This week, vegan activist and cycling champion Dotsie Bausch wrote a letter to the US Olympic Committee urging to stop promoting dairy products to athletes. It was printed as a full-page advertisement in three daily newspapers. Dotsie Bausch was a silver medalist for Team USA in the 2012 London Olympics and is the founder of nonprofit Switch4Good.
The letter points out that the committee is supported to support athletes and to advocate for optimal health, the USOPC accepted the tobacco industry as a sponsor in the 1980s. Now after many years of battle that the organization has cut ties with big tobacco and stop the advertisements, Bausch is urging the USOPC to drop dairy as a sponsor to better serve athletes.
“As an organization that promises in its bylaws to protect and promote its athletes' wellbeing and champion the integrity of sport, the USOPC has failed yet again to do what's right,”
“The promotion of unhealthy cow's milk to Team USA athletes and to the public is unacceptable and another example of the USOPC's willful disregard for the wellbeing of those it's entrusted to protect.”
Dotsie Bausch
Bausch's letter is a follow up to another similar letter signed by nine Olympic and Paralympic medalists sent to the USOPC in October, which the organization completely dismissed.
In her letter, Bausch comments on the bad effects of dairy on health and athletic performance such as the constriction of blood vessels and the slowing down the flowing of blood flow to muscles, the inflammatory issue as well the limitation to function, and its link to breast cancer.
This new campaign follows several actions by Switch4Good over the years to demand the USOPC cut ties with the dairy industry. In 2018, Switch4Good debuted with a commercial starring six Olympians speaking out about the health impacts of dairy products, which aired during the closing ceremonies of the 2018 Olympics. However, it was dropped down from the air almost immediately due to the complaints by the USOPC and the dairy industry.
