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.”
“They have experts coming on just saying kind of silly, glowing things about why everybody should be drinking milk, so it’s just a big, three-hour dairy industry commercial, and it’s inappropriate,” Barnard told STAT.
While Barnard’s group opposes dairy consumption, he’s not alone in finding reasons to be concerned about Mayo’s partnership with the dairy checkoff, which encompasses Dairy Management Inc. and its subgroups, the National Dairy Council and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.
“In my opinion, not-for-profit health entities should never partner with food trade associations because such partnerships create blatant conflicts of interest,” Marion Nestle, a professor emerita at New York University who studies the role of the food industry in shaping dietary habits and nutrition policy, said via email. “The partnership makes the Mayo Clinic appear to endorse dairy products as foods that everyone should be eating, an idea that some (many?) people find debatable for reasons of health, animal welfare, or environmental protection.”
Beyond the podcast, critics note the potential for conflict of interest in studies conducted by Mayo Clinic researchers but funded by the dairy checkoff program. In October 2024, the Mayo Clinic’s Cardiovascular Research Center invited doctoral-level investigators at Mayo to apply for funding for research involving whole milk dairy foods and cardiovascular health. “Priority will be given to dietary trials and studies whose results may change paradigms,” according to the announcement, which was reviewed by STAT. The email said that the applications would be for a “multidisciplinary collaborative grant,” but did not specify that the dairy checkoff program was providing the funding.
“Mayo Clinic research adheres to strict regulatory and ethical guidelines to ensure the integrity of our independent research results, which are then peer-reviewed and published,” the Mayo Clinic, which is headquartered in Rochester, Minn., said in a statement shared by spokesperson Heather Carlson Kehren. “The Dairy Management, Inc., is not involved with and does not influence the research or potential publications.”
For the dairy checkoff, the goal of the collaboration is to “advance the science on key health and wellness topics by funding high-quality studies that undergo peer review and provide education and outreach to improve public health and discover more about dairy’s health and wellness benefits,” Joe Micucci, a spokesperson for Dairy Management Inc., told STAT via email. “National Dairy Council is not involved in how the research is conducted nor the final outcomes.”
University researchers and patient advocacy organizations regularly accept funding from industry groups, but not without a hefty dose of side-eye from critics.
“Anytime you have one of these public-private partnerships, it’s a bit of an odd fit,” said Matthew McCoy, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
And for the Mayo Clinic, a system that pulled in over $19 billion in revenue in 2024, a collaboration with the dairy checkoff doesn’t seem critical to the bottom line. These kinds of deals create the risk of bias, McCoy said, so it’s best to skip them if an organization can do its health messaging and research without the additional financial support.
“The clinic is going to survive with or without this partnership,” he said.
The dairy industry’s ties to health organizations
The $60 billion dairy industry has a long history of finding ways to promote and protect dairy’s place in the American diet, often via the checkoff program. “Checkoffs control the conversation in the American food system; they’re the most powerful thing no one knows about,” said Austin Frerick, author of the book “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry” and a fellow at Yale University’s antitrust program. And within the hierarchy of powerful agricultural checkoffs for products like beef, eggs, and pork, “there’s dairy, and everyone else.”
Partnerships with health organizations are a key part of the dairy checkoff’s strategy. A Dairy Management Inc. press release last year noted that collaborations with Mayo Clinic and National Medical Association, which represents Black physicians and patients, “enhanced the reputation of dairy in health and science circles.”
The National Dairy Council is also listed as a participating member of the American Heart Association’s paid Industry Nutrition Forum, along with food giants like PepsiCo and General Mills. It has partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics on initiatives like a guide for parents on feeding children under age 2 and a nutrition education program for pediatricians.
“The dairy industry is extremely aggressive in finding ways to get the medical imprimatur for their product,” Barnard told STAT.
But research is still evolving on its potential harms and benefits. U.S. dietary guidelines currently recommend adults consume three cups of dairy per day, most of which should be fat-free or low-fat. Some critics say that’s too high, and note that while dairy provides some key nutrients, these can also be found in other foods, and that ideal levels of dairy consumption probably varies with each individual’s diet — for example, what other sources of protein and calcium are consumed. Eating a lot of dairy may be associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, but a higher risk of prostate cancer. Some newer research suggests full-fat dairy may not be linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease after all, but also calls into question previously touted benefits of dairy like reduced risk of fractures in adults.
The upshot: “For many outcomes, dairy foods compare favorably with processed red meat or sugar-sweetened beverages but less favorably with plant-protein sources such as nuts,” researchers Walter Willett and David Ludwig wrote in an influential 2020 review published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Mayo’s messaging on dairy
STAT reviewed the products of Mayo’s partnership with the dairy checkoff so far in order to understand how questions about dairy and nutrition are being framed, and how transparent Mayo has been about the dairy industry’s involvement.
