Got (Artificial-Hormoned) Milk?

In 2007, Carol Goland drove home from a meeting of the Dairy
Labeling Advisory Committee in Reynoldsburg feeling optimistic. There
had been heated debate over a seemingly simple issue: the fairest and
most informative way to label dairy products made from cows that have
not been injected with a controversial growth hormone intended to
increase milk production.

The farmers using the hormone — commonly known as rBGH
(recombinant bovine growth hormone), but also rBST (recombinant bovine
somatotrophin) — were worried about losing business to
competitors labeling their products as “rBGH-free.” Goland, executive
director of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, could
empathize. Still, she’d argued — successfully, it would turn out
— that Ohio consumers have the right to know how their food is
produced.

But the matter did not stay settled. In February 2008, Ohio
Department of Agriculture (ODA) head Robert Boggs issued a ruling that
tilted the labeling issue in favor of farmers using rBGH.

Since 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended that
labels touting “rBGH-free” also state that the FDA has
determined that “no significant difference has been shown between milk
derived from rBST-supplemented and non-rBST supplemented cows.” But the
FDA remained silent on details like size and placement of the
disclaimer. [Editor’s note: This paragraph was corrected. It previously stated, falsely, that the FDA requires the disclaimer.]

Boggs decreed that on milk sold in Ohio, this disclaimer must be
placed front and center, directly beneath the hormone-free claim.
Governor Ted Strickland signed an emergency executive order in support
of that ruling. A subsequent legal challenge was unsuccessful, leaving
Ohio with the most stringent rBGH labeling requirements in the country.
This seemed unfair to farmers not using the hormone, which many other
nations have banned over possible links to cancer.

Boggs says that debate had nothing to do with his decision. “The ODA
could care less whether or not farmers use rBGH,” he says. “We just
want consumers to be able to make the most informed decisions for their
families, and some of the labels we were seeing made that hard.”

But organic advocates don’t buy that, and the battle over labels
isn’t over. On September 17, lawyers representing the Organic Trade
Association and the International Dairy Foods Association will argue
before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati in
an effort to reverse the earlier court decision that upheld the ODA’s
ruling.

Conspiracy Theory, Anyone?

A labeling law similar to Ohio’s was passed in Pennsylvania but was
overturned in February. The same thing happened in Indiana. And in
April, then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas vetoed a bill that she
said would “negatively impact a dairy producer’s ability to inform
consumers that milk is from cows not treated with rBST.”

Conspiracy theories involving Ohio have been fueled in part by
“Monsanto & Cancer Milk,” a YouTube video that tells the story of
Fox News reporters fired after putting together a broadcast about rBGH,
and the recent documentary Food Inc. Chat rooms buzz with
speculation that the ODA wants to confuse shoppers in order to benefit
the manufacturers of rBGH (Monsanto engineered it in 1994 but last year
sold the rights to Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly.) Armchair activists
point to Monsanto’s 2007 request that the Federal Trade Commission and
the FDA ban labels that read “rBGH-free.” The agencies refused, so
observers theorize the company switched to a state-by-state
approach.

Boggs rejects the suggestion that industry pressure played any role
in his decision: “We never had any correspondence at all with Monsanto,
Eli Lilly or anyone else. We were hearing from customers who said that
they didn’t know milk from cows given rBGH was the same as milk from
cows who hadn’t been given it. Producers were putting their disclaimers
on the backs of packages in really hard-to-read font.”

But complying with the order isn’t easy, and at least one observer
insists that state government is counting on dairy producers to get
frustrated with verbose and cumbersome disclaimers and stop putting
“rBGH-free” on their labels altogether. That’s exactly what Hartzler’s
Family Dairy, which supplies the Cleveland Food Co-op in University
Circle, among other Cleveland stores, did.

Hartzler’s general manager, John Merriman, says the family-owned
company found Boggs’ label rule unmanageable, so Hartzler’s decided to
remove “rBGH-free” from their old-fashioned glass bottles rather than
attempt to squeeze the long disclaimer onto the bottle.

“If we printed all that right there, we wouldn’t have room to print
much about our milk,” he says. But now some consumers are confused. “We
get calls from folks asking whether we use [rBGH] or not, and then I
have to explain it all to them.”

That’s just what the Washington, D.C.-based International Dairy
Foods Association doesn’t want. “This impinges on free speech, because
our members want to be able to label. It’s about marketing; consumers
want it,” says IDFA spokesperson Peggy Armstrong.

But spokesperson for Governor Strickland, Amanda Wurst, says Ohio
had to get tough with some dairy producers because customers were
getting incomplete and misleading information. Boggs adds that, in
response to what he calls constructive criticism from the rBGH-free
community of producers, the ODA twice reduced the font size of the
required disclaimer. Yet many remain dissatisfied.

“The net effect is that it makes it harder to label products
rBGH-free,” says Goland. “The intent of the rule was to protect
consumers. But there have been unintended consequences. Some producers
are saying, ‘We can’t fulfill the requirements so we’re just going to
say nothing.’ So ultimately the consumer has less information, not
more. The only one who really benefits is Elanco.”

