Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

by Sunaura Taylor

For decades the USDA has promoted milk and dairy products by declaring that everyone should be getting two to three servings of dairy a day. Yet the Food Empowerment Project (FEP) reports, “While 95% of Asians, 60–80% of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80–100% of American Indians, and 50–80% of Latinos are lactose intolerant, only a very small proportion of individuals of northern European descent experience any pain as a result of consuming lactose-filled milk products.” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Lactose Intolerance: Information for Health Care Providers,” NIH no. 05-5305B, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/Documents/NICHD_MM_Lactose_FS_rev.pdf.) As scholars such as A. Breeze Harper and John Robbins have shown, this bias in favor of dairy is a form of institutionalized nutritional racism, which leads many to become sick with symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea, bloating, and flatulence, especially in communities that are least likely to have access to dairy-free alternatives. A study by the FEP reports that “dairy alternatives were only available in approximately 3% of market locations in lower-income areas, which have proportionally much larger populations of ethnic minorities. In comparison, dairy alternatives were available at 23% of locations in higher-income neighborhoods.” Food Empowerment Project, “Food Deserts,” accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.foodispower.org/food-deserts.