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Snap, crackle and pop. But do you really know what you are pouring on your cereal? The Natural Law Party wants to make sure you do. American dairy farmers have been injecting their cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) since it was approved in November 1993.
Dennis Slotnick, Natural Law Party of Ohio spokesman, thinks that the hormone, which unnaturally enhances milk production in cows, means an increased risk of cancer, and that it might be responsible for lowering the age of puberty.
“A lack of testing is, maybe, our greatest concern,” Slotnick said.
He also is concerned that, without the need for product labeling, many people might be unaware that they are exposing themselves to elevated levels of the hormone.
Bovine growth hormone injections can increase milk yields by 10 to 15 percent and provide a way for farmers to dramatically increase productivity without increasing herd size. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled in 1994 that labeling of dairy products from animals injected with growth hormone is not required because it is identical to the hormone produced by the cow.
The growth hormone is manufactured by Monsanto using recombinant genetic technology and marketed as Posilac in the United States.
It is harvested and purified from bacteria that have an inserted copy of the cow gene responsible for producing growth hormone naturally.
Opponents claim that the required daily injections of hormones derived from bacteria might also have negative effects and should never have been approved by the FDA.
Between February 1994 and February 1996, the FDA received 1,438 reports of adverse reactions of dairy cattle to Posilac. The FDA thinks that 918 of these possibly were related to Posilac treatment. Reactions ranged from udder infections, or mastitis, to anorexia and death.
Scientific studies show that cows treated with Posilac have elevated levels of insulinlike growth factor, a hormone strongly implicated in cancer development. Other trials have shown that rats treated with Posilac for 90 days developed thyroid cysts and prostate disorders.
Mastitis, the most common problem, requires antibiotic therapy and critics feel that treatment will increase the levels of antibiotic residues in milk and contribute to the problem of antibiotic resistance. But tests were never conducted in humans and no long-term animal trials were completed.
“There is no difference in the milk,” said Gary Barton, director of biotechnology communications for Monsanto.
Barton said that growth hormone and insulinlike growth factor levels in treated cows were within the range seen in normal cows and did not present a problem.
Despite opposition from all quarters, Posilac has been an extremely successful product for Monsanto. In the years since it gained federal approval, Monsanto has sold about $600 million of the drug to 13,000 customers. Currently, three million of nine million U.S. cows get regular injections.
Barton said that there still was no evidence of health problems in countries where Posilac had been commercially available for more than 10 years and that critics were just, “harping back on the same issues.”
Critics gained strength in August 1997 when Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., a national manufacturer of all-natural ice cream and frozen yogurt, won the right to label its products rBGH-free. Since then, many other manufacturers have been following suit to provide the shopper with product information. Before this, Monsanto had filed lawsuits against manufacturers who labeled their products as being free of milk from Posilac-treated cows.
Dan Smith is the sales manager of Louis Trauth Dairy Inc., one of the largest producers of dairy products in the Greater Cincinnati area. He said that Trauth is “dramatically opposed to (bovine growth hormone),” and will discontinue buying milk from farmers who acknowledge that they inject cows with Posilac.
“We don’t want it in the food chain,” he said.
But, without a test for the growth hormone, it is difficult to enforce such regulations.
Smith thinks that the FDA’s having extended approval with so few trials means that, “There’s been a lot of cocktails bought for people.”
Slotnick said that until a reliable test for Posilac could be developed, the Natural Law Party was, “looking at an entire group of legislative initiatives that are purely aimed at label law.”
In the meantime, the only certainties are that Monsanto will continue to manufacture Posilac, and its critics will continue to oppose it. ©
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 1999.