OK, I'm totally having a cow about a few issues. Yes, it's a bad pun in this case... the topic at hand is milk. It's a dairy diary. Go ahead and TR me for obnoxious use of puns if you must :)
In some ways this is the same old stuff I've been blogging about forever (and I hate sounding like a broken record and repeating topics but these darn UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS who are spreading lies to our politicians and newspapers are making me) and then there are also a few new things here.
One new thing in this diary? I interviewed a dairy farmer. Enough of me trying to figure this out on my own based on Wikipedia articles and such. I went straight to the source.
Another new thing going on? In addition to the rBGH issue that - I'll say it again - UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS are lying about, there's a rather pressing issue about "ultrafiltered" milk. That is, milk with all of the nutrients filtered out. They want to call that shit milk and sell it.
There are action steps to take for each topic, so please follow me below the flip.
The dairy farmer I spoke to this week is John Bunting, a dairy farmer in upstate New York - the #3 state for dairy after WI and CA. I've met him before and I was incredibly impressed with him. He's a good guy in general but beyond that he's very, very well-informed and very well-spoken too. And he doesn't sit around and just take it when he sees his rights being abused. He gets involved - politically if he has to - to do what he can to make things right.
For consumers, our issues tend to revolve around fair prices, labeling truth and access to information, and the health and safety of our foods. Dairy farmers care about those things too but they also care about whether they receive fair prices, whether the market they participate in is fair to all, and of course - they have to care about their cows.
The reason I wanted to speak to John was mostly about cows. We know that consumers don't want rBGH (Monsanto's artificial growth hormone that boosts milk production) used on the cows that make their milk. We know consumers want their milk labeled as rBGH-free when it's rBGH-free. There is some evidence that rBGH use on cows leads to milk that has negative health implications for humans. But what does rBGH do to the cows?
Lying Professors
I guess I should back up a bit here too. What do I mean about university professors lying, as I mentioned in the intro? And who am I to know that they ARE lying?
To be honest I was rather shocked by this. I've always generally been a believer in academic integrity. With the exception of a few notorious global-warming-deniers, I figured professors stuck to the facts. Whoops... I was wrong. I don't know why this is, although during our conversation, John pointed me to an article called The Kept University about a pharmaceutical company gaining a ridiculous amount of influence over Berkeley.
Here are the lies which I speak of. In short, a number of profs from schools like Penn State, U. of Minn., Cornell, OSU, U. of Tenn, and other non-fringy mainstream schools signed on saying:
- Huge corporate interests are trying to make people fear conventional milk.
- rBGH milk is absolutely identical to rBGH-free milk.
- rBGH is better for the environment.
- rBGH cows aren't less happy or healthy than rBGH-free cows.
Let's go through these one at a time. Just to set the record straight. I'm going to save the first one about the huge corporate interests for last.
Lie #1: rBGH is Identical to rBGH-Free Milk
Time to look at Monsanto's own numbers here. I've blogged this before, but years before rBGH was even legalized, some Monsanto documents leaked out. In 1990, Samuel Epstein, MD and Pete Hardin wrote an article about the documents and published the actual Monsanto documents showing the results of tests about rBGH. I've got a paper copy of this in a newspaper called The Milkweed.
A lot of the documents deal with differences in the actual cows themselves, but they did test the BGH levels in the milk.
In Monsanto's experiments dealing with two-week bGH injections, immediately following treatments, the hormone content of treated cows' milk skyrockets to as much as 1000 times control animals' milk hormone levels.
- The Milkweed January 1990 p. 3
A 2006 issue of The Milkweed carries an article dealing with another hormone increased in rBGH cows' milk: IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1). Whereas BGH is a cow hormone that doesn't have any effect on humans, IGF-1 is identical in both species.
The 2006 article references a May 2006 article in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine that links an increase in multiple births in humans to rBGH milk due to the increase in IGF-1 in milk from rBGH cows. Here are 2 quotes:
USDA estimates that in recent years, about 22 percent of all lactating dairy cows in the country receive Posilac [rBGH] injections.
The Journal of Reproductive Medicine article specifically links use of rbGH to increased multiple human births in the U.S. Injecting synthetic growth hormones in milk cows increases their production of IGF-1 - a powerful "secondary" hormone. IGF-1 IS EXACTLY THE SAME IN BOVINES AND HUMANS. IGF-1 spurs cellular growth function.
Steiman's article summarizes:
"Genotypes favorint elevated IGF and diets including dairy products, especially in areas where growth hormone is given to cattle, appear to enhance the chances of multiple pregnancies due to ovarian stimulation."
The article text notes: "IGF increases the sensitivity and responsiveness of ovaries to follicle stimulating hormone (FSH)." Increased sensitivity of the ovaries to FSH is cause for more "twinning."
There are 2 other differences in rBGH milk that I've heard about - increased antibiotics and increased pus - but those both come from increases in mastitis among cows injected with rBGH. I think that leads into the next 2 lies from those professors:
Lies #2 and #3: rBGH is better for the environment and rBGH cows aren't less happy or healthy than non-rBGH cows.
This is where my chat with John Bunting becomes relevant. I asked him about the biological impact of rBGH on cows. From what I could conclude, a lot of the impact of rBGH is just an increase in a bunch of typical things that happen to cows in factory farm environments already. It seems like under normal (if you can call it that) industrial conditions the cows are near their breaking points and rBGH can put them over the edge.
