IGF-1, Milk and Cancer

The Augusta Chronicle
Damon Cline
August 12, 2007

Excerpt…

Milk from rBST-treated cows is safe for human consumption and has not been found to be different from milk from non-treated cows.
– U.S. Food and Drug Administration position statement of March 16, 1994

You might have heard about the recent decision by Kroger Co. to stop selling milk produced by dairies that use the hormone rBST on their cows.

Let me rephrase that: You must have heard about the recent decision, because Kroger said it was you, the consumer, who motivated it to become “rBST-free” by February 2008.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of rBST? How about its full name: recombinant bovine somatotropin? Some folks call it rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). Still not ringing a bell?

Here’s what it is: A man-made copy of a hormone that is naturally produced in a cow’s pituitary gland. The lab-made hormone, like the natural one, stimulates milk production in cattle. It was approved for use by federal regulators in 1994 and is made here in Augusta by Monsanto Co.,* which markets it under the brand name Posilac.

Dairy farmers who purchase the hormone see their milk production increase by about 15 percent. The milk is not different; there is just more of it.

Kroger acknowledged this when it made its announcement Aug. 1, pointing out that “there is no difference” between milk produced at dairies that use rBST and those that don’t. Companies that shun rBST, including Safeway and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, say essentially the same thing.

So why all the fuss? I’m trying to figure that out, but I suspect it has less to do with health and wellness, and more to do with marketing and merchandising.

Food marketers can create new, more expensive product categories if they can convince consumers that “rBST-free” dairy products are somehow better. Fortunately for the grocers, they don’t really have to work too hard – there’s no shortage of all-natural/organic/free-range/cruelty-free organizations out there passing off junk science as fact. According to these groups, rBST is bad for cows and maybe, just maybe (quick, get Michael Moore on the line!) can cause cancer in humans. The common theme is that because rBST is the result of biotechnology and engineering, it has to be bad.

These folks probably don’t like seedless watermelons, either.

Monsanto says the Kroger announcement will have little impact on its Augusta facility, which employs about 120, because in 2009 the company will begin moving production from a supplier in Belgium to the local plant. Common sense dictates that if every grocer stopped buying milk from dairies that use rBST, there no longer would be a market and the Augusta plant probably would shut down.

If that were to happen, and I doubt it would, I would raise my milk glass and give the facility a farewell toast. I won’t care whether the milk in the glass was produced by an rBST dairy or not, because in the end, it’s the same milk….

Full article at The Augusta Chronicle.