What did U.S. Senator Cory Booker do for cows after his 25-hour speech?

Booker introduced a bill –– for the second time––seeking to add soy milk to National School Lunch Program options

WASHINGTON D.C.––What did Cory Booker,  58,  U.S. Senator from New Jersey,  do on April 1,  2025,  soon after completing his record 25-hours-and-five minute speech from the Senate floor,  denouncing the policies of U.S. president Donald Trump?

After spending the duration of his speech on his feet,  without food or so much as a bathroom break,  breaking the “longest Senate speech” record set in 1957 by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina,  Booker did not go straight home to sleep.

Proposed amendment to Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act

Instead,  the official Congress,gov web site indicates,  Booker quietly seconded S. 1235, officially described as “A bill to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act to require schools to offer a variety of milk to students participating in the school lunch program.”

Richard B. Russell,  a U.S. Senator from Georgia,  longtime colleague of Strom Thurmond,  introduced the National School Lunch Act in 1946,  soon signed into law by then-U.S. president Harry Truman.

The mandate that milk be served as a part of school lunches was added in 1954.

Segregationists

Both Thurmond and Russell were avowed segregationists,  who opposed every major civil rights bill introduced during their political careers.

Indeed,  Thurmond’s previous record 24-hour,  18-minute filibuster came in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957,  the first civil rights bill to become law since 1875.

Both in breaking Thurmond’s record for “longest Senate speech,”  and in seeking to amend the National School Lunch Act,  Booker struck at the racist legacies that were Thurmond and Russell’s proudest achievements;  but only the Thurmond filibuster was widely recognized as such.

“The majority of children of color are lactose intolerant,  and yet our school lunch program makes it difficult [for them] to access nutritious,  non-dairy beverages,”   explained Booker in October 2023,  as co-author of a forerunner to S. 1253 called the Addressing Digestive Distress in Stomachs of Our Youth (ADD SOY) Act.

            (See The USDA “milk mandate”:  a black-&-white issue on school lunch trays.)

“ADD SOY Act” recycled

“We must ensure that all children have access to nutrient-rich drink options that do not make them sick,”  Booker said.

The proposed ADD SOY Act died with the close of the 118th Congress.

Now dubbed the “Freedom in School Cafeterias & Lunches (FISCAL) Act,  introduced into the House of Representatives as HR 2539,  the bill at the moment has only one Senate cosponsor,  Senator John Kennedy,  a Louisiana Republican,  and only one sponsor in the House,  Representative Troy Carter,  a Louisiana Democrat.

Despite the very long odds against passing either S. 1253 or HR 2539 through the 119th Congress,  and the near certainty that Donald Trump would veto either version,  even if passed,  Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle strongly endorsed both versions hours after Booker,  Kennedy,  and Carter introduced them.

“Industry capture”

“It’s no secret that powerful animal use interests — the industrial pork producers,  the western ranching industry,  and laboratory animal breeders,  just to name a few — exert disproportionate control over federal agencies,”  Pacelle began.

“In political science terms, it’s called ‘industry capture,’  and some federal agencies,  such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA],  are experts at serving these masters.

“When it comes to animals and their well-being,  these industry groups generally don’t give a damn and generally treat any animal welfare standards as a ‘regulatory burden,’”  Pacelle observed.

“The dairy lobby is perhaps king when it comes to industry capture of government,”  Pacelle charged.  The USDA funnels billions of tax dollars to producers,”  including perhaps most egregiously through the “milk mandate” in the National School Lunch Program.

What the “milk mandate” means

The “milk mandate” means,  Pacelle explained,  that “The government denies local school districts reimbursement for the costs of breakfast and lunch offerings unless the school places cows’ milk on the trays of every student receiving nutrition assistance,  whether the child wants the milk or not.

“This program operates even though as many as half of the 30 million kids getting this form of nutrition assistance are lactose intolerant.

“The incidence of lactose sensitivity is especially high among non-white ethnic groups,”  Pacelle emphasized,  as Booker had earlier,  “with up to 75% of African Americans,  65% of Latinos, and more than 90% of Asian Americans and Native Americans suffering the often-incapacitating effects of lactose sensitivity.

Plant-based milk option

“The National Institutes of Health reports that the majority of all people have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy,  and lactose sensitivity “is also very common in people of West African, Arab,  Jewish,  Greek,  and Italian descent,”  Pacelle recited.

“To remedy this unfairness and unwind a rigged food assistance program,”  Pacelle said,  “more than 200 organizations support” S. 1253 and HR 2539.

“This legislation,”  Pacelle detailed,  “requires public schools to offer children a plant-based milk option that meets USDA nutritional standards as part of the National School Lunch Program.”

Among those 200 organizations,  Pacelle listed,  “are the National Urban League,  the National Rural Education Association,  the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America,  International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders,  Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Connection Team,  American Soybean Association,  and the Coalition for Healthy School Food,”  along with the anti-dairy group Switch4Good.

Garbage

“Given this widespread physical aversion to cows’ milk,”  Pacelle continued,  “it is no surprise that according to the USDA’s own review,  29% of the milk cartons served in our schools are thrown unopened into the garbage.

“A 2017 study focused on 60 schools in a medium-sized urban district concluded that “of the total milk offered to School Breakfast Program participants,  45% was wasted,”  equivalent to the total milk output resulting from the births of 21,500 calves to an equal number of cows.

“Add all of that up and it amounts to $400 million a year in squandered taxpayer dollars,”  Pacelle charged,  a fact that should interest Elon Musk and his Department of Governmental Efficiency,  but so far has not and is unlikely to.

Eight decades of collusion

“Yet despite eight decades of this collusion between industry and government,”  meant to habituate children to lifelong milk consumption, “it is not working.  Consumption of fluid milk has declined by half in the last 40 years.”

Pacelle concluded with several paragraphs pointing out the suffering of the cattle involved,  “from inflammation of the udders to foot and leg problems resulting from the massive body mass the cow must support,”  to say nothing of the surplus calves sent to early slaughter.

Charles Walter Forward

Very likely neither Booker nor Pacelle ever heard of Charles Walter Forward (1863-1934),  the English author of Fifty Years of Food Reform (1898),  who became vegan at age 15 after childhood illnesses that killed his siblings in infancy and often kept Forward himself out of school.

            Hong Kong animal advocate and humane movement historian John F. Edmundson,  however,  on April 5,  2025 posted an excerpt from Forward’s 1924 book The Fruit of the Tree: an argument on behalf of man’s primitive and natural diet,  presaging Booker and Pacelle sufficiently that one could imagine they channeled him.

“The milk industry is well-organized and very profitable,”  began Forward,  “and it is not surprising that every effort should be made to maintain the superstition that milk is indispensable.  Enormous sums are paid by local authorities for grants of milk to poor families where there are young children,  a very doubtful benefit in view of the many dangers associated with contaminated milk.

“Cease to live a parasitical life at the expense of the cow”

“Dr. [Augustus Volney] Waller,”  Forward mentioned,  citing a vegetarian physician best known for his work on nerve degeneration in severed tissues,  “in a recent lecture remarked that ‘It is a mistake to suppose that children of the slums are unhealthy.  An enormous proportion of them, between three and six years of age,  are magnificently healthy,  although brought up under the most unorthodox conditions.’

“The reason of this,  Waller declared,  is that cows’ milk has played no part whatever in their early diet.  They were breast-fed entirely for their first five or six months.  Not a hundredth part of the present bottle feeding of infants was necessary.”

Concluded Forward,  “If civilized man desires perfect health and freedom from the risk of infection for himself and his offspring,  he must cease to live a parasitical life at the expense of the cow.”

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