Court rules rBGH-free milk *is* better than the kind produced with artificial hormones.

[bananas]

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-06-court-rules-on-rbgh-free-milk/

Court rules rBGH-free milk *is* better than the kind produced with artificial hormones. Now what?
by Tom Laskawy
6 Oct 2010

Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio's ban on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods.

First, some background: rBGH stands for recombinant bovine growth hormone; rBST for recombinant bovine somatotropin. Both are a genetically engineered variation on naturally occurring hormone that farmers inject into cows to increase milk production by as much as 10 percent. It has also been proven to increase the incidence of mastitis in cows, which as any breastfeeding mother knows is a painful condition requiring treatment by antibiotics -- and indeed, rBGH use has also upped the use of antibiotics in dairy cattle.

The United States is the only developed nation to allow people to drink milk from cows given artificial growth hormone. All 27 countries of the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada have banned its use in milk destined for human consumption. In 2007, Monsanto, which created and manufactured Posilac, the most popular form of rBST, began encouraging its dairy-farmer customers to protest their rBGH-free competitors' labeling. Campaigns to restrict rBGH-free labeling were launched in 14 states, as this Ethicurean satire chronicled, but only Ohio passed the effort. In October 2008, Monsanto saw the writing on the dairy wall and dumped Posilac on Eli Lilly.

Thanks to consumer pressure, approximately 60 percent of milk in the U.S. is rBST-free at this point, labeled or not, according to the Center for Food Safety. However, that leaves an enormous amount of milk still being produced with these hormones, and by extension cheese and most brands of ice cream, except for Ben & Jerry's.

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:applause:

[DirkGently]

1. Excellent. There's no good-faith reason to ban informative labelling. Thanks for posting this.