Human beings do not “need” dairy, and there exists NO such thing as “lactose intolerance.” Human beings are not baby cows and do not need to consume the secretions of other species.
A condition called “lactase persistence;” however, does exist.
“Mammals are born to drink milk…The milk sugar, lactose, is broken down by the enzyme, lactase. In most cases, mammals stop producing lactase after weaning, but a nucleotide switch in their DNA can keep lactase flowing into adulthood, a trait called lactase persistence.”1
Mother cows who are mammals like human beings produce milk to feed their babies for the sole purpose of their baby calves gaining several hundred pounds.
Human beings normally digest lactose for the first five to seven years of their lives, but most other mammals stop producing lactase much earlier. Cattle may be weaned from their mothers’ milk at six months to one year of age, and lambs are generally weaned around 16 weeks old.
Humans do not need cows’ milk any more than they need giraffes’ milk or zebras’ blood for a transfusion. Sadly, baby calves who truly do need their mothers’ milk, are taken from their moms during the first twenty four hours of their lives because humans think they need it more…to drink with butter and egg laden pastries, and to eat cheese and ice cream.
The reason that human beings believe they need the milk of another species for calcium, etc. is because they are addicted to it and/or they have been programmed to think they need it by the dairy industry because the meat, fish, dairy and egg industries are the new tobacco industry. (See Posts entitled, “What is our relationship with nonhuman beings?” “The Correlation between Tobacco and Big Ag” and “Sensory pleasure: Big Ag (meat, fish, dairy, egg industries) verses Tobacco” herein.)
1“Evolution: It Does a Body Good,” The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), February 26, 2007.