The Mayo dairy podcast series discloses the collaboration with the National Dairy Council at the beginning of each episode. It includes interviews with nutrition professors (at least one of whom, Richard Bruno, has accepted research funding from the National Dairy Council in the past) and registered dietitians, as well as an executive chef.
Neither the guests nor the hosts go so far as to suggest everyone needs to eat dairy or to dismiss concerns about saturated fats entirely. But the three episodes largely focus on research that either puts dairy in a positive light or complicates its potential risks. In two of the three episodes, host and Mayo Clinic cardiologist Kyla Lara-Breitinger brings up research conducted in France, where she notes that “everything is full fat,” as a way of questioning the idea that full-fat dairy consumption is necessarily linked to worse health outcomes.
The episodes also mention ways to work more dairy into one’s diet — for example, discussing how people with lactose sensitivities can build up their tolerance with yogurts and hard cheeses. They observe, accurately, that many plant-based milks contain added sugar.
In that vein, Lara-Breitinger brings up research conducted in rats on the potential anti-inflammatory benefits of full-fat dairy — a topic to which the National Dairy Council has dedicated research funding and sponsored conference sessions. Though her guest, Bruno, notes that the research findings have not yet been translated to humans, Lara-Breitinger says that she considers it while talking to her patients: “It’s like, what are you eating that I could replace with something that has this milk-fat globular membrane that has more vitamins and an anti-inflammatory effect than these pro-inflammatory, ultra processed foods that we eat?”
A positive slant toward dairy is also evident in the dairy and health page that the National Dairy Council worked on with Mayo Clinic Press, the clinic’s trade publishing arm, according to a 2024 press release. The articles do not indicate that they were created in partnership with the dairy program, although a note at the top of each article says: Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission.
“While Dairy Management Inc. provides input on the topics for these Mayo Clinic Press articles, Mayo Clinic determines the ultimate topics and maintains full editorial control of the published content,” Mayo’s Kehren said.
One article on the dairy and health page highlights research suggesting that the saturated fat found in full-fat dairy may not have negative effects on heart health. Others focus on the benefits of yogurt for digestion and proper nutrition during pregnancy, recommending dairy along with other foods as a source of protein, calcium, vitamin D, iodine, choline, and vitamin B-12.
Some points discussed on the podcast and the dairy and health page are at odds with other advice from the Mayo Clinic. On the mayoclinic.org website, which is separate from that of the Mayo Clinic Press, the Mayo Clinic recommends limiting saturated fats, including those from dairy, because of higher risk of heart disease, and advises choosing skim milk over full-fat milk and eating more plant protein instead of animal protein as part of a heart-healthy diet.
It’s contradictory that the Mayo Clinic has a relationship with a checkoff program “that’s promoting dairy products, including lots of cheese and butter and things like that, that truly are not optimal foods, and at the same time they’re telling people to eat less saturated fat,” said Willett, a Harvard nutritionist who as part of his 2020 review of dairy argued for lowering the amount of dairy servings in U.S. dietary guidelines. “So it’s not good.”
Few details about the dairy research that is also part of the collaboration are publicly available, but a press release from Midwest Dairy notes the formation of a scientific advisory team to review applications made up of three researchers from Mayo and three from Dairy Management Inc., and that three projects from researchers in the Mayo Clinic’s network had received grants in 2022 and 2023. The Mayo Clinic’s October 2024 request for applications, reviewed by STAT, notes that the grant is for up to $500,000 over two years, and that a particular area of interest is “dietary intervention trials on the role of full-fat dairy foods within healthy dietary patterns on risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease.”
“The things that you’re typically worried about in the situation like this is that the commercial interests of, in this case, the dairy industry are influencing the research that they’re doing,” said McCoy. Researchers at universities and nonprofit institutions, where industry-funded studies are common, often think they can avoid being influenced by the groups footing the bill — but studies suggest that the source of financial backing can sway everything from the questions they ask to the conclusions they reach.
In its statement, Mayo noted that the agreement with the dairy checkoff was primarily about “research involving dairy products and cardiovascular health.”
Dairy isn’t the only food industry group to seek out financial partnerships with hospitals and health systems. “Think of all those McDonald’s restaurants in children’s hospitals,” Nestle said. While some hospitals have ended such contracts in recent years, about 36 in the U.S. still have fast-food restaurants McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Chick-fil-A on their premises, according to Barnard’s group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Now, as the Make America Healthy Again movement propels conversations about how the food industry influences Americans’ dietary habits and nutrition policy, health organizations’ relationships with commercial interest groups may be in for even more scrutiny. The nutrition, bioethics, and agribusiness experts who spoke with STAT agreed that while they weren’t shocked that the Mayo Clinic entered into a partnership with the dairy industry, they were disappointed.
“Dairy foods are controversial,” Nestle said. “The Mayo Clinic does not need to take a side in dairy debates, and should not.”
STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.