National cows’ milk mandate puts kids, teachers, school administrators in an impossible situation
Zachary, LA — The recent filing of child cruelty charges over a public-school incident in Louisiana spotlights a larger spiraling controversy over school choice in our national school lunch program. The incident involves a teacher who allegedly forced a student to clean up her own feces after she had an accident in class related to her inability to digest milk safely.
The mother of the 6-year-old girl from Zachary, La., knew her daughter was lactose intolerant, but the school gave her cows’ milk as a matter of routine. The girl became ill and repeatedly visited the bathroom. After allegedly being denied yet one more visit to the bathroom, she defecated in her clothes in the classroom and was directed to clean up the mess.
“This bad outcome for the teacher and the student would never have happened if kids were offered more food choices in the National School Lunch Program,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “Upwards of 40 percent of kids participating in the National School Lunch Program are lactose intolerant, yet federal law requires that kids are served milk even if it makes them sick,” Pacelle said.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., already had plans in motion to reform the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) before the incident in Zachary, anticipating that the national cows’ milk “mandate” was a prescription for unhealthy kids and bad outcomes in the school.
Their bill, the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches (FISCAL) Act, will provide a nutritionally equivalent, plant-based alternative to cows’ milk in school meals. This policy would address rampant food and money waste and give 30 million kids participating in the program a healthy beverage option.
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than one-third of the U.S. population is lactose-intolerant, and the rates are especially high for children of African (75%) and Asian (90%) descent. Nearly 33% of Louisiana residents are Black, and nearly 3% are of Asian descent, with a particularly large Vietnamese-American community.
“The recent incident at Rollins Place Elementary School in Zachary, Louisiana, is unacceptable and a glaring example of why we need immediate reforms in our schools to ensure all children have safe and appropriate dietary options,” said Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr., D-La., who last year introduced a version of that legislation.
“I am a strong advocate for the right of all students to have access to milk alternatives in schools,” added Rep. Carter, whose wife and two kids are also lactose intolerant. “No child should be put in harm’s way due to something as simple as a lack of dietary accommodations. My bill would mandate that schools provide non-dairy options to students with allergies or intolerances, ensuring they have a safe drink at mealtimes. No child should be subjected to pain, embarrassment, or punishment due to their medical needs,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy was the lead Republican on the companion legislation in the Senate last Congress. He will team up again with Sen. John Fetterman, D.-Penn., on that same legislative fix. Fiscal conservatives also support the legislation because perhaps as much as 40% of cows’ milk is tossed in the trash because kids don’t like it. That’s an annual squandering of $400 million in taxpayer dollars — $4 billion over a decade.
“We cannot and should not think of this as a one-off incident,” said Dotsie Bausch, president of Switch4Good and a silver-medal-winning cyclist for the U.S. Olympic team. “According to NIH data, we have at least 15 million kids, out of a total of 30 million participants in the national school lunch program, with lactose intolerance or dairy allergies. We see firsthand every year how desperate kids are for another choice, with USDA acknowledging that an enormous volume of cows’ milk cartons are thrown away by the kids unopened! We must do right by our nation’s children and choose fairness and free choice over political inertia.”
Under law, since the 1940s, the USDA places a carton of milk on the tray of every participant in the National School Lunch Program. That makes little sense given that millions of kids get sick from cows’ milk.
“This little girl is just an extreme case of a circumstance that befalls millions of kids every day in America,” said Kendrick Farris, a three-time Olympic weightlifter from Shreveport and gold medalist in the Pan Am Games. Farris is lactose-intolerant and also had problems with the milk mandate when he was growing up in north Louisiana.
The federal school lunch reform has been endorsed by a wide variety of organizations, including American Soybean Association, the National Urban League, the National Rural Education Association, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders, Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Connection Team, and the Coalition for Healthy School Food.
Animal welfare groups are also keenly interested in the FISCAL Act because of the unnecessary distress the excess milk production causes among dairy cows, only to have their milk tossed into the trash bin. Dairy cows now produce seven times as much milk as they did 50 years ago, leading to a range of health ailments, including mastitis and lameness. They are kept continually pregnant and separated from their calves shortly after giving birth.
“We put cows through a lot and then see tens of millions of their output tossed into the trash because kids don’t want the product,” Pacelle said. “This unfortunate circumstance in Zachary left a trail of problems, and we can learn from it and make adjustments in national policy to prevent incidents like this from recurring.”