More about A2 milk & various issues surrounding it
Jan 31, 2015 9:44:09 GMT -5
simplynaturalfarm, rosalind, and 11 more like this
Post by Nonesuch Melissa on Jan 31, 2015 9:44:09 GMT -5
Alrighty then... First of all Susan go get a mirror, look into it and repeat after me... "Melissa Parker loves me, she thinks I am a great person, kind, warm, decent, moral and she would not hurt my feelings for the world... But I did open a thread, almost as a challenge, and ask people to speak their minds"... Then please call the 'other' Dexter breeder who is deeply hurt by this and ask her to do the same thing (cause I can think of at least two that I knew where going to hate this and I love them).
This part really, really, really sucks for me. Because it is some of my nearest and dearest that are breeding almost exclusively for A2. And I get it. It's what people want. I am leaning that way myself because it's harder and harder to sell a heifer or cow that is not A2. And from all the conversations I've had with people in the last year or two they don't give a rat's patooti if I believe it or not because THEY believe it and they WANT A2.
So all I am asking is why WE (yes the collective WE) are not sharing truth with people rather than promoting something unproven? And I feel personal guilt over it. Yes it's nice that a fair amount of my original herd was at least A1/A2, yes it's nice that I could afford testing, yes it's nice that I was able to move on or eat my few A1 animals and yes it's nice that several calves that I kept from my bull when he died unexpectedly are RED, POLLED, A2.
So far in my eight years with Dexters I have survived the great Chondro debate (still going yes but the fire is down from blaze to smolder), My animals survived being tested for PHA. And I am mostly unscathed even on A2. But I've bought animals from someone who was getting out defeated by having been sold a chondro bull by someone VERY high up in the association when they were brand new and then finding out that they could not sell his chondro pos offspring. I picked up a heifer from someone who was getting out because he lost the PHA lotto in a big way and most recently I have watched an acquaintance whose A1 milk cow sat on craigslist for 6 months last year at a reasonable price finally sell the cow in milk for $600 so her husband would not butcher it, because they were moving. Maybe I have survivors guilt but I understood the Chodro controversy, I got why PHA needed to be tested for and controlled and I even get why people prefer certain colors and breed for them... But this... allowing someone to think that there is something about an animal's milk that will make them sick or maybe kill them without basis in fact... It's just unconscionable.
And right here I am going to quote myself from the thread that was the springboard for this one... This comment pretty much sums up what I had to say there. "The way the drive for A2 affects my breeding really bugs me though... If it has some legitimate benefit I want to breed for it but I don't want to be forced by economics to breed for it because some corporation has decided it's marketable. Because having a corporation decide what I should be eating by what is most favorable to their profit margin is the antithesis to the reasons I got into farming."
This part really, really, really sucks for me. Because it is some of my nearest and dearest that are breeding almost exclusively for A2. And I get it. It's what people want. I am leaning that way myself because it's harder and harder to sell a heifer or cow that is not A2. And from all the conversations I've had with people in the last year or two they don't give a rat's patooti if I believe it or not because THEY believe it and they WANT A2.
So all I am asking is why WE (yes the collective WE) are not sharing truth with people rather than promoting something unproven? And I feel personal guilt over it. Yes it's nice that a fair amount of my original herd was at least A1/A2, yes it's nice that I could afford testing, yes it's nice that I was able to move on or eat my few A1 animals and yes it's nice that several calves that I kept from my bull when he died unexpectedly are RED, POLLED, A2.
So far in my eight years with Dexters I have survived the great Chondro debate (still going yes but the fire is down from blaze to smolder), My animals survived being tested for PHA. And I am mostly unscathed even on A2. But I've bought animals from someone who was getting out defeated by having been sold a chondro bull by someone VERY high up in the association when they were brand new and then finding out that they could not sell his chondro pos offspring. I picked up a heifer from someone who was getting out because he lost the PHA lotto in a big way and most recently I have watched an acquaintance whose A1 milk cow sat on craigslist for 6 months last year at a reasonable price finally sell the cow in milk for $600 so her husband would not butcher it, because they were moving. Maybe I have survivors guilt but I understood the Chodro controversy, I got why PHA needed to be tested for and controlled and I even get why people prefer certain colors and breed for them... But this... allowing someone to think that there is something about an animal's milk that will make them sick or maybe kill them without basis in fact... It's just unconscionable.
And right here I am going to quote myself from the thread that was the springboard for this one... This comment pretty much sums up what I had to say there. "The way the drive for A2 affects my breeding really bugs me though... If it has some legitimate benefit I want to breed for it but I don't want to be forced by economics to breed for it because some corporation has decided it's marketable. Because having a corporation decide what I should be eating by what is most favorable to their profit margin is the antithesis to the reasons I got into farming."