDavis VGL website has this disclaimer on the A2 test info page (emphasis mine):
They make no claim whatsoever to own any part of our cows. Yes, VGL (and Texas A&M) have to send them a list of A2 animals they test as part of their right to perform the patented test. I can certainly understand why people might not want to go along with A2 Corp knowing their cow's test results. Honestly though, in this day and age, this is way down on my list of worrisome invasions of privacy. Having to give my SSN everywhere I go and knowing that cameras are all over the place scanning license plates into data bases, some of which are accessible to the federal government, are way higher up my list than A2 Corp knowing that some of my Dexters are homozygous A2. (I'm not trying to be political or offensive; I'm trying to give an analogy.)
So that's my "A2 pilgrimage," fwiw. Now have at it, you won't hurt my feelings unless you hit me with virtual rotten eggs! And sorry in advance for it being so looooong!
I first heard about the A2 issue early on after we got our first Dexter cow in Dec. 2009. I eventually tested our animals (as mentioned in the A1/A2 milk poll thread) and found our foundation cow was A2, but I never got to taste her milk due to a personality conflict between us. Her heifer tested hetero (A1/A2, but that's harder to type!)
Then I thought I ought to read the book, Devil in the Milk. It was a slog, but I got through it. I'm a nurse with some scientific background, but I don't gobble it down for breakfast like some people I know. However, and pleeeeez don't kill me, I actually thought it made some sense. As I understood the book, it was not so much about an "allergy" (think hives, sneezing, etc.) to A1 protein as it was about the way A1 is broken down during digestion and forms BCM7 (this is from memory, so bear with me). BCM7 acts as a narcotic, among other things, which I found interesting because I had always found that if I had trouble sleeping, all I needed to do was eat a bowl of cereal--forget the proverbial hot milk, even cold cereal worked. When I read the narcotic bit, a little light bulb went off and I thought, well, duh, that makes sense. I'm certainly not going to buy into A2 because of that, but I'm just telling you my story.
As I remember from the book (and this was some time ago), there have not been any comprehensive, double-blind studies conducted to "prove" the entire A2 hypothesis. However, the author does extensively cite studies that were done on various aspects related to the issue. One of these that caught my attention was the list of countries where the incidence of heart disease and Type 1 diabetes correlated with whether the majority of the country's milk supply was largely A1 or A2. Apparently, and who knew, such statistics existed. There were other studies cited, and the author of the book is fairly clear that more studies need to be done. A main focus of the book was how the commercial dairy companies made concerted efforts to stop test results from being published when they related to A2 milk. What I got from the book was that the author was trying to present the story behind the story, pulling things together from various countries and sources, and was pretty much saying, "Here are some things for you to think about and evaluate. It's not definitive, but you should be able to read this stuff for yourself and draw your own conclusions."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find scientific research articles a bit much to wade through sometimes, and I personally appreciated the more accessible way he presented various studies and their conclusions. I thought he was fair-minded and very clear about the difference between quotes and his own analysis. Although he has an obvious, and openly stated, bias, I did not feel as if he was ever asking his readers to just take his word for it. Having been raised in a "conspiracy theory" family (yep, my dad believed pretty much every theory Mel Gibson spouts at his taxi passengers at the beginning of the movie!), I am perhaps more ready than most to believe that agribusiness, the milk industry in this case, has a LOT to gain by keeping the A2 issue as quiet as possible and as marginalized as possible.
So much for the book, it left me feeling like I wanted to know more, but interested in the topic.
Then my little granddaughter developed a milk intolerance. She suffered from colic if my DIL consumed any milk products. My DH has suffered from intestinal colic for years, unable to be diagnosed by any of the numerous medical procedures he has undergone. By process of elimination, we came down to thinking there was a link to milk, and he almost had to stop consuming any store-bought milk products, cheese, etc. That is about when I found out that Sara was A2 and Siobhan was hetero. I began milking Siobhan, and we learned that my DH could tolerate raw milk! It was certainly not an A1 issue for him, since Siobhan is hetero for the A2 gene. At the time our granddaughter still did not drink any milk, and I wondered whether A2 milk might prove to make a difference for her.
