Cows eat herring for new milk

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 Posted: 10:05 AM EDT (1405 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/scienc...reut/index.html



WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) -- Some landlocked Canadian cows are enjoying a little seafood with their hay and grain so they can produce a new kind of milk being touted for its benefits for the brain, eyes and nerves.

The milk, produced by herring-fed cows in Ontario, provides a fatty acid also common in salmon, trout and mackerel to diets of people who don't eat enough fish, said Larry Milligan, a researcher at the University of Guelph, which developed the milk.

But it doesn't taste fishy, Milligan said Tuesday.

"I don't detect any difference whatsoever from regular milk," he said.

The milk is sold in Ontario by Neilson Dairy, a subsidiary of George Weston Ltd. , Canada's largest food processor and distributor.

At $5.29 (Canadian) per four liters ($3.98 for 3.5 quarts), it's more than 20 percent pricier than regular milk, but similar in cost to calcium-enriched milk.

The fatty acid, called docoshexaenoic acid, or DHA, is an omega-3 fatty acid that is also found in omega-3 eggs, nuts and canola oil.

Ninety grams (three ounces) of cooked Atlantic salmon contains 1.2 grams of DHA, a week's worth of what the body needs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Drinking three cups of the fortified homogenized milk provides 0.06 grams of DHA, Neilson said.

Children can get almost 60 percent of recommended DHA by drinking two cups of the new milk a day, it said.

But one food activist said the nutritional claims are a red herring used for marketing.

"I'm frankly so skeptical of all the dietary claims: one thing is good for you, and then it's not," said Brewster Kneen, publisher of The Ram's Horn journal, which rails against biotechnology and multinational food processors while promoting organic farming.

Kneen said cows are best left to turning grass and hay into foods humans can eat rather than eating designer diets.

"Why are we taking herring, which is a good human food, and putting it through a cow? This is very strange," Kneen said.

Milligan said fish meal has been used for protein in livestock diets for decades and is safe.

"DHA milk was put through all the possible analytical measurements you could even imagine for Health Canada [the country's health ministry] and was approved," he said.

If they would grass feed their cattle instead of grain feed them, the beef would contain all the omega-3's we would need (don't know about the milk).

I agree, why not have the cows eat grass and humans eat herring. This seems silly. People should just stick to what's natural and you don't see cows in nature chowing down on herring. Now feeding chicken flax seed seems like a good idea, but fish to cows ? What will they think of next.

So where is the long term research on this?
Mad cow is linked to the addition of animal protein in feed(ok there are conflicting opinions there((some of them involving aliens))
I don't think the world needs supplemented milk.

Its actually linked to grinding up other animals infected with prion disease and feeding it to other animals. As far as I know, there's no prion diseases in fish that I've heard of. Otherwise, no one would be eating fish.

I couldn't think of the unfolded protein thing-prions. And it was cannabilism ie cattle fed to cattle.
They linked the death of a herd of elk to lichen they were eating that grew naturally in area.

Now if they were feeding cows to herrings, I'd like to see that. Especially if it was whole ones.

Not all omega-3s are created equal

Carol Ness, Wednesday, April 7, 2004

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...FDGNM606121.DTL

Science is very clear when it comes to the cardiac and other benefits of the long-chain omega-3s found in fish, DHA and EPA. The other main kind of omega-3, short-chain ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), found in flax and canola oil, as well as walnuts, has been shown to be heart healthy too; but to use it, the body must convert this form into the potent DHA and EPA, and it doesn't do it very efficiently.

Most of the omega-3s in eggs, including Chino Valley Ranchers' and Organic Valley's, come from hens that are fed flax seed, so it's the hard-to- use kind, 225 mg per egg.

The Southern California-based Gold Hills Farms brand (Petaluma Farms is the Northern California producer) takes a different approach. It adds farmed algae to hens' feed to make eggs with 150 mg of DHA, plus some ALA. The algae is more expensive than flax, so there are far more flax eggs on the market.

But which is a better buy? And wouldn't it be just as good to pop a fish oil softgel instead?

Petaluma Farms' Steve Mahrt argues that the eggs "give people extra nutrients in the way that nutrients are supposed to be delivered to the body - - through food." His DHA eggs are being promoted as a way for people who don't like fish, or live far from the coasts, to get their omega-3s.

Nutritionists recommend that people eat fish and forget about supplements. But Mahrt brings up problems with mercury and heavy metals in some fish to promote his DHA eggs as a cleaner alternative.

So are the eggs a healthy alternative? You'd have to eat a lot of them to get a gram a day of omega-3 fats, as recommended by the Food and Drug Administration. While the American Heart Association dropped its limit of three to four yolks a week four years ago, nutritionists still counsel against going hog-wild on eggs or any one food. Eating moderate amounts of cholesterol- rich foods doesn't raise most people's blood cholesterol levels, but some people don't metabolize cholesterol well and have to be more careful.

Some studies suggest that EPA and DHA may reduce cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. But the science of omega-3s is still evolving

And, although herring is relatively low in mercury, feeding those herring to dairy cows every day over the course of several years is bound to cause that mercury to build up in the cow - and when that cow eventually goes to slaughter...