The last time Conscious Choice reported on the controversial rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) issue, we provided some historical information about why people are so opposed to the biotech hormone. The latest twist in this complex tale of proponents vs. protestors is an upcoming court case that will highlight background issues such as freedom of speech and alleged corruption at corporate, state, and federal levels.
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), also known as recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST), or Posilac, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993. The hormone is injected into dairy cattle every other week to increase their milk production. An estimated 15 to 30 percent of dairy cows in the U.S. are injected with rBGH today.
The hormone’s proponents claim it has no adverse affects on human health, that milk treated with the hormone is no different than untreated milk, and that treated cows do not incur any negative health outcomes from the hormone. Those opposed to the hormone say there is a clear link between human consumption of milk treated with the hormone and diseases such as diabetes and cancer, and that use of the hormone promotes factory farming and hurts small and mid-sized dairy farmers. They also say use of the hormone results in adverse effects on injected cows, including decreased life span, poor quality of life, increased rates of infection, and reproductive disorders, concerns that allegedly contributed to the recent ban on use of the hormone in Europe and Canada (although treated milk can still be imported to Europe and Canada).
Gary Barton, Monsanto’s public relations director, wants to know why critics are focusing on BST but not other forms of genetic engineering. "Why not breeding?" Barton said. "What about three times a day milking? The people who oppose this technology are the same names we’ve heard for more than a decade."
Whistleblower suit will bring controversy to new levels
Journalists Steve Wilson and wife Jane Akre are bringing the rBGH controversy to new levels with their case against New World Communications of Tampa, Inc., which owns WTVT (Channel 13), a Tampa, Florida-based television station where Wilson and Akre once worked. New World Communications is owned by Fox Television Stations, Inc. At press time the suit was still awaiting a trial date.
According to Wilson, after he and Akre completed a series about the rBGH controversy, the station repeatedly asked them to revise its content. "We agree a station has the right to decide what it does not want to cover," said Wilson. "No station has the right, however, to decide to air a story and then bend it, twist it, and distort the facts so as to present slanted news reports." He said he and Akre are suing Fox as whistleblowers who were fired for "refusing to air what we knew and documented to be false and slanted information about rBGH. In Florida, people who are fired for refusing to go along with orders to break the law are protected by whistleblower legislation."
Wilson said the station allegedly stood to lose a substantial amount of advertising revenue from Monsanto if they ran the story. "We found ourselves working for a news organization that is controlled by people with little or no commitment to public service. It is run by people who see the bottom line as the only line," said Wilson. "While more corporations take control of the news room, the news has become a commodity."
Wilson said that since the firing, he and Akre have essentially been blacklisted from comparable journalistic jobs. Since their dismissal on December 2, 1997, Wilson and Akre have made it their occupation to publicly protest rBGH and inform the public about their suit. They have created a Web site that outlines their original script along with the changes the station tried to get them to make. The site also carries developing news about the lawsuit.
"When we were let go, we were told we had a contract that allowed them to fire us for no cause within a certain time period," said Wilson. "Fox’s attorney said we were hard to get along with." Wilson said he believes they were fired because "We wouldn’t lie on television."
Akre will be represented by Chamblee and Johnson, a two-man Tampa firm; Wilson said he will represent himself due to financial concerns; Fox will be represented by in-house counsel (Gary Roberts and Ted Russell) as well as by Florida-based Rahdert, Anderson, McGowan, and Steele; and the defense team will be led by the famous firm Williams and Connolly.
Among the dozens of witnesses representing each side, Akre and Wilson’s witnesses will include consumer advocate Ralph Nader, renowned journalist Walter Cronkite, Dr. Samuel Epstein, Akre, and Wilson. The defense’s key witnesses will include station personnel, a University of Texas journalism professor, and a National Institutes of Health scientist.
Barton emphasized that data on rBGH produced by regulatory agencies throughout the world, such as the FDA and Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) in Geneva, have approved rBGH. Dr. Samuel Epstein, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois’ Medical Center, and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition in Chicago, has been a long-time protester of rBGH. According to Epstein, "Such committees are massively stacked with industry consultants who are in bed with the [genetic food] industry. They’ve given [rBGH] a clean bill of health." Epstein is a leading international expert on the toxic and carcinogenic effects of environmental pollutants and contaminants in consumer products.
According to Epstein, "By 1989, analysis of available industry information showed clear evidence of adverse veterinary effects, especially reproductive, and a high incidence of mastitis." Mastitis is an infection of the cow’s udder, which can lead to an increased amount of pus that ends up in milk along with antibiotics that may lead to human antibiotic resistance. Epstein said Monsanto files that were allegedly leaked to him from the FDA in October of 1989 led to one congressman’s accusation that "Monsanto and FDA have chosen to suppress and manipulate animal health test data."
According to Barton, "The FDA evaluated herds and the results were that mastitis is less than they thought. Higher producing cows have the potential for higher mastitis; it doesn’t cut down on the life of the cow."
