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Mayo Clinic’s partnership with dairy poses conflict of interest, critics say
Mayo Clinic's partnership with the dairy industry is drawing criticism for its potential to undermine its credibility.
In the world of nutrition research, dairy is neither hero nor villain. It contains important nutrients like protein and calcium. Yet full-fat dairy also contains relatively high levels of saturated fat, which has been linked to increased levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and greater risk of stroke and heart disease.
These complexities mean many health providers aim for nuance in how they talk about dairy, avoiding the full-throated endorsements they might give to leafy greens or legumes while discussing how dairy can be a part of a balanced diet. But a partnership between the dairy industry and the Mayo Clinic, one of the top-ranked health systems in the U.S., is drawing criticism for its potential to undermine the Minnesota powerhouse’s credibility.
In 2022, the Mayo Clinic signed a five-year partnership with the dairy checkoff, a program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and funded by dairy farmers and importers whose mission is to promote dairy consumption. It’s run by Dairy Management Inc., a nonprofit that drew $178 million in revenue in 2023, the latest year for which data are available, and spent half that money on marketing. The collaboration with Mayo involves research funded by the checkoff on dairy’s impacts on cardiovascular health as well as outreach “communicating dairy’s strong body of evidence,” per a press release from the checkoff when the partnership was first announced. “In addition, co-created content will help debunk dairy myths and help consumers maintain confidence in dairy foods, farms and businesses.”
The announcement didn’t draw much notice at the time. That changed when the clinic launched a three-part podcast series on dairy in January as part of the collaboration, releasing it as part of its Cardiovascular Continuing Medical Education podcast. (The series does not count toward continuing education credits.)
A Mayo Clinic email promoting the podcast caught the attention of Neal Barnard, a physician and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that advocates for plant-based diets. He wrote to Mayo’s chief executive, Gianrico Farrugia, in January with his concerns and published a commentary in the local nonprofit news outlet Minnesota Reformer, arguing that the podcast gives the dairy industry “the opportunity to promote its own industry-funded research, presenting an imbalanced perspective on dairy’s role in chronic health outcomes.”
