A couple of months ago, a 61-year-old
Washington guy decided to sue the dairy industry,
of all things, as regards his gunked-up arteries and
recent stroke. His unprecedented claim - too much
whole milk was to blame.
   "I drank milk like some people drink beer or
water," Norman Mayo told a reporter in June. "I've
always loved a nice cold glass of milk, and I've
drank a lot of it."
   A former smoker and self-titled milk-a-holic,
Mayo is not a man given to understatement. It is his
public position, for example, that "milk is just as
dangerous as tobacco."
   In a way, Mayo has sort of invited us here to
dismiss him as some isolated (if darkly amusing)
freak.
   But two weeks ago, a guy named Don Lutz
showed up unsolicited at this newspaper. Among
other things, he was pitching a recent book he had
written called "The Weaning of America," the cover
of which is decorated with a handsome cartoon of a
tongue-lagging cow violently kicking its bewildered
milker to the ground.
   The book's title essay essentially amounts to an
extended bluster against milk. Many of its specific
anti-dairy claims cannot be reproduced here due to
libel concerns. Still, it is possible to summarize the
work's general themes, which seem to mirror
Mayo's: that milk is bad for you (it contains fat and
cholesterol and stuff), and that it's addictive.
   Only Lutz goes farther.
   Of course, he isn't suing anybody. But once you
finish his no-milk essay, you sort of figure out why
- he can't sue the devil.
   Lutz never comes out and says this exactly (and
he doesn't know or isn't saying how the devil got
into the dairy business in the first place), but he
definitely suggests the milk-devil link: According to
Lutz, the innocent-looking and all-American
beverage known as milk is slowly wrecking not
only our bodies but also and our world and its little
creatures - and you have to admit that this sounds
exactly like a scheme the devil would come up with.
   Many of Lutz's positions (milk is unnatural and
wildly unhealthy; the milk industry is inefficient,
cruel and polluting, etc.) are perhaps best explained
by these two facts: He is a vegan, or hard-line
vegetarian; and he is a former longtime employee of
several Washington, D.C.-based animal rights
organizations.
   There are passages in Lutz's book where he, in
Mayo-like fashion, almost asks us to dismiss him
offhand. Like when he labels a typical dairy cow
birth as deriving from "rape by the human
inseminator." Or when he spends much time
grieving the fact that calves are often denied their
own mothers' milk because they can't pay for it. Or
when he asks us, "How van we ignore the
comparison between this and the black women
slaves who were forced to nurse white infants, while
their own babies were sold at auction?"
   Furthermore, in an interview at his Beach
apartment the other day, Lutz admitted that for
some reason he has not had much luck getting the
media to pay attention to him. He allowed as how
his book's sales have been kind of disappointing.
And he conceded, sadly, that the growth of the
anti-dairy "movement" has been "much slower than
I expected."
   Which all sort of conspires to paint Lutz as some
half-bent figure shouting in the wilderness, his
voice heard only by squirrels and passing mountain
men.
   Still, consider a call placed recently to a local
health-food store, which was chosen more or less at
random from the Yellow Pages. In less than five
minutes of roundabout (and truth be told, feeble)
questioning, it was possible to dislodge from the
manager, Diana Lady, the following impassioned
rant:
   "I mean, would you drink dog's milk? Would you
drink cat's milk? No. Why do we drink
cow's milk? Because they can get a lot of it; you
know, it's a big huge industry. So consequently
we've been raised to believe that it's acceptable" -
here she ratcheted up her voice a notch - "when
actually it's made for baby calves that are gonna
grow up to be two thousand pounds and have six
stomachs." (Clearly, she had given the matter some
thought.)
   Lady went on to explain that she is not an animal
rights extremist or a vegan (she eats fish, for
example), but just a health-conscious '90s woman
who has stopped drinking grocery-store milk. 
   And there are a lot more people like her around
here than there used to be, she insisted. She thought
for awhile. "Maybe ten times as many as just five
years ago," she said. "Of course, I don't have any
statistics for that."
   About the only figures available here are the ones
from the Florida Dairy Farmer's Association
(FDFA), which show that Floridians consumed
more than a billion pounds of milk last year, a
number that will doubtless be topped this year,
according to FDFA chief executive officer George
Jung.
   Incidentally, Jung not only professed to be
unconcerned about the anti-milk movement, he said
he'd never heard of it. Also, he started laughing
before I could even get into the substance of the
anti-milk people's claims. (In an interesting side
note, a leading anti-tobacco lawyer is on record as
saying that it's just plain silly to call milk addictive,
and that "milk producers have (never) conspired to
try to convince the public that milk has no possible
adverse consequences.")
   "Oh, we've made some progress," said
Don Lutz, back in his Beach apartment. "But like I
said, I thought this thing would catch on a lot faster
than it has."
   He then began a lengthy and far-reaching lament. 
   He spoke again about his difficulties getting
media attention. "I don't know if it's because this is
too radical, or if it's a shock to people, or they're
afraid I can't document this stuff, or it's just their
sponsors telling 'em no. I'm not sure."
   He talked about what it's like to be a full-time
writer (he's had no other job for the last number of
years). "It's a real tough road to how. I haven't been
very successful at it."
   He touched upon the fact that he never gets paid
for any of the speeches he occasionally gives across
the country. "The only way I ever will be is if I get
lucky and get on Oprah or some show like
that and my book becomes a bestseller, which is a
longshot. Remember what I was saying about the
media?"
   Then he segued, unexpectedly, into the garden
outside his back window. "It's tough growing
anything this close to the beach. I'm gettin' wiped
out by the fire ants and stuff. They ate all my squash
and pumpkins and half my tomatoes. I mean, I'm
having a hard time."
   He sat mute for awhile, apparently transfixed by
the tennis match in progress on his TV. But he
didn't sit still. At one point, he clenched his fingers
behind his head, and his elbows flayed out like giant
cauliflower ears. Later, he literally wrung his hands
upon his lap. "I don't know what the answer is," he
said finally, to a question never asked. 

   News Herald wire services contributed to this
article.

News Herald Photo Illustration: Vern Miller, Brent Unger.