Here's another good one...

In case you've noticed a trend in recent posts, I've found myself noticing a lot of hidden biases and incomplete information in children's media. I suppose one could argue that there is only so much information you can give to children, but I think it's more than that.

Here's a new one I noticed the other day - apparently Disney Consumer Products has teamed up with Stremick's Heritage Foods to create a new milk beverage line featuring the Little Einsteins on the packaging. Therefore, the Disney Channel is featuring "commercials" during their preschooler time block (which isn't supposed to contain commercials) promoting the products. The one I saw was disguised as an informational segment - "Playhouse Disney 1-2-3" - about where milk comes from. First, it showed happy cows munching on hay and contentedly chewing their cud on rolling green pastures. The farmer apparently milks his herds by hand, and then ships the milk in huge trucks to special factories where it is packaged and sent to stores where we can buy it to drink.

Okay....where to start? The cows producing milk for this mass-marketed product line are probably not living in clean, beautiful green pastures, and they're almost definitely not being milked by hand. And where are the calves who are supposed to be drinking the milk? Where are the vets who come in to prescribe antibiotics to the cows to prevent mastitis in animals who are producing several times more milk than is healthy for them (though the farmer on the segment claims that his cows produce about 8 gallons of milk a day, industry reports indicate that it might be as much as 7 times that amount on average in the US)? What happens to the cows when their milk production decreases?

Perhaps this idyllic picture of dairy farms in America is true in some places, some of the time - though even then, this account is incomplete. It is certainly not true in most places, most of the time. Parents, be aware - misinformation is everywhere!