"For example, the a2 US website at <
https://a2milk.com/faq/> states: "Our cows are not treated with growth hormones or rBST and our milk is antibiotic free." They are also pasture-fed and run their farms on eco-sustainable principles. That puts A2 milk in the US pretty much in the organic category although suppliers there are not at this point required to have organic certification."
I would put it to you that the above statement is a country mile away from the NASAA standards required for organic certification in Australia.
As for the number of Holsteins in the global herd being irrelevant I would fundamentally disagree. As dairy production has become more commercially orientated and more mechanised, the Holstein has dominated the global dairy herd in the western world. Below is a small article that gives some pretty obvious reasons why, as a dairy farmer, you'd breed holsteins any day of the week before Jerseys or Guernseys.
http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/what-makes-holstein-dairy-cattle-special-569624.html
"There are Jerseys that have the A1 allele and Friesian Holsteins that have the A2, and lots of cows that have always been a mix of the two". I do not agree with this statement. The correct statement should read: All cows have A2, BUT not all cows have A1. However Holsteins do have A1.
And as for drinking milk as a kid at school, I dont know what it was I drank except that I know it had a "top of milk" or "cream top" meaning it wasn't homogenised. Interestingly, I looked up homogenisation to read up a little about it, and found the following: (Maybe the health risks associated with A1 are actually more to do with Homogenisation that the A1 protein????)
"Homogenization is a more recently invented process and it has been called "the worst thing that dairymen did to milk." When milk is homogenized, it is pushed through a fine filter at pressures of 4,000 pounds per square inch. In this process, the fat globules are made smaller by a factor of ten times or more. These fat molecules then become evenly dispersed throughout the milk.
Milk is a hormonal delivery system. When homogenized, milk becomes very powerful and efficient at bypassing normal digestive processes and delivering steroid and protein hormones to the human body (both your hormones and the cow's natural hormones and the ones they may have been injected with to produce more milk).
Homogenization makes fat molecules in milk smaller and they become "capsules" for substances that are able to bypass digestion. Proteins that would normally be digested in the stomach are not broken down and instead they are absorbed into the bloodstream.
The homogenization process breaks up an enzyme in milk which in its smaller state can then enter the bloodstream and react against arterial walls. This causes the body to protect the area with a layer of cholesterol. If this only happened once in a while it wouldn't be of big concern, but if it happens regularly there are long term risks.
Proteins were created to be easily broken down by digestive processes. Homogenization disrupts this and insures their survival so that they enter the bloodstream. Many times the body reacts to foreign proteins by producing histamines, and then mucus. Sometimes homogenized milk proteins resemble a human protein and can become triggers for autoimmune diseases such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis.
Two Connecticut cardiologists have demonstrated that homogenized milk proteins did in fact survive digestion. It was discovered that Bovine Xanthene Oxidase (BXO) survived long enough to affect every one of three hundred heart attack victims over a five-year time period. Even young children in the U.S. are showing signs of hardening of the arteries."
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/022967_milk_pasteurization_dairy.html#ixzz4EiqaxQ7f
(20min delay)