Barton said samples of each farmer’s milk are taken on the truck’s way to the pasteurization plant. After arriving at the plant, he said, the overall batch is tested. "If antibiotic residues are found, the farmer who violates it has to buy the entire truckload," said Barton.
Milk treated with rBGH allegedly contains high levels of Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1). According to Epstein, elevated levels of IGF-1 have been strongly associated with high risks of colon, breast and prostate cancers and promote the cancers’ invasiveness. Criticizing the ninety-day rat trial the company did conduct as insufficient data, Epstein pointed out that Monsanto failed to conduct any studies in peer reviewed scientific literature. Barton accuses Epstein of allegedly failing to conduct any original research himself.
Local opinion
Cory Schroeder, a small dairy farmer
in Downing, Wisconsin, is adamantly opposed to the use of the hormone. Schroeder said he first became aware of the hormone in the early 1990s when he read about it in Country Today, a publication directed at the dairy industry. Schroeder said that although he hasn’t formally protested the use of rBGH, he said, "Sometimes I think I should have."
According to Schroeder, the Con Agra milk truck that picks up his untreated milk picks up treated milk at a farm several miles away. "They do it but they don’t tell people [the milk is being mixed together]," said Schroeder. Representatives from Con Agra were unavailable for comment, but according to Barton, "The milk is all mixed together. The milk is absolutely the same. There is no test that can distinguish [treated from untreated] milk. A lab test can’t tell the difference."
Schroeder admits the practice of using the hormone "probably contributes" to large scale factory farming that pushes small and mid-sized farmers out of business. But Schroeder wonders whether farmers who use the hormone actually make more of a profit than he does. "When you have more to do (with a larger scale operation) you pay more," said Schroeder. Farmers who use the hormone must pay for each syringe administered to each cow. According to Barton, the hormone costs approximately $5.80 per dose, administered every two weeks. Barton said pricing is not based on volume but on the percentage of cows treated. "So it’s the same price for someone who treats 50 percent of 80 cows as for a farmer who treats 50 percent of 10,000 cows (it’s size-neutral)," said Barton, who said the hormone allegedly produces 10 to 15 percent more milk per cow.
Schroeder said he thinks injecting cows with the hormone "is inhumane." Some protestors of the hormone allege that injected cows are kept from grazing on open pasture and often must wear harnesses to hold their udders in place. Barton said grazing practices "depend on what the farmer does. In the Southwest, there is very little open grazing. It has nothing to do with BST. In Arizona, there are not a lot of big open grazing fields."
Other critics say use of the hormone creates an excess supply of milk that taxpayers wind up paying for. If that’s the case, says Barton, "then why do 13,000 dairymen with three million cows continue to expand and use the product?"
Geneticist alleges fraud
Dr. Bill VonMeyer, former vice-president of Fairview Industries, a large genetic engineering firm, accused the FDA of fraud in April of 1999 before a senate investigation committee in Canada. VonMeyer charged the FDA after the organization allegedly told the public on a 1996 CBS morning news episode that rBGH had been tested as much as any other human hormone.
According to VonMeyer, a report he wrote in 1992 after extensively researching rBGH himself was allegedly hidden from the public by state and federal officials despite his repeated attempts at contacting and alerting them. "That was the first indication to me of what amounted to local and federal corruption," said VonMeyer. According to VonMeyer, his report showed that there were no long-term tests of the effects of rBGH in humans at all. VonMeyer has accused a variety of individuals for allegedly presenting false evidence and undermining his research at hearings at which he was called to present his findings in New York State in May of 1999 and in Chicago in November of the same year.
VonMeyer, who has developed potent chemicals for crop disease control, said he is not against all genetic engineering. He spent thirty-two years researching the effects of chemicals on living organisms as a biological chemist and geneticist. VonMeyer jumped on the anti-rBGH bandwagon after a hearing in 1991 in Wisconsin before the State Assembly and Agriculture Committee on labeling procedures for milk. According to VonMeyer, the ruling there was that milk could be voluntarily labeled rBGH-free, however treated milk was not to be labeled.
Other states banned BGH-free labels, until August of 1997, when Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., settled a lawsuit filed in federal court against the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago, charging that the prohibition of anti-rBGH labeling was a violation of the companies’ first amendment right to honestly inform customers about the contents of their products. The suit was settled when Illinois and Chicago agreed to permit voluntary labeling by natural food companies against rBGH.
"Manufacturers should be able to tell customers how their products are produced and consumers should have the right to information that allows them to make an informed choice," said Perry Odak, CEO of Ben and Jerry’s.
Though many of the issues in the Florida trial will be familiar, even old-hat, to anti-BGH activists, labeling issues such as the above-mentioned, along with misinformation from Monsanto and the FDA, have continued to confuse the public and defuse the mainstream press. This trial promises to bring these problems to the surface once again — a good thing, because the problems won’t go away until rBGH does.