Canada and the European Union have banned the use of Bovine Recombinant Growth Hormone (rBGH), citing its toxicity to both cows and humans, but the US Food and Drug Administration approved rBGH use for US dairy cows.

rBGH a genetically engineered synthetic hormone, mimics a naturally occurring hormone released when a cow is pregnant, which allows the cow to produce milk for her calf. When rBGH is injected into a cow, nature runs wild, causing the cow's milk output to increase. Nutritional energy that is supposed to sustain the entire cow becomes almost entirely dedicated to milk production. Vital nutrients are leached from other parts of her body, causing painful udder infections and crippling lameness. In addition, rBGH injected cows are much more likely to suffer infertility and gastrointestinal disorders. Because rBGH use increases the incidence of disease a rBGH-injected cow requires greater amounts of antibiotics than an rBGH-free cow. Increased antibiotic usage may lead to resistance to antimicrobials, having dire consequences for the health of both humans and cows.

After more than nine years of study that took into account the findings of two independent advisory panels, Health Canada (the FDA's Canadian counterpart) made the decision to ban the hormone, citing greatly increased health risks to cows and potential health risks for humans exposed to rBGH. Canadian researchers reported that "long-term toxicology studies to ascertain human safety" must be conducted, as their research indicated that rBGH may cause "sterility, infertility, birth defects, cancer and immunological derangements" in humans. Other recent studies, as reported in the Journals Science (1/23/98) and The Lancet (5/9/98) have linked IGF-I (Insulin-like Growth Factor), high levels of which are present in milk produced with rBGH, to much increased incidence of prostate and breast cancer.

The European Union has enacted an rBGH moratorium, due to expire in 2000, based on European studies that concurred with Health Canada's findings. In addition, a recent European Commission on Consumer Health and Protection study concluded that rBGH should not be used in dairy cows, as its use seriously compromises a cow's health and well-being.

Why the US needs to increase milk production is puzzling. Every year since the mid-1950s, the US has produced far more milk than its citizens can consume. According to the Ecologist (vol. 28, no. 5), since 1980 the US government has spent a whopping 18 billion dollars sopping up America's milk surplus in order to prevent milk prices from plummeting.

How and why approval of rBGH occurred and is being upheld, seems not so much a question answered by sound science or interest in the public's welfare, but by corporate patronage. If rBGH's approval were to be rescinded, the Monsanto corporation stands to lose $300 to $500 million a year in sales of its rBGH product, Posilac. Upper echelons of Monsanto and FDA management are constantly interchanged. Many of Monsanto's top brass were once employed by the FDA, and vice versa. For example, Margaret Miller, the FDA's Director of Food Safety, is now "reviewing" her own rBGH research done while she was a Monsanto employee. Monsanto attorney Michael Taylor was hired by the FDA to fast-track rBGH through the approval process.

In order to approve the growth hormone, the FDA violated its own guidelines on several occasions. According to FDA literature, approval of a drug "requires pharmaceutical companies to submit all studies they conducted [and] all the raw data form the basis of the approval of the product...". The FDA never reviewed all of Monsanto's data, disregarded the Canadian ban decision, and approved rBGH based solely on information presented in Monsanto's own project summary.

The FDA website states that the "elimination of violative residues in meat and milk" is of utmost importance. By ignoring warnings from both Europe and Canada, the FDA endangers the well-being of Americans and their dairy cows.

Betsy Lydon, consumer representative on the National Organic Standards Board and Program Director at Mothers & Others, an organization educating consumers about safe and ecologically sustainable buying choices, has a few simple, yet effective, recommendations to avoid rBGH-tainted products.

Read the label. If your milk carton doesn't say organic or rBGH-free on the label, then the milk inside isn't rBGH free. At a conventional milk processing plant, milk is collected from individual dairies and then taken to a centralized "creamery" where milk front rBGH-injected cows is mixed with milk produced without the synthetic growth hormone, tainting the entire batch of milk. All products certified organic are labeled as such and do not contain milk produced from rBGH injected cows. Although an organic label is the only guarantee that a dairy item is rBGH-free, a few larger companies, such as Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Stonyfield Farms Yogurt have long standing policies of only buying milk from dairies that pledge not to ruse rBGH. Labels on their product certify their foods as rBGH-free.

Buy local or buy imported. Many small, producer-owned dairy cooperatives do not use growth hormones in their cows, so check around home for a good local dairy that certifies its milk as rBGH-free. Because rBGH is banned in Canada and the European Union, dairy products imported from either place do not contain the growth hormone. _______________________________________________________ Left: This dairy cow was found covered in mud and nearly starved when she was rescued from a North Carolina dairy. She now leads a rBGH-free life at The Humane Farming Association's Suwanna Ranch – a farm animal refuge.

AWI Quarterly, Spring 1999, Vol. 48, No. 2