The Truth About Organic Foods

The New York Times
Henry I. Miller
June 29, 2007
Excerpt…

MILK occupies a special place in our lives and language. It has been dubbed “nature’s most perfect food,” and we speak sentimentally of the “land of milk and honey” and the “milk of human kindness.”

But things are turning sour for consumers of milk. The average price of a gallon of milk nationwide is up 37 cents since January, to $3.47. Strong demand and limited ability to increase production quickly are expected to increase prices more, and experts have speculated that the price per gallon could reach a record $5 by year’s end. High feed costs associated with the ramping up of American corn-based ethanol production are making it difficult to produce more milk.

Worldwide, prices are also at historically high levels. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s price index of traded dairy products has risen 46 percent since last November.

One way to ease the shortage and lower the prices is to take greater advantage of a proven 13-year-old biological technology that stimulates milk production in dairy cows — a protein called recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), or bovine growth hormone. The protein, produced naturally by a cow’s pituitary, is one of the substances that control its milk production. It can be made in large quantities with gene-splicing (recombinant DNA) techniques. The gene-spliced and natural versions are identical.

Bad-faith efforts by biotechnology opponents to portray rBST as untested or harmful, and to discourage its use, keep society from taking full advantage of a safe and useful product. The opponents’ limited success is keeping the price of milk unnecessarily high.

When rBST is injected into cows, their digestive systems become more efficient at converting feed to milk. It induces the average cow, which produces about eight gallons of milk each day, to make nearly a gallon more. More feed, water, barn space and grazing land are devoted to milk production, rather than other aspects of bovine metabolism, so that you get seven cows’ worth of milk from six.

This may not seem like a big deal, but when applied widely the effects are profound. For every million cows treated with rBST each year, 6.6 billion gallons of water (enough to supply 26,000 homes) are conserved, according to Monsanto, which makes rBST. With much of the nation enduring a drought and many cities in the West experiencing water shortages, this is a significant benefit.

The amount of animal feed consumed each year by those million rBST-supplemented cows is reduced by more than three billion pounds. This helps to keep the lid on corn prices, even as much of the nation’s corn harvest is diverted to producing ethanol for cars. And the amount of land required to raise the cattle and grow their food is reduced by more than 417 square miles.

At the same time, more than 5.5 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel (enough to power 8,800 homes) are saved, greenhouse gas emissions are lowered by 30,000 metric tons (because fewer cows means less methane produced by bovine intestinal tracts), and manure production is decreased by about 3.6 million tons, reducing the chances of runoff getting into waterways and groundwater.

Comprehensive studies by academics and government regulatory agencies around the world have found no differences in the composition of milk or meat from rBST-supplemented cows.

And consumers are apparently happy to drink milk from supplemented cows, in spite of efforts by biotechnology opponents to bamboozle milk processors and retailers into believing that consumers don’t want it. In various surveys to ascertain the factors that influence consumers’ milk purchasing decisions, the predominant considerations have been: price (80 percent to 99 percent), freshness (60 percent to 97 percent), brand loyalty (30 percent to 60 percent) and a claim of “organic” (1 percent to 4 percent). Only the “organic” claim is even remotely related to rBST supplementation. Unless prompted, the consumers surveyed didn’t mention rBST as a concern.

Some milk suppliers and food stores have increased the price of milk labeled “rBST-free,” even though it is indistinguishable from supplemented milk, and offer only this more expensive option, pre-empting consumers’ ability to choose on the basis of price.

Activists’ purely speculative concerns about rBST — ranging from the destruction of small family farms to the risk of cancer — have proven baseless. Before approval by the Food and Drug Administration, rBST underwent the longest and most comprehensive regulatory review of any veterinary product in history. Three years before the F.D.A. approved the marketing of milk from supplemented cows, its scientists, in an article published in the journal Science, summarized more than 120 studies showing that rBST poses no risk to human health….

Full article at The New York Times.

