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Got Milk?

Got Bovine Growth Hormone?

Not in My (organic) Milk!
 
  Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormones are shot into conventional dairy cows, sometimes as often as every couple weeks, to increase milk supply.  This causes them to fill up more and more quickly.  Any mother who has ever nursed can empathize with the discomfort this must cause the dairy cows.  This discomfort can clearly lead to mastitis and puss from the mastitis getting into the milk.  Mastitis normally is treated with antibiotics.  These hormones can also cause reproductive problems including giving birth to deformed calves, digestive problems, and persistent sores on the cows.

After filling the tanks for a few years, these cows will die early because the rBGH shortens their uncomfortable life by as much as thirteen years!  Then, many are turned into hamburger so we continue to ingest this hormone in another way.

Banned in Europe and Canada, the U.S. has decided to continue this harmful and painful (to the cows) practice.  Known as BGH, rBGH, BST, and rBST, this a Genetically Engineered hormone that has been used since 1994.  There have been no long term studies of the effects of this in our bodies or in our children; like HFCS, we are walking experiments.  We do know that is is unsafe and uncomfortable for the dairy cows.  Dairy farmers who don't use this hormone are disadvantaged so this affects organic farming practices.  We also know that the milk has very high levels of a natural growth factor (IGF-1) which is quite similar to the natural growth factor in us humans.  It is an insulin-like growth factor and the IGF0-1 of rBGH treated cows is more bioactive than natural (and this is increased with pasteurization) so the effects on our biology is unclear but there is sound reason to believe that it does something to our bodies, especially to growing children.  When we drink milk contaminated with rBGH, it is absorbed into our bloodstream where it can effect other hormones.  Excess amounts have been suspected in cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate.

Milk from cows with rBGH is not the same as organic milk. Samuel Epstein includes these differences:

  • chemically and nutritionally different
  • rBGH milk increases risk of cancer
  • rBGH makes cows sick
  • rBGH is a GE hormone
  • pus and bacteria can be found in the milk from mastitis in the conventional cows
  • antibiotics from treating the mastitis can be found in the conventional milk, many of which are illegal
  • increased concentration of thyroid hormone enzyme thyorixin-5-monodeiodinase (long chain) and decrease of short chain fatty acids in conventionally treated rBGH dairy
  • conventional rBGH dairy products have less protein and more saturated fat
  • dairy cows treated with rBGH have milk with high levels of IGF-1

Organic dairy cows are not treated with BGH.  Organic dairy farmers get twice the money for their milk as the conventional dairy farmer.  The organic dairy cow must be fed grain or hay that has not been treated with herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizer or be pasture raised on land that is free of chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides.  The cows are not given hormones or antibiotics and must be treated humanely.

Imported European dairy, including the much beloved imported cheeses, do not contain rBGH.

 

  
     
Links:

Books:


Got (Genetically Engineered) Milk?
by Samuel Epstein

  
Untold Story of Milk
by Ron Schmid
Don't Drink Your Milk!
by Frank A. Oski
Milk
by Robert Cohen

 

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