JUST SAY MOO
Norton, W. P.
Just Say MOO Now they want to drug the cows BY W.P. NORTON Milk—nature's perfect food. But will it stay that way? Not if the chemical companies have anything to do with it. Monsanto, American...
...Besides the Epstein report, virtually nothing has been said to contradict the FDA's assertion that the drug cannot be detected in milk and would have no secondary effects on humans...
...The price tag on the dairy-surplus program was about $12 billion...
...That's why the industry insists on using the more scientific—and sanitized— term Bovine Somatatropin, or BST, rather than BGH...
...If, as predicted, BGH drives down milk prices, it would eventually squeeze thousands of farmers off the land, leaving only the corporate farms with large-scale managerial resources and deep pockets to weather the storm...
...There was, he believed, enough uncertainty over the behavior of genetically engineered BGH to warrant the start of long-term human health studies...
...In Wisconsin alone, the corporation spent $37,833 in lobbying fees and expenses in the year starting July W.P...
...Eli Lilly and Co., based in Indianapolis, spent $20,214...
...But the companies have not given up...
...BGH is a product with no redeeming value," says Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends...
...But these guys are really hooked on all these pharmaceutical inputs...
...It's simply a distraction from the issue of how to reorganize agriculture so that it's sustainable in every sense of that word...
...Still, farmers appear to be hedging their bets...
...Approval of BGH by the FDA for commercial sale is a near-certainty within a few months...
...It's just going to create another drug dependence," says Dr...
...But regular picketing—organized largely by Kinsman and his Farm Unity Alliance—stopped the experiments...
...With profits on the line, Monsanto has been lobbying hard...
...Market analyses also showed consumers are repelled by the mere mention of hormone additives in milk...
...1, 1988, according to the secretary of state's office...
...Our entire agricultural system has put farmers on a treadmill where they have to produce more and more to stay even," she says...
...And testing involving some 11,000 cows around the country goes on...
...Michael Fox, a veterinarian and head of the National Humane Society...
...With 17 per cent of the nation's milk production, Wisconsin is the top dairy state...
...Family farms may be a thing of the past as chemical companies peddle a startling range of genetically engineered food products onto supermarket shelves...
...It was a matter, Epstein said, of the public being kept in the dark by companies that had reason to fear their massive investments were being jeopardized...
...And this is called progress...
...Kinsman has been in the forefront of opposition to BGH...
...BGH is the tip of the iceberg of what these oppressive industries and their allies want to put on the consumers of the world...
...It's a real high for the corporate dairy industry...
...We'll see a faster turnover rate, and more cows going into hamburgers...
...Small farming is only now picking itself up from the farm crisis of the mid-1980s, which drove thousands out of a time-honored way of life...
...In the majority of instances where industry interests are involved, the only information available to Congress and decision-makers is either developed in-house, or by contract with university research arms," he said...
...It's more than just BGH that we're opposing," he says...
...All we've ever asked is to get the public both sides and let them decide," he says...
...Field trials and university studies are being conducted in at least twenty states at a cost of $10 million to $15 million a year...
...Companies like Eli Lilly and Upjohn will clean up on this stuff if it gets approved," Stauber says...
...Until late last year, milk produced with BGH had been sold on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, where the school of agriculture was conducting BGH research under contract with the chemical manufacturers...
...So it seemed fitting that the fight over BGH would be joined there...
...Our biggest success is going to come in the nonlegislative arena...
...It's not the first time the agency has insisted that a radical new chemical is benign: Such pesticides as DDT, synthetic hormones, and chemical additives now known for their high risks were all once touted as threat-free...
...The FDA is holding steadfast to its position that BGH milk is safe...
...It's outrageous that FDA refuses to release these studies," says Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette...
...Monsanto, American Cyanamid, Eli Lilly, and Upjohn are promoting Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a bioengineered substance injected into cows that is said to increase milk production by as much as 20 per cent...
...One of their tactics is to avoid any reference to genetic engineering, according to an analyst quoted in The Wall Street Journal...
...The longest-term studies of BGH on record so far do not stretch over the five-year milking life of a typical dairy cow...
...BGH may not be good for cows, either...
...The only delay would come from Washington, where Congress could call for further studies on the matter, or even a commercial moratorium...
...The cow's immune system will be placed in jeopardy because of energy budgeting: She's putting so much into milk output that her own bodily needs will be sacrificed...
...Monsanto has already sunk $1 billion into long-term biotechnology research, with most of its eggs in the BGH basket...
...In the wake of the announcements by the food retail chains that they would spurn BGH milk, University of Wisconsin officials have yet to find a buyer who will take milk from BGH test herds...
...It's hard for them to resist...
...If we're successful there, the rest will follow...
...But resistance is great at the grass roots, in the state houses, and in the boardrooms of the nation's supermarket chains, which have refused to accept dairy products from cows injected with BGH...
...Wisconsin's LaFollette wrote to FDA Commissioner Frank Young in early August, asking for a moratorium on the sale of BGH products until further studies are done...
...With so much milk around, and production showing no signs of slowing down, Wisconsin fanners alone could lose as much as $100 million annually if BGH takes off...
...One who stayed on the land is dairy farmer John Kinsman, whose family has tilled the soil of Lime Ridge, Wisconsin, for generations...
...It's bad for the farmer, the cow, the consumer, and the taxpayer...
...Meanwhile, the chains' own consultants were citing a 1987 report from the Office of Technology Assessment which found that 52 per cent of Americans believed genetically engineered food products may pose a serious danger to people or the environment...
...High-yielding dairy cows already suffer from a wide spectrum of diseases...
...But Dr...
...We want to make it so there won't be any processor in the country who will handle this milk...
...Now, after four years, we are more convinced than ever of the value of working to stop this...