Henry I. Miller, a doctor and fellow at the Hoover Institution, headed the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993. He is the co-author, most recently, of “The Frankenfood Myth.”

Junkscience.com
Steven Milloy
June 21, 2007

Excerpt…

Organic yogurt king and Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg may have thought that he avoided the buzzsaw this week by ducking a TV appearance with me. Guess I’ll just have to go on without him.

The news hook for our scheduled appearance was Hirshberg’s new global warming effort called ClimateCounts. The project’s ostensible goal is to help consumers make “climate-conscious” purchasing decisions.

Electronics/computer shoppers, for example, are steered toward IBM and Sony products, rather than Apple’s, since the latter fared abysmally in ClimateCounts’ survey of the so-called “carbon footprints” of 56 consumer products companies.

Global warming hysteria and the concept of the carbon footprint, in particular, have been debunked many times in this column already. Suffice to say, the ClimateCounts survey commands no credibility here, and consumers who shop based on the survey’s recommendations may as well consult with an astrologist to guide their purchasing decisions.

So here are some other relevant tidbits about ClimateCounts’ leadership that viewers may have heard from me had Hirshberg not gotten cold feet about appearing on CNBC’s “On the Money” program on June 19.

Stonyfield Farm’s organic yogurt has long been marketed through dubious efforts to scare consumers away from conventional (i.e., not marketed as “organic”) yogurt.

One Stonyfield ad, for example, reads: “Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone. Your baby doesn’t want it. We’re pretty sure cows don’t either.”

Synthetic bovine growth hormone (also known as rbST) is widely administered to dairy cows to increase milk production. According to the Food and Drug Administration — but contrary to the Stonyfield ad — rbST is safe to humans and cows. Milk from cows given rbST contains no more bovine growth hormone than milk from cows not treated with rbST.

Organic dairy producers, who are desperately in need of reasons to get consumers to buy their more expensive products, nevertheless try to scare consumers about conventionally produced milk — even though the Department of Agriculture has stated that “organic” is strictly a marketing term without any health or environmental connotations, and the FDA and state regulators specifically have warned organic dairy producers against scaring consumers about rbST.

(Read on …)

Terry Etherton Blog
Daniel Brandt
Lebanon County Dairy Farmer
June 20, 2007

Excerpt…

I got a bombshell dropped on me this past week when my milk inspector stopped by and said they had a meeting at our dairy (Swiss Premium Dairy, formerly Wengerts Dairy in Lebanon, PA), and have made a final decision to go 100% rBST free. As you may know, our dairy is owned by Dean Foods. They have targeted October 1st as the latest cutoff date to have no producers using rBST. Upon further questioning I was informed that 3 of their largest retailers are requesting rBST-free milk and threatening to pull their product if they don’t comply. At the same time our processor has developed a fine reputation in this area for the great product they supply from local well-kept and run dairy farms. They also said they will not compensate farmers in any way for giving up their right to use this safe, approved product. They admitted the public hasn’t given much pressure yet but this is business and you have to stay ahead of the ball.

Upon talking to the General Manager at the plant the next day, he said he doesn’t want to do this but his arm is being twisted by the retailers and he had to show now some sort of decision or lose his markets. He did say this is a real headache and he would back me 100% in anyway to possibly get this resolved.

It reminds me of the time about 15 years ago that our dairy sold their milk as a AA class dairy and most other milk was sold as single A milk. At that time a number of processors got together and had a ruling passed that their milk was no different and our dairy was informed that they were using “Super-Labeling” and it would no longer be allowed. Update to today - and, we have a much worse and blatant form of this “Super-Labeling” as the FDA put it. With the AA over A, we as farmers had to adhere to stricter bacteria count levels in our milk, but with rBST their is NO difference in the milk. Study after study by both sides of the issue have never been able to show a negative effect of rBST on cow or human. Plus, unlike say antibiotics, it is undetectable in the milk because rBST is the recombinant version of BST and is identical to what the cow produces naturally. This said, a dishonest person can sign a letter saying they are not using the product and continue to! Use it and nobody will ever know but the honest farmer takes the shaft. I have contacted some of the largest producers at our dairy and they all use rBST and have commented how it has made their cows healthier, extended the life of problem breeders, improved their bottom line, etc. At the same time they said they will NOT quit using it.

