![\"Kangaroo](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_25-06-05_15-36-38-491-e1749163199727.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n WASHINGTON D.C.\u2013\u2013<\/strong>The evolutionary distance between marsupials and placental mammals is currently believed to be about 160 million years,\u00a0 both having emerged from a common ancestor in the Late Jurassic period,\u00a0 sharing habitat with Brachiosaurus,\u00a0 Stegosaurus,\u00a0 Allosaurus,\u00a0 and Diplodocus.<\/p>\n The chronological distance between Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle claiming campaign successes on behalf of both kangaroos, \u00a0the most prominent marsupial species,\u00a0 and a pair of the most prominent placental mammals,\u00a0 specifically both human children and cows,\u00a0 was only two weeks.<\/p>\n This was also accomplished amid dinosaurs,\u00a0 figuratively anyhow,\u00a0 from the old guard in the athletic shoe industry to the old guard of the\u00a0U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n First,\u00a0 on May 15,\u00a0 2025,\u00a0 Adidas\u2019s chief executive officer Bj\u00f8rn Gulden personally told Pacelle and the Adidas company annual general meeting that Adidas\u2013\u2013the world\u2019s largest athletic shoe maker\u2013\u2013has permanently stopped sourcing kangaroo skins for soccer shoes,\u00a0 the last Adidas product to use kangaroo leather.<\/p>\n (See <\/em><\/strong>\u201cKangaroos are not shoes\u201d campaign boots Adidas into the goal<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n ANIMALS 24-7 <\/strong>had barely reported that news when on May 20,\u00a0 2025,\u00a0 Animal Wellness Acton spokesperson Lindsay von Busch emailed that,\u00a0 \u201cThe global athletic shoe giant ASICS has followed suit.\u201d<\/p>\n Stipulated ASICS,\u00a0 \u201cWe are moving toward ending the production of products using kangaroo leather by the end of 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pledged Von Busch,\u00a0 \u201cThe Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action are ramping up efforts to persuade Mizuno \u2014 the last major athletic shoe brand still using kangaroo leather \u2014 to make the same commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n On May 31,\u00a0 2025,\u00a0 just 16 days after the Adidas announcement,\u00a0 the Financial Times<\/em> reported that Mizuno too had quit making shoes from kangaroo leather.<\/p>\n \u201cMizuno alone had upward of 25 shoe models made from kangaroos,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle said,\u00a0 wrapping up a \u201cKangaroos Are Not Shoes\u201d campaign introduced in 2020 with a research report and paper entitled The Moral Footprint of the Athletic Shoe Industry<\/em>.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was a false note,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle suggested, \u00a0\u201cfor Australia to put kangaroos at the center of marketing and tourism promotions,\u201d\u00a0 featuring a kangaroo in the national coat of arms,\u00a0 \u201cwhile maintaining kill quotas for six million kangaroos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is not enough money in the kangaroo parts trade to employ nearly enough shooters to conduct killing on that scale,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle assessed. \u00a0\u201cLast year, the shooters killed 1.3 million kangaroos \u2014 about 18% of the state quotas.\u201d<\/p>\n Kangaroo hunters typically kill whole kangaroo \u201cmobs\u201d at once.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mothers are shot too,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle explained.\u00a0 \u201cThat means their dependent joeys are doomed, \u00a0left to starve, \u00a0or perhaps to be finished off by having their heads slammed against a truck fender or bashed in with a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Under pressure of the international \u201cKangaroos Are Not Shoes\u201d campaign,\u00a0 the athletic shoe makers Puma,\u00a0 Nike,\u00a0 and New Balance quit buying kangaroo skins in 2023.<\/p>\n The last kangaroo leather shoe makers held out for two years longer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is still work to do,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle acknowledged. \u00a0\u201cMizuno must formalize its timeline. Adidas and other companies must honor their pledges. \u00a0And Congress must pass the Kangaroo Protection Act to ensure our giant market no longer welcomes the sanitized skins sent our way by the collaboration of clothing companies and commercial shooters.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pacelle then turned toward a much more difficult campaign rooted right here in the U.S.<\/p>\n Even at peak,\u00a0 the kangaroo leather trade was only worth about $200 million a year.\u00a0 \u00a0Big as it was,\u00a0 the kangaroo leather business was Late Jurassic mammal-sized compared to the brontosaurus-sized U.S. dairy industry.<\/p>\n The U.S. dairy industry is worth about $39 billion a year,\u00a0 directly and indirectly employing about three million people:\u00a0 about 1.5% of total U.S. wage earners.<\/p>\n The U.S. dairy industry is supported in large part by the culturally entrenched belief,\u00a0 maintained and reinforced by the National School Lunch Program,\u00a0 that drinking cow\u2019s milk is an essential part of childhood nutrition,\u00a0 long after children are weaned from their own mothers\u2019 milk.