...The corporations' strategy is to rely on surrogates—mostly scientists and the FDA— to win the battle for public confidence...
...BGH combatants are already drawing battle lines for the next round...
...It's a very powerful economic incentive," says Stauber...
...But in the long run, time and money are on the side of the corporations...
...Biotechnology may be here to stay, but it's up to the public to decide whether we have anything to say about it...
...And the Foundation on Economic Trends joined roughly forty other groups and individuals in a formal petition asking the FDA to conduct long-term health studies...
...The U.S...
...In the rest of the country, active BGH testing continues...
...Samuel Epstein was one of the first scientists in the nation to sound the alarm on BGH...
...The family farmer is already an endangered species...
...If the cooperatives say no, the farmers are encouraged to sell their milk elsewhere...
...Henry A. Miller, the special assistant to the FDA Commissioner on biotechnology issues, ridiculed the safety issue, calling Epstein's report a "gross distortion of scientific fact...
...He said substances known as "cell-stimulating growth factors" had been reported in milk from cows injected with the drug...
...This product and what it represents probably pose far more serious hazards than did the nuclear revolution...
...The study's planned September 1 start-up date passed...
...Already, consumers in some states have unknowingly been drinking this high-tech milk...
...The country's 160,000 dairy farmers produce about 150 billion pounds of milk a year...
...The extent of any threat to consumers remains unclear...
...The nation was so glutted with milk that by 1986 and 1987, the Government picked up the tab for the most drastic surplus-cutting measure yet—a $1.8 billion program to pay 14,000 farmers for slaughtering 1.5 million cows and calves...
...This creates an inherent conflict of interest, and a conscious and subconscious effect on those receiving the funds...
...They are organizing dairy farmers into coalitions which, in turn, demand that their dairy co-ops go on record as refusing to take milk from BGH cows...
...If the technologies end up consolidating more control, then you can produce more hunger at the same time you produce more food...
...BGH and products like it could eventually make it possible for only 50,000 commercial farms—one-tenth of the present number—to produce most of the nation's food...
...Smaller farms and the communities that support them would be the first casualties...
...They have also saturated officials of the American Medical Association with propaganda in favor of BGH and are launching a massive advertising campaign to win public confidence...
...The time has come for the dairy industry to just say moo to crack for cows," says Michael Picker of the California Biotechnology Action Council, which opposes BGH...
...We're fighting on two levels," says John Stauber, Jeremy Rifkin's associate in Wisconsin...
...They just can't lose...
...By the end of August, Ben & Jerry's, the popular ice-cream company, and five of the largest supermarket chains announced they would riot take BGH milk products...
...This is the most elaborate—and expensive—attempt to move a bioengineered product from the laboratory to the marketplace...
...Concerned about the health effects, Rif-kin's foundation blitzed the nation's twelve largest supermarket chains with letters outlining the safety concerns and underscoring consumer polls indicating a severe backlash against milk products containing BGH...
...I've been trying to get them for weeks...
...Since 1979, the Government has spent almost $ 16 billion to buy and store surplus butter, milk, and cheese...
...Consumers in large numbers are beginning to understand how important it is that the family farm is preserved, because once that is gone, there is no watchdog for the quality and purity of the food they get...
...Food and Drug Administration, he told me, "acted irresponsibly and recklessly" in approving the drug for testing and consumption, and "abrogated its regulatory responsibilities in favor of protecting industry interests...
...The battle over BGH may be only the first skirmish in a revolution that promises to transform one of the nation's basic industries—possibly destroying a way of life in the process...
...Without a sustained public outcry, the companies and their friends in the Government regulatory agencies will continue to tinker with life's most basic processes...
...Progress is when you put people back on the land...
...Once in common use, the substance will generate some $500 million annually, Monsanto predicts...
...But syndicated columnist Jack Anderson says he obtained copies of the confidential documents showing some cows that received BGH injections "lost weight, suffered lower fertility rates or anemia, or came down with mastitis (inflammation of the mammary glands...
...Kinsman sees the fight against BGH and the fight to save the family farm as one and the same...
...Upjohn spent only $624, and American Cyanamid has no lobbyist, according to the records...
...Norton is an editorial intern at The Progressive...
...In July, barely a month before the controversy made national headlines, the University of Illinois professor of environmental and occupational medicine produced a paper claiming a wide range of harmful side-effects attributable to the consumption of BGH milk...
...This scenario could have been the largest takeover of power, land, and resources in the history of agriculture," Kinsman says...
...The agency does have BGH studies conducted by the chemical giants, but has declined to make them public...
...While 75 per cent of dairy producers oppose FDA approval of the hormone, only 28 per cent say they would not use it, according to a national survey by the publication Dairy Herd Management...
...For the moment, however, the health issue is overshadowed by farmers' concern over the all but certain concentration of ownership that will affect American agriculture after BGH...
...In some cases, Anderson wrote, Monsanto researchers refused to count cows that got mastitis...
...The companies seem to have lost this round...
...But the health effects of BGH milk remain in dispute...
...If the cows get sick, they'll just make more money selling antibiotics to the farmers...
...Frances Moore Lappe, founder of Food First and author of Diet for a Small Planet, sees the BGH issue as just the latest attempt to keep farmers dependent on big-money technologies whose long-term effects—like poisons from pesticides—are unknown at their inception...
...In every major dairy state from Vermont to California, activists are organizing an insurgency that draws on the long-dormant populist roots of American agriculture...
...These substances could induce premature growth and breast stimulation in infants and possibly promote breast cancer, Epstein warned...
...A few chemical companies," he says, "are willing to endanger the health of millions of Americans who take for granted the safe, wholesome quality of our milk supply...
Vol. 53 • November 1989 • No. 11
