Cows naturally lactate seasonally (after giving birth), but dairy cows are injected with oxytocin all year round so that they keep producing milk; such milk is 'induced, not real'.

Original statement

في بقره بتحلب طول السنه وما فيش حاجه اسمها كده ده البقر ده مواسم يعني يولد يعني يخلف يرضع يعني ايه بقرب اوكسيتوسين تحقن طول السنه ما الاوكسيتوسين ده هرمون غده درقيه خلفي ما الدرقيه قصدي نخاميه

verbatim according to source. Translation by the project; the Arabic wording is authoritative.

Translation

Cows naturally lactate seasonally (after giving birth), but dairy cows are injected with oxytocin all year round so that they keep producing milk; such milk is 'induced, not real'.

Origin

Source status

Video transcript (own words)

Attribution

Elawady (machine transcript)

Video

Dr Diaa Al Awady د ضياء العوضي is live! الهرم الغذائي الجديده (Open source)

Published

20 January 2026

Timestamp

0:47:23 (location in the original video’s automatic YouTube caption track; confirms where the words occur, not who speaks)

Attribution uncertainty

Archive transcript (YouTube CC or AI-generated); no timestamps; wording may contain speech-recognition errors; speaker turns are not marked, the excerpt was judged to be Elawady's own speech from context.

Claimed mechanism

Year-round oxytocin injections keep cows lactating outside the natural post-calving period.

Claimed health effect

Implied: milk from such cows is unnatural and harmful (part of the general case against dairy).

Population concerned

Consumers of cow's milk.

Geographic restriction by Elawady

none found; stated as a general description of dairy farming

Diverging source versions

Scientific assessment

Mostly false – Essential parts of the statement are not supported by the evidence or are strongly exaggerated.

Certainty of evidence: low – Further research is likely to change the assessment considerably.

1. What was claimed?

Dairy cows give milk all year only because they are injected with oxytocin; the milk is therefore not 'real'.

2. What is demonstrably correct?

Oxytocin is released from the posterior pituitary (he corrects himself to the pituitary) and contracts the milk-producing tissue during milking and after birth. Repeated oxytocin injection of dairy animals is a documented practice in at least one country: an Indian survey describes indiscriminate use and found oxytocin in market milk from milkmen (mean 8.9 ng/mL; I-INTA-05). Long-term exogenous oxytocin reduces the udder's response to the cow's own oxytocin (I-INTA-06), so the practice is undesirable.

3. What is wrong or exaggerated?

Oxytocin does not create or maintain lactation over the year. Its role is milk ejection (let-down): it releases the milk already produced, which is needed for the more than 80% of stored milk in the alveoli (I-INTA-06). Milk production is initiated by pregnancy and calving and maintained by hormones such as growth hormone and prolactin, local mechanisms in the udder and regular milk removal (I-INTA-07). Year-round milk supply in dairy herds is explained by repeated calvings at different times of year, not by oxytocin (general dairy practice; not taken from a cited study).

4. What remains unclear?

How often oxytocin is injected in Egyptian dairy farming is unknown to us; we found no Egyptian survey. Whether oxytocin traces in milk have any effect on consumers is not established: the Indian survey measured no health outcomes (I-INTA-05), and peptide hormones like oxytocin are generally unstable and poorly absorbed in the gut (I-INTA-18, indirect).

5. Which studies support it?

I-INTA-05 (practice documented in India).

6. Which studies contradict it?

I-INTA-06, I-INTA-07 (oxytocin causes milk ejection, not year-round lactation). I-SRC-130 (buffalo: 90-95% of milk released only by oxytocin-induced ejection).

7. What applies to Germany and Europe?

Not verified for this review; in the EU oxytocin is a veterinary medicinal product, and routine use for milk let-down was not documented in the sources read.

8. What is known about Egypt?

No Egyptian survey of oxytocin use was found. Buffaloes, important for Egyptian milk, store 90-95% of their milk deep in the udder and release it only through oxytocin-induced milk ejection, which explains why oxytocin is used for let-down when the calf is absent; it does not create lactation (I-SRC-130).

9. What practical conclusion is appropriate?

Concerns about oxytocin misuse in some dairy systems are legitimate for animal welfare and regulation, but the claim that cows give milk all year only because of oxytocin is physiologically wrong, and a health risk to milk drinkers has not been shown.

Assessment details

Rationale for certainty of evidence

The physiology (oxytocin causes milk ejection, not year-round lactation) is well established in reviews, but data on how often oxytocin is injected in Egyptian dairy farming and on any consumer health effect are lacking.