We ended up selling A2 Sara and bought her A2 granddaughter, Ebony, in her place. This has all occurred over several years, and DH and our granddaughter have now both drunk our raw A1/A2 milk and our raw A2 milk, with no noticeable difference in the two. My DIL gets raw milk from a herd share in TN, and the whole family drinks it with no problem. So our "need" to have A2 milk has not been an issue in the end. We love the milk from both our cows.
Now on to another of the "issues" around the whole A2 issue, and that's breeding. When we decided to buy a bull, I decided I wanted to buy an A2 bull, among a list of other qualities. The top one of those was temperament! Another was beefiness, milking bloodlines (his dam's udder got a perfect score when she was qualified and she has exceptional milkfat and protein content), conformation, etc. I also wanted a polled bull, and I would definitely have preferred a homo polled bull, but that was where I decided to take very good instead of perfect. There MAY be a "perfect" Dexter bull out there, but I knew we couldn't afford him!
So, did I do the "wrong" thing by buying an A2 bull? He was young and unproven, and there may have been some really good hetero bulls I passed up. I did talk to breeders about some of them and was tempted by a couple of them. But they were mostly not halter broken, not handled, and were mature bulls with one or more previous owners. This bull was halter broken, handled, dam-raised, his breeder arranged shipping, etc., etc. So for many reasons in addition to the A2 factor, this is the bull we ended up with. A lot of Dexter breeders could care less about A2 because there are still a great many who don't milk. This is one difference to the pure dairy market. There are still people looking for Dexters who don't care about A2, they just want beefy calves.
One thing I feel no guilt whatsoever about, is adding our bull to the Dexter gene pool! He is really nice in SO many ways that have nothing to do with his A2 status. He is the first animal on this page, and I've included a quote about his dam's milking capability. On the surface, it looks like I've jumped on the "A2 polled red" bandwagon that so many "traditional" Dexter breeders decry, but the purchase of this bull was very carefully thought out. If you knew my first cow, the "polled" part would be obvious. I really did like her, but just sayin'. The red was purely the color he happened to be! It was icing on the cake that our 2 black cows carry red. Honest! The A2 was intentional, but here is my logic . . .
I don't know for sure where I stand on the A2 issue. I love my hetero cow and have no intentions of getting rid of her just because she didn't hit the genetic lottery. However, the fact of the matter is, A2 is not going away any time soon, so . . . if I'm looking to buy a bull to breed my cows, and if I'm interested in breeding milking Dexters, why NOT go A2? I did not cause any hetero or A1 bull to be butchered or make him unavailable for someone else to purchase. I could not possibly have bought every worthy bull that was for sale; I could only buy one. It was my money to spend if I was willing to pay the price that the breeder put on this bull for whatever reason--milking genetics, temperament, A2, polled, red, pedigree, cute habit of licking people . . .
When we have calves for sale, I'll evaluate them and price them according to the market. Will I get more for any red, polled, A2 ones? Sure, that's the market. Will I have to eat the black, hetero polled, hetero A2 ones? I haven't had to yet; I've bred and sold three of them! Will we eat a red polled A2 calf? If we can't sell it, sure! Will I get more for halter-trained heifers? Yep, that's the market, too.
There's not a lot I can tell you for sure about A2, but the one thing I think I can safely promise you, the A2 Corporation is not going to come over here and take your A2 cows, a concern I have heard mentioned in relation to the A2 issue. UCDavis VGL website has this disclaimer on the A2 test info page (emphasis mine):
A2C owns various intellectual property rights (including patent rights, trade marks, and technical and commercial know how) relating to the commercial production and sale of a2™ branded milk or milk with reduced beta casein A1.
It is possible that commercial use of test results may fall within the scope of such intellectual property rights, so if you intend to form a herd of animals used to produce a2™ branded milk or milk with reduced beta casein A1 on a commercial scale, you should contact A2C for more information.
It is possible that commercial use of test results may fall within the scope of such intellectual property rights, so if you intend to form a herd of animals used to produce a2™ branded milk or milk with reduced beta casein A1 on a commercial scale, you should contact A2C for more information.
So that's my "A2 pilgrimage," fwiw. Now have at it, you won't hurt my feelings unless you hit me with virtual rotten eggs! And sorry in advance for it being so looooong!