rBGH Ruled Unsafe
for Canadian and European People and Cows
Canada and the European Union have
banned the use of Bovine Recombinant Growth Hormone (rBGH), citing
its toxicity to both cows and humans, but the US Food and Drug
Administration approved rBGH use for US dairy cows.
rBGH a genetically engineered synthetic
hormone, mimics a naturally occurring hormone released when a
cow is pregnant, which allows the cow to produce milk for her
calf. When rBGH is injected into a cow, nature runs wild, causing
the cow's milk output to increase. Nutritional energy that is
supposed to sustain the entire cow becomes almost entirely dedicated
to milk production. Vital nutrients are leached from other parts
of her body, causing painful udder infections and crippling lameness.
In addition, rBGH injected cows are much more likely to suffer
infertility and gastrointestinal disorders. Because rBGH use increases
the incidence of disease a rBGH-injected
cow requires greater amounts of antibiotics than an rBGH-free
cow. Increased antibiotic usage may lead to resistance to antimicrobials,
having dire consequences for the health of both humans and cows.
After more than nine years of study that took into account
the findings of two independent advisory panels, Health Canada
(the FDA's Canadian counterpart) made the decision to ban the
hormone, citing greatly increased health risks to cows and potential
health risks for humans exposed to rBGH. Canadian researchers
reported that "long-term
toxicology studies to ascertain human safety" must be conducted,
as their research indicated that rBGH may cause "sterility,
infertility, birth defects, cancer and immunological derangements"
in humans. Other recent studies, as reported in the Journals Science
(1/23/98) and The Lancet (5/9/98) have linked IGF-I (Insulin-like
Growth Factor), high levels of which are present in milk produced
with rBGH, to much increased incidence of prostate and breast
cancer.
The European Union has enacted an rBGH moratorium, due to expire
in 2000, based on European studies that concurred with Health
Canada's findings. In addition, a recent European Commission on
Consumer Health and Protection study concluded that rBGH should
not be used in dairy cows, as its use seriously compromises a
cow's health and well-being.
Why the US needs to increase milk production is puzzling. Every
year since the mid-1950s, the US has produced far more milk than
its citizens can consume. According to the Ecologist (vol.
28, no. 5), since 1980 the US government
has spent a whopping 18 billion dollars sopping up America's milk
surplus in order to prevent milk prices from plummeting.
How and why approval of rBGH occurred and is being upheld,
seems not so much a question answered
by sound science or interest in the public's welfare, but by corporate
patronage. If rBGH's approval were to be rescinded, the Monsanto
corporation stands to lose $300 to $500 million a year in sales
of its rBGH product, Posilac. Upper echelons of Monsanto and FDA
management are constantly interchanged. Many of Monsanto's top
brass were once employed by the FDA, and vice versa. For example,
Margaret Miller, the FDA's Director of Food Safety, is now "reviewing"
her own rBGH research done while she was a Monsanto employee.
Monsanto attorney Michael Taylor was hired by the FDA to fast-track
rBGH through the approval process.
In order to approve the growth hormone, the FDA violated its own
guidelines on several occasions. According to FDA literature,
approval of a drug "requires pharmaceutical companies to
submit all studies they conducted [and] all the raw data form
the basis of the approval of the product...". The FDA never
reviewed all of Monsanto's data, disregarded the Canadian ban
decision, and approved rBGH based solely on information presented
in Monsanto's own project summary.
The FDA website states that the "elimination of violative
residues in meat and milk" is of utmost importance. By ignoring warnings from both Europe and
Canada, the FDA endangers the well-being of Americans and their
dairy cows.
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How
You Can Be rBGH-Free
Betsy Lydon, consumer representative
on the National Organic Standards Board and Program Director
at Mothers & Others, an organization educating consumers
about safe and ecologically sustainable buying choices, has a
few simple, yet effective, recommendations to avoid rBGH-tainted
products.
Read the label. If your milk carton doesn't say organic
or rBGH-free on the label, then the milk inside isn't rBGH free.
At a conventional milk processing plant, milk is collected from
individual dairies and then taken to a centralized "creamery"
where milk front rBGH-injected cows is mixed with milk produced
without the synthetic growth hormone, tainting the entire batch
of milk. All products certified organic are labeled as such and
do not contain milk produced from rBGH injected cows. Although
an organic label is the only guarantee that a dairy item is rBGH-free,
a few larger companies, such as Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and
Stonyfield Farms Yogurt have long standing policies of only buying
milk from dairies that pledge not to ruse rBGH. Labels on their
product certify their foods as rBGH-free.
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Buy local or buy imported. Many small, producer-owned
dairy cooperatives do not use growth hormones in their cows,
so check around home for a good local dairy that certifies its
milk as rBGH-free. Because rBGH is banned in Canada and the European
Union, dairy products imported from either place do not contain
the growth hormone.
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Left: This dairy cow was found covered in mud and nearly
starved when she was rescued from a North Carolina dairy. She
now leads a rBGH-free life at The Humane Farming Association's
Suwanna Ranch – a farm animal refuge.
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AWI Quarterly, Spring 1999, Vol. 48,
No. 2