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Neither marsupials nor other placental mammals,\u00a0 in their long development of distinctly different methods of nursing,\u00a0 ever evolved a phase that involved nursing from a different species,\u00a0 let alone species as divergent as cows and humans.<\/p>\n Indeed,\u00a0 cows and humans last shared a common ancestor about 80 million years ago.\u00a0 Marsupials and placental mammals had already long since gone their separate ways,\u00a0 but the vegetarian Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus were still around,\u00a0 joined by the younger and also vegetarian Iguanodon,\u00a0 Hadrosaur,\u00a0 Triceratops,\u00a0\u00a0 and Ankylosaur,\u00a0 as well as by the fiercely carnivorous Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus Rex.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In view of the evolutionary distance involved,\u00a0 it is small wonder that inability to digest cow\u2019s milk,\u00a0 called lactose intolerance,\u00a0 afflicts from 50% to 70% of Latinos,\u00a0 60% to 80% of African Americans,\u00a0 80% to 90% of Native Americans;\u00a0 and 90% to 95% of Asian-Americans:\u00a0 altogether,\u00a0 about a third of all U.S. school children.<\/p>\n (See The USDA \u201cmilk mandate\u201d:\u00a0 a black-&-white issue on school lunch trays<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Geography and genetics suggest that those of us who can digest cow\u2019s milk are at least partially descended from Neanderthals,\u00a0 also the genetic source of blue eyes and blond and red hair.<\/p>\n The National School Lunch Program milk mandate,\u00a0 a Neanderthal throwback requiring that a carton of milk be provided with every federally subsidized school lunch, \u00a0originated in 1949 as a way of subsidizing the dairy industry.<\/p>\n Though perhaps well-intended,\u00a0 the National School Lunch Program milk mandate,\u00a0 in light of current knowledge about nutrition and health,\u00a0 was Neanderthal in concept,\u00a0 albeit lucrative for the dairy industry from top to bottom.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have since July 2023 sought to amend the National School Lunch Program to allow schools to offer \u201cnutritionally appropriate and digestible beverage options, \u00a0including non-dairy milk.\u201d<\/p>\n This would seem to be a no-brainer,\u00a0 something that even a Stegosaurus, \u00a0long erroneously believed to have a second pea-sized brain in his butt, \u00a0could figure out.<\/p>\n As Pacelle has long argued,\u00a0 \u201cSymptoms of lactose intolerance \u2014 bloating, \u00a0gas, \u00a0diarrhea, \u00a0abdominal pain, \u00a0nausea, \u00a0and more \u2014 can significantly impair a child\u2019s ability to learn and thrive in school. \u00a0These symptoms are avoidable with simple changes in beverage policy.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Further,\u00a0 as Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have previously pointed out,\u00a0 USDA research has discovered that \u201c29% of the cartons of milk served in our schools are thrown in the garbage unopened, \u00a0sending at least $300 million in tax dollars into the trash. \u00a0Another study found that children discard 45 million gallons of milk each year,\u201d\u00a0 equivalent to the total milk production of about 21,500 Holstein cows.<\/p>\n That data should at least have attracted notice from the Department of Governmental Efficiency,\u00a0 yet apparently did not faze founding DOGE chief Elon Musk,\u00a0 known to have posed for photos in a cheesehead hat.<\/p>\n But no $39 billion a year industry,\u00a0 with many an elected official bought and paid for,\u00a0 cannot be expected to quickly or easily surrender a schoolroom monopoly on corrupting the diets of youth.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thus,\u00a0 while the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee approving a proposed bill normally is not news landing with the thump of a dinosaur\u2019s foot,\u00a0 it is news and a noteworthy achievement for critics of the school lunch program milk mandate that the committee on June 3,\u00a0 2025 \u201cpassed a bipartisan compromise bill that merges key provisions of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act (S. 222) and the Freedom in School Cafeterias & Lunches Act (S. 1236),\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle summarized,\u00a0 \u201ccreating a landmark shift in how milk and milk alternatives are handled under the National School Lunch Program.\u201d<\/p>\nBoth campaigns dodge dinosaurs<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cKangaroos are not shoes\u201d any more<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMizuno was last target<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFalse note<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n\u201cThere is still work to do\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMilk mandate is tougher target<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nCows & human evolution<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNeanderthals<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNon-dairy milk options<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMilk waste did not faze Elon Musk<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nAmendment to milk mandate clears Senate Agriculture Committee<\/h2>\n