To explain, John backed me up to the beginning of land grant universities. In his eyes, before they existed, the farmer was seen as someone who was the most in tune with nature and the most knowledgeable about farming and the natural world. The land grant universities had to justify their existence - they had to help farmers do their jobs better.
"Helping farmers farm better" in itself is very subjective - the universities wanted measurable progress. You can't quantify animal welfare but you can quantify things like milk production per cow. Which they did.
Through this system, the two breeds that were the best milk producers (Jerseys and Holsteins) were selectively bred via artificial insemination to the point where they were incredibly inbred and really fit for nothing beyond producing the highest quantity of milk. Other desirable traits fell to the wayside. John mentioned in particular that a lot of animals have very weak legs.
From there, he told me that cows eat more when they are injected with rBGH. They need more calories to balance out their increased milk production. Cows that feed on grass - which is the most environmentally friendly way to raise cows AND the healthiest for the cows - literally cannot eat enough.
Instead, rBGH injected cows eat grains and rendered slaughterhouse wastes like beef tallow (yes, cows DO eat cows - legally - according to John). Eating grain may give these cows enough calories but they also change the pH in the cows' rumens (where they digest their food). The rumen becomes acidic and the cow gets "acidosis."
rBGH cows aren't the only cows that eat grains and/or beef tallow - that's pretty much the staple diet of your average factory farmed cow - but they DO eat MORE of it. So it's not necessarily the rBGH that directly gives the cow acidosis but it IS one or rBGH's effects that DOES.
Another consideration is mastitis - an infection of the udder. Again, this isn't something directly caused by rBGH but there is a correlation between rBGH and increased mastitis. A baby calf or a human hand milking a cow does not irritate the udder but a milking machine DOES. The longer the milking machine is on the udder, the more irritated the udder gets. And the more milk a cow produces, the longer it takes to milk the cow.
Therefore, rBGH leads to more milk, which means more time getting milked, which means more irritation, which leads to more mastitis. More mastitis (from what I hear) means more antibiotics for the cow and more pus in the milk. Yum.
Are organic cows happier? Well, if they are being raised on pasture and they aren't being stressed quite so much by eating a diet that makes them sick, living under fluorescent lights, and getting milked 3 times a day, I'd imagine so.
Not all organic cows get to graze on pasture though. Dairies like Aurora and Horizon have perfected the certified organic factory farm. Even so - if no rBGH means less time with the milking machine on your udders and less food that makes you sick, I suppose that IS better.
Lie #4: Opposition to rBGH comes from mega-corporations
Are you kidding me? Seems to me the opposition to rBGH based on human health concerns, animal cruelty concerns, and environmental concerns is totally justified. It's taken years and years of grassroots consumer opposition to finally get the mega-corporations on board with us.
At long last we've got Kraft, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Kroger, and more seeing that their customers don't want rBGH and finally getting rid of it (or in some cases, just getting rid of some of it). Perhaps it's out of concern for future liabilities too. What if the speculated link between IGF-1 and cancer is proven? What happens then?
What is these professors' agenda and why are they doing this? I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. I thought schools were about learning and science and truth. I'm a cynic, but I wasn't cynical enough to predict this!
Action: If you live in Missouri, click here. If you live in Ohio, please click here.
Issue #2: Ultra-Filtered Milk (with the nutrients filtered out)
There is a comment period for this going until April 11. Here's a blurb from an op-ed by a dairy farmer on the topic:
Consumers and farmers should also be infuriated by agribusiness’s current attempts to redefine "milk." The FDA is now considering a request by dairy corporations to allow ultrafiltered milk to be labeled as simply "milk" in cheese. UF milk is a process that strips many of the vital nutrients out of "real milk" thru a filtration process.
The resulting cheap imitation product can be shipped cheaper for longer distances across the country, making it ideal for cheese processors such as Kraft or big industrial users like Pizza Hut. UF milk is not nutritionally equivalent to real milk and offers an inferior product to consumers.
The FDA comment period to redefine milk ends April 11, but I believe it represents just the first step by dairy food corporations such as Nestle and Kraft (working with our corporation-friendly cooperatives including Dairy Farmers of America) to destroy the integrity of our product while fattening agribusiness profits.
The dry form of UF milk is called milk protein concentrates (MPC). MPCs have never been recognized by the FDA as a "generally regarded as safe" ingredient. But now, MPCs are used in Kraft Cheese slices, Velveeta, energy bars, and numerous other products foisted on an unsuspecting public. The corporations get away with this by labeling it not as "cheese" but as a "cheese food product."
MPCs are mostly imported from countries such as Russia and India, which sometimes have questionable safety standards. Already, agribusiness has tried thru the Farm Bill and other FDA petitions to allow the definition of milk to include "MPCs." Consumers think they are buying wholesome dairy products when MPCs in reality are an illegal, untested, unregulated dairy ingredient from foreign countries that is displacing our American dairy farmers’ local, quality milk.
ACTION: Please go here ASAP and submit a comment opposing the use of ultrafiltered milk and the suggestion that it can be labeled as "milk." (If that link gives you trouble, go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID FDA-2008-P-0086-0001)