Are milk companies required to indicate on the carton whether the poison BGH has been used?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcjzdoiL0...
Anyway, if the carton doesn't say BGH is in the milk...are we safe??
Answers: You know, the Bovine Growth Hormone produced by the company Monsanto that is carcinogenic and caused the two TV news investigators to get fired because they wanted to make the public aware. Fox General Manager fired them because Monsanto [also known for the carcinogenic aspartame in diet sodas] threatened not to advertise on Fox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcjzdoiL0...
Anyway, if the carton doesn't say BGH is in the milk...are we safe??
i would then buy organic milk if you want to avoid that all together but thanks for educating us!
I'm not going to debate whether the reporters were coerced into changing their stories; besides the facts that they were trying to report were false, misleading, and poorly researched. They probably were coerced.
But let's start with the proper terminology. BGH is the bovine growth hormone. it is the (natural) hormone in cows that is partially responsible for growth and maturity and mainly responsible for milk production. rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) or or rBST (recombinant bovine somatotrophin) is what Monsanto produces, with trade name Posilac. The mechanism of milk production uses this hormone and it is broken down during the process. To suggest that it is carcinogenic for humans is a misunderstanding of the science behind hormones, proteins, and enzymatic activity. Cows that aren't treated with rBST also excrete the hormone in their milk. Hormones are proteins. just like the proteins that make up the muscle we eat (example:meat), the human digestive system breaks the proteins down into amino acids and reassembles them into proteins that our body needs. So to say that milk from cows not treated with rBST does not contain hormone is a false statement because it is naturally present no matter what (in trace amounts). That is why the FDA would not allow milk producers to say that it is "hormone-free"- because that is a false statement. It is not just the BGH hormone, other hormones are naturally excreted in trace amounts. Humans consume hormones and foreign proteins from most of the foods we eat. However, companies are allowed to state that their cows are not treated with rBST and most use the claim, "not treated with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)” or "from cows not treated with bovine growth hormone". It is also acceptable to say "no artificial hormones". As far as aspartame and saccharin studies go, there is still no clear evidence that shows an elevated risk of cancer due to these ingredients. The studies that have shown a correlation or relation to cancer have used very, very high levels and they were in mice. And the results haven't really been duplicated. When dealing with health research, it is extremely difficult to make solid conclusions because there are so many factors involved in simply living-environment, genetics, exercise, other foods, and on and on.The mice were given nearly the equivalent of 500 cans of cokes per day, in terms of saccharin. I don't think there is a single compound in the world that if your body took in too much of wouldn't kill you. If you are familiar with Pubmed or oncology (cancer) journals, you can do a google scholar search and read the abstracts on this. Anyway, the trend in the US is getting away from the use of rBST because consumer demand seems to be going that way. Several large milk processors are now not accepting milk from cows treated with the hormone. The hormone is expensive and doesn't always produce large increases in milk production in an entire herd so some farmers never made the switch anyway.
There is also talk about the hormone treatment increasing sickness in cows. Well, more milk production will put extra stress on the cow. Typical lifespan has decreased from, I think 10 years to 4-6 years for a dairy cow. But this is partly because of advances in breeding that made it cheaper to breed quality cows (artificial insemination, ability to buy award-winning bull semen-I'm not jokin). So when production dips as the cow ages, it is cheaper/easier to sell for meat and replace with a new calf. And as far as antibiotics go, ABSOLUTLEY NO COW treated with antibiotics is allowed into the milkstream for sale to humans. There are very strict regulations for antibiotic testing. A farmer can lose an entire shipment of milk (1000's of gallons and a lot of money) if they include these cows. The testing for antibiotics is strict. Small dairy farmers work hard for their money and it's not worth the risk to lose an entire day or few days' worth of milk. So the cow may get sick and may be treated with antibiotics but no matter what the scenario is-it's milk is not sold once treated. You can be skeptical and think that they get by here and there. I have worked in a dairy plant and that is the very first thing that is tested when a batch of milk gets trucked in. You ultimately have to make the choice. but I want you to be informed and not just take one youtube video as the basis for your decision. There is currently no scientific basis to tell the milks apart. So you are taking the word of the milk producers that they didn't treat the cows when the label makes that claim. that became much longer than I planned, sorry for the rambling.
There is no difference between milk from cows treated with rgbh and milk from untreated cows.