Source quality

Elawady's own words in an archive machine transcript (live stream); exact wording may contain recognition errors.

Regional transferability

Oxytocin misuse is documented in parts of South Asia (I-INTA-05); prevalence in Egypt and Europe was not verified.

Individual exceptions

Not applicable.

Regional scope of the claim

depends on production conditions

Last reviewed

26 October 2026 provisional

Scientific evidence in detail

Overinterpreted – A real finding exists, but the claim draws more from it than the data allow (e.g. association taken as cause, animal data applied to humans, small effect presented as large).

Research question: Do dairy cows give milk all year only because of oxytocin injections, making their milk 'not real'?

Study results as reported by the authors. Our assessment follows below.

Open questions

Egyptian survey of oxytocin use in dairy herds.

How deeply was this checked?

5 linked studies: 0 checked in full text (0 of them with a structured risk-of-bias assessment), 5 on the basis of the abstract, 0 bibliographically only. No formal assessment with two independent reviewers and no independent human expert review has taken place yet.

Last scientific review: 26 October 2026

In plain language

Dr. Elawady said that cows only give milk all year because farmers inject them with oxytocin. Oxytocin is a real hormone that helps release milk from the udder, and in India some farmers have been reported to inject it too often. But oxytocin does not make a cow produce milk: that depends on calving and other hormones, and herds give milk all year because cows calve at different times. We found no study showing that traces of oxytocin in milk harm people.

Studies on this claim

Regional context

Germany / EU

Not verified for this review; in the EU oxytocin is a veterinary medicinal product, and routine use for milk let-down was not documented in the sources read.

Egypt

No Egyptian survey of oxytocin use was found. Buffaloes, important for Egyptian milk, store 90-95% of their milk deep in the udder and release it only through oxytocin-induced milk ejection, which explains why oxytocin is used for let-down when the calf is absent; it does not create lactation (I-SRC-130).

• Food-safety governance and official controls
• Pesticide residues in fruit and vegetables on the EU/German market (incl. imports from Egypt)
• Pesticide residues in produce sold on the Egyptian domestic market
• Antibiotic (veterinary drug) residues in poultry meat and eggs
• Antimicrobial use in food animals and antibiotic growth promoters
• Hormones in poultry, meat, milk and farmed fish
• Dioxins, PCBs and PFAS in eggs and other animal foods
• Aflatoxin M1 in milk and dairy products
• Aflatoxins in groundnuts (peanuts)
• Heavy metals in fish
• Farmed fish (aquaculture): drugs, water source and controls
• Import controls and the meaning of RASFF notifications for Egyptian products

What applies in my country?

General scientific assessment

Mostly false Oxytocin misuse occurs in some regions, but it releases milk rather than creating year-round lactation, and harm to consumers is unproven.

The following areas of food safety are relevant to this statement:

• Pesticides and pesticide residues
• Veterinary medicines and antibiotics
• Hormonal growth promoters
• Contaminants (heavy metals, PFAS, PCBs, dioxins, nitrate)
• Mycotoxins (mould toxins)
• Controls, imports, recalls, labelling

Eggs · Poultry · Dairy · Fish and seafood · Red meat · Fruit and vegetables

Limits: legal rules describe what is allowed, not what every single food contains. Measurement data come from samples and are meaningful only together with their method details.

Country of residence or purchase Compare with another country

References

1. Analysis of oxytocin in milk samples and intake pattern in different age groups of Indian population.. Mishra M et al.. Toxicology mechanisms and methods 2014 · PMID 24712660 · DOI 10.3109/15376516.2014.910851
2. Induction of milk ejection and milk removal in different production systems.. Bruckmaier RM et al.. Journal of animal science 2008 · PMID 17709779 · DOI 10.2527/jas.2007-0335
3. Endocrinology of milk production.. Svennersten-Sjaunja K et al.. Domestic animal endocrinology 2005 · PMID 15876512 · DOI 10.1016/j.domaniend.2005.03.006
4. Perinatal physiology and welfare in water buffalo: calving, mother-calf bonding, lactation, and postpartum disorders.. Mota-Rojas D et al.. Front Vet Sci 2026 · PMID 42707960 · DOI 10.3389/fvets.2026.1913756
5. Impact of Peptide Structure on Colonic Stability and Tissue Permeability.. Taherali F et al.. Pharmaceutics 2023 · PMID 37514143 · DOI 10.3390/pharmaceutics15071956