This comes to us from award-winning environmental educator and writer,
Mike Weilbacher. He wrote this in response to some questions he received regarding hormones in milk. He says this all better than I can. My 2 cents have to do with being a
breast cancer survivor and my own vigilance about eating only hormone-free food products.
Here's Mike:
I've enjoyed reading the thread of commentary on PA's requirement, starting Feb 1, that milk be no longer be labeled free of anything, like 'hormone fee' or 'pesticide free.' Coincidentally, I had just been reading up on this for commentary on
WHYY's "Morning Edition," and thought I'd add some additional layers to the conversation.
First, the state says it is misleading to label milk 'free' of something, implying that milk free of, say, hormones is somehow better than milk that is not, even though the FDA claims there is no health risk from synthetic bovine growth hormone (called
rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone) in milk, and consumers have been confused. Fine. But the state also could not present any consumers who were in fact confused-- contrary to what our Secretary of Agriculture says, consumers have not clamored for this labeling; industry has. So the whole premise of this is suspicious.
Second, Europe and Canada have already banned rBGH milk hormones in it, so our milk cannot be exported to many other countries. What do the Europeans know that we seem to miss?
Third, rBGH increases milk production by 10-15%, and separate from the hormone itself, raises other issues. One is that the lifespan of cows may be diminished, as they are milked more vigorously than otherwise and I guess are dying from exhaustion. rBGH becomes short term gain at the cost of the long-term health of the herd. In addition, increased milking leads to a higher incidence of mastitis, infection of the udders. With apologies for perhaps grossing us out, this leads to higher levels of pus in our milk-- at high levels, the infection changes milk visually so that milk does not make it to market, but at lower levels, it's fairly undetectable. And to treat mastitis, farmers put antibiotics in the feed, which ends up in our milk as well, and many physicians and health experts are concerned about high levels of antibiotics in our food.
Additionally, milk made with synthetic hormones shows higher levels of IGF, insulin growth factor, which can be even 10x higher in rBGH milk. Health activists claim this chemical, not the hormone itself, increases risks of prostate, breast and colon cancer, and correlates to a higher tendency of people to give birth to twins. It's IGF that may be the health risk, not rBGH.
Finally, with farmers having to inject each cow with rBGH every two weeks, add antibiotics to feed to combat mastitis, and replace cows more frequently, it's hard for family-run dairy farms to survive, and activists point out that
Monsanto's rBGH has contributed measurably to the loss of family farms.
The first rule of ecology is "you can never do just one thing." Adding rBGH does one thing well, but has a ripple of effects through the food chain. So everyone, including PA's ag secretary, who says rBGH milk is safe is technically correct in that no study seems to point to higher risk from the hormone itself. But we need to take into consideration the entire ripple-- and again, one has to wonder why Europe bans it outright while America paves the way for increased use...
For those worried about milk and this issue, the easiest solution is to simply buy milk labeled organic-- that milk will always be pesticide- and hormone-free, and can blessedly be exported anywhere in the world.
