Despite Monsanto's Lobbying & Arm Twisting Consumers and Dairies Are Rejecting Bovine Growth Hormone-Tainted Milk

Despite Monsanto's Lobbying & Arm Twisting Consumers and Dairies Are Rejecting Bovine Growth Hormone-Tainted Milk

* Dairies relent, move to hormone-free milk
By PHILIP BRASHER
DES MOINES REGISTER, April 13, 2008
Straight to the Source

Washington, D.C. - Anderson Erickson Dairy tried to convince consumers that there's nothing unsafe about milk that comes from cows treated with a synthetic hormone. But like many other processors and supermarket chains, Anderson Erickson has given up.

In March, the Des Moines-based company started posting signs in the supermarket dairy sections stating that its milk was free of the hormone, known as rBST.

Some of the nation's biggest grocery chains, including Wal-Mart and Kroger, also are moving away from selling milk produced with the synthetic hormone, which increases a cow's milk output. Wal-Mart's private label milk is no longer produced with the hormone.

"Consumers felt that there was something wrong with milk coming from cows treated with rBST," said Miriam Erickson Brown, chief executive of Anderson Erickson and chairwoman of the Milk Industry Foundation, a trade group.

"It was one of those issues that we couldn't educate the consumer on the differences, so we decided to provide the consumers what they wanted. Sometimes, if you can't beat them, you join them."

The alternative is losing sales, potentially to organic milk, one of the most popular organic foods. Federal rules for organic milk prohibit the use of rBST.

One-quarter of conventional milk production is sold in fluid form for drinking, and most of it is going rBST-free, said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

Land O' Lakes, one of the nation's largest farmer cooperatives, segregates milk from rBST-treated herds and milk from farms that don't use the hormone...