. . a powerful industry lobbying group runs into global demographics. A group of doctors studying bone health since 1983 (findings published in a book titled "The China Study") have found those cultures that use the most dairy products have the most problems with osteoporosis and those that get their calcium from green leafy plants have the least.

Milk drinking Americans have 5 times the bone fractures from osteoporosis as the Chinese, for instance, but you can expect dairy industry financed "established science" to continue urging us, "drink more milk for healthy bones".

There's been mumbling about dairy having a negative effect on bone density and other health aspects for some years, but I guess the evidence is finally getting more substantial.

Ref: article in health section of the Los Angeles Times 3-7-05, "The dairy debate: Does milk build stronger bones?".

. . and Central Asian tribes, and is localized and a fairly recent development. Most of the population of the world cannot tolerate milk once they achieve adulthood, nor can most animals (house cats obviously excepted).

. . would make it digestible by Orientals.

The reason rennet for cheese making is extracted from the fourth stomach of suckling calves (some disasembly required) is that older calves have already lost their milk digesting enzymes.

Keeping milk cattle in production does produce a surplus of suckling calves, but nowhere near enough for our current cheese manufacturing plants. Today most rennet is produced in factory fermenting tanks by genetically altered bacteria.