Something’s wrong with American milk and that’s rBGH
I will never take milk for granted again.
A couple of days back, I posted a piece on pathogenic bacteria in milk. And now comes the rBGH issue.
rBGH ? it’s short for recombinant bovine growth hormone. I know that it was concocted by no other than the chemical giant Montsanto and that its trade name is Posilac. And I know what it can do to animals and humans. What I didn’t know was that rBGH is still being used in dairy cows in the US!
The recent report in CBNNews really shocked me as a European resident because this product has been banned in Europe for almost a decade now due to concerns over public health and animal welfare.
So what?s all the fuss about rBGH? What does it actually do?
Simply put, the hormone makes the cows produce more milk. According to the Montsanto website, Posilac ?safely enhances milk production and serves as an important tool to help dairy producers improve the efficiency of their operations.?
So why aren?t the EU countries, Canada and many other countries allowing the use of this supposedly ?safe? product?
In Europe, the EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare (SCAHAW) banned Posilac because of its adverse effect on the animals. Cows treated with Posilac develop a lot of diseases including mastitis and reproductive problems. There were also concerns as to its effects on human health but this line of thinking wasn?t pursued any further because animal welfare issues alone led to the banning of the hormone in the EU.
In addition to lots of milk, cows treated with Posilac also produce higher-than-normal amounts of a growth factor called IGF-1. And this is where the human health concerns come in: IGF-1 is identical in both cows and humans ?and it is found in the milk. That means, if we drink milk from rBGH-treated cows, we are actually taking in a lot of IGF-1 ? a suspected carcinogen.
American consumers are now waking up to the fact that the milk they drink may actually be tainted. Doctors are warning their patients about rBGH and some food companies such as Starbucks are planning to use rBGH-free milk only. There are attempts to label milk products whether they were exposed to rBGH or not but it seems that this is not strictly regulated and may even be misleading.
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MrsH says...
This is scary, but not exactly shocking. The American landscape is mostly reactionary. It won’t get banned until further testing, lost of proof that its bad for us, and most likely a public outcry. The lobbyist for this company is probably working hard for them.