Did you want a side of recombinant bovine growth
hormone with that chili dog?
Do your kids eat school lunches? Millions of American children do and they’re getting more than calcium and Vitamin D in the milk they wash it down with.
Food and Water Watch, an environmental and consumer watchdog group, is working to increase public awareness about the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, in the school lunch program. The synthetic hormone has been at the center of controversy for years and is, increasingly, being rejected by more and more businesses and individual consumers.
Just last month, Agri-Mark, a collective of New England and New York dairies, announced they would begin phasing out the use of rBGH with the goal of being rBGH-free by August. That’s not insignificant: it wasn’t that long ago that Agri-Mark was critical of other dairies seeking to do the same thing.
Why the big deal? While its manufacturers insist it’s safe (and good for the environment!) fewer and fewer people seem to feel the same way. For the sake of argument, I’ll go along with idea that rBGH is fine for human consumption; that doesn’t alleviate the multitude of additional problems caused by use of the synthetic hormone, however. In December I posted a short series of articles about its use.
More and more of the milk produced in the United States is produced by fewer and fewer dairies as small dairy farms are forced out of business by their inability to compete against bigger factory farms. Government subsidies to the industry, a legacy of Depression-era policies to save farmers, keep modern day corporate interests feeding at the subsidies-teat. Use of rBGH also means we’re still producing more milk than can be sold on the open market, so it’s purchased by the feds and then redistributed through the National School Lunch Program.
Even though only about a quarter of the nation’s milk supply actually uses rBGH, it’s often mixed with milk that doesn’t contain the synthetic hormone; as a result, it’s everywhere, including in your kid’s school lunch milk.
Food Politics has a full slate of news on the growing recall, as does Fooducate. Of course, you can always check the FDA's peanut recall site.
Comments
This is great, I'm happy to see this article up and hope for many more to read it. But I have an idea, its been brewing and I finally want to do something. I want change, global. So many are working on so many different aspects that need work, yes I agree there is a lot that needs to be done including this milk. But I was thinking... What if all groups working for changed worked together? What if we all were able to help one another make change in our own groups dreams. Power in Numbers. This is my dream at least.
Thanks again for the article
i like poop
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