Smith Dairy in Orrville, which supplies Cleveland’s Convenient Food
Marts, complied with Boggs’ rule, adding the lengthy disclaimer to
their milk label. But Smith spokesperson Penny Baker says the verbiage
probably just confuses customers. “The Ohio ruling is very specific
about font size, location, wording. I can see why a lot of producers
might just drop the [rBGH-free] label altogether.”

An Image Problem

An estimated one in six cows in the U.S. are injected with rBGH, and
the dairy farmers who use it do so because it increases milk output by
about 5 to 15 percent.

But to many Americans — and not just the kind who shop at
Whole Foods — milk is liquid childhood: ethical purity and
physical health in a glass. Surveys suggest that the same grocery
shopper who might toss a box of Oreos into the cart might think twice
when he sees a carton of “rBGH-free” milk next to a carton that’s
silent on the issue. And if the results from studies conducted by the
Consumer’s Union and the Chipotle restaurant chain are to believed,
he’ll reach for the milk he considers “clean.”

The FDA declared that milk containing rBGH is safe for human
consumption, but the rest of the developed world is not so sure. Use of
the chemical hormone is banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand
and all 27 countries in the European Union. Codex Alimentarius, the
U.N.’s main food safety body, has twice come to the conclusion that the
jury is still out on whether or not milk from cows given rBGH is
safe.

Scientists point to studies published in Cancer Epidemiology,
Biomarkers, and Prevention; Science; and the 1999 Report on Public
Health Aspects of the Use of Bovine Somatotropin. The issue is the
established connection between rBGH and higher-than-normal levels of
insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in cows’ milk. High levels of
IGF-1 have been linked to breast, prostrate and other types of
cancer.

What’s still unclear is whether significant amounts of IGF-1 can be
passed from milk to humans. The FDA maintains that even if IGF-1 does
survive digestion, the levels would be so low that there would be no
significant effect on human health.

Monsanto spokesperson Thomas Helscher points out that although our
ideological neighbors have banned the use of rBGH, they have not banned
U.S. dairy imports. But Rick North, director of the Campaign for Safe
Food program of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, argues
that it doesn’t mean those countries consider it safe.

“The countries don’t want to get involved in world-trade
complications,” says North. “The official reasons Canada and the EU
cited for banning internal use was the harm to cows. However, they both
had internal committees dealing with human health that cited concerns.
Health Canada, their version of the FDA, cited all kinds of concerns
with rBGH’s effects on human health. Similarly, the EU’s Scientific
Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health cited cancer
and increased antibiotic resistance as human-health concerns.”

The concerns are real, says Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist
at the independent, nonprofit Consumers Union. “We know that the cows
have higher levels of IGF-1, and we know that higher levels of IGF-1 in
humans are toxic. Further studies have to be done to establish whether
or not there is a link.”

But who is going to fund these studies? Not the FDA, it seems. And
Hansen says that the Europeans and Canadians, having already banned the
chemical, have no need to fund further studies for a drug that has no
health benefits.

The Cows Think it Bites

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of harm caused by rBGH comes
from veterinary scientists. Studies indicate that it makes cows lame,
disease-prone and dead.

Based primarily on research published by the Canadian Journal of
Veterinary Research and The Report on Public Health Aspects of the
Use of Bovine Somatotropin, the Humane Society of the United
States, the European Union and Health Canada have concluded it’s
inhumane.

Corollaries have been long established between increased risk of
lameness and shortened lifespan and rBGH use in cows. Juiced-up cows
also tend to suffer from mastitis, a painful disease of the udder.
Miyun Park, director of farm animal welfare at the Humane Society, says
that it’s “simply wrong to inject cows with a substance that increases
painful and debilitating diseases.” And Donald Broom, who headed the
European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal
Welfare, concluded in his report that, in addition to mastitis and
lameness, artificial hormone injections “often results in unnecessary
pain, suffering and distress.”

And then there’s the matter of antibiotic resistance. Sick cows
require antibiotics — lots of them. North points to research that
shows that powerful antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria make it
into their milk. Many of these powerful strains are killed in the
pasteurization process, but a few mighty strains are not.

Oddly, FDA spokesperson Siobhan Delancey writes in an e-mail that
“the FDA is not aware of any data that the use of rBST shortens
a dairy cow’s life span.” She adds that the average life
expectancy of a dairy cow is four-five years, and that the FDA has “no
evidence that the introduction of rBST in 1993 has altered that
average.”

But the international scientific community, as well as local dairy
farmers, would argue Delancey’s points. “You’re supposed to inject the
cow when she’s pregnant, and it makes her produce more than twice as
much milk,” says Hartzler’s Merriman. “When she has another calf, she
produces even more. It puts a lot of stress on the cow and wears her
out. They get used up, spent. We have cows [not injected with the
hormone] that live and produce milk for 10 to 15 years.”

North hopes one day all cows will get the Hartzler’s treatment.
“RBGH is a house of cards founded on ignorance,” he says. “Once people
find out about it, it’s over. Who wants something like this?”

He has a point. Last year, under pressure from consumers, nearly all
members of the Michigan Milk Producers Association signed an agreement
not to use rBGH.

news@clevescene.com

This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2009.