I personally feel the next step is not to educate the consumer or processor. I think this is great and we should keep doing it but it will not resolve this issue. As you know with the world today, the consumer continues to hear from the few loud extremists out there pushing this issue with no hard evidence to back up any of their claims. Also, we have learned that you cannot educate or negotiate with an extremist because they have their mind made up and also have to have an agenda to continue their funding….

Full article at Terry Etherton Blog.

Scientific Blogging
Lee Silver
11 March 2007

Excerpt… 

Before the 18th century, scientists and non-scientists alike assumed that the material substance of living organisms was fundamentally different from that of non-living things — organisms and their products were considered organic by definition, while non-living things were mineral or inorganic.  With the invention of chemistry in the late 18th century, scientists uncovered the incoherence of the traditional distinction: all material substances are constructed from the same set of chemical elements.  Today we understand that the special properties of living organic matter emerge from the interactions of a large variety of large molecules built mostly with atoms of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Chemists now use the word organic to describe all complex, carbon-based molecules—whether or not they are actually products of an organism or products of laboratory synthesis.  But many educated people in Western countries think that only some crops and cows are organic, while all others are not.  How can one simple word — organic — have such different meanings?

Through the 19th and 20th centuries, increased scientific understanding, technological innovations, and social mobility changed the face of American agriculture. Large-scale farming became more industrialized and more efficient. In 1800, farmers made up 90% of the American labor force; by 1900, their proportion had decreased to 38%, and in 1990, it was only 2.6%.  However, not everyone was happy with these societal changes, and there were calls in the United States and Europe for a return to the preindustrial farming methods of earlier times. This movement first acquired the moniker organic in 1942, when J. I. Rodale began publication in America of Organic Farming & Gardening, a magazine still in circulation today.

According to Rodale and his acolytes, products created by—and processes carried out by—living things are fundamentally different from lab-based processes and lab-created products. The resurrection of this prescientific, vitalistic notion of organic essentialism did not make sense to scientists who understood that every biological process is fundamentally a chemical process. In fact, all food, by definition, is composed of organic chemicals. As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) refused to recognize organic food as distinguishable in any way from nonorganic food.

The “organic food” movement was not taken seriously by U.S. government agencies until 1990, when lobbyists convinced Congress to mandate the establishment of a certification process for organic foods.  Twelve years later, organic farmers finally obtained rules they wanted to prevent impostors from siphoning off market share.  But as the USDA emphasizes, the “basis of these standards is on process, not product.”  In other words, organic food is defined not by any material substance in the food itself, but instead by the “holistic” methods used on organic farms. Furthermore, the physical attributes of the product and any effects it might have on environment or health are explicitly excluded from U.S., European, and international definitions.

The implicit, unproven assumption is that organic agriculture is — by its very nature — better for the environment than so-called conventional farming. The European Commission states as a matter of fact that “organic farmers use a range of techniques that help sustain ecosystems and reduce pollution.” Yet, according to self-imposed organic rules, genetic modification in the laboratory is strictly forbidden, even if its purpose is to reduce an animal’s negative impact on the environment. (Canadian scientists have already engineered pigs to secrete an enzyme in their saliva that reduces the polluting phosphorous content of their manure by up to 75%.)  On the other hand, spontaneous mutations caused by deep-space cosmic rays are always deemed acceptable — without any testing — since they occur “naturally.” In reality, laboratory scientists can make subtle and precise changes to an organism’s DNA sequence, while high-energy cosmic rays can break chromosomes into pieces that reattach randomly and sometimes create genes that didn’t previously exist.

Even more than a concern for the environment, organic producers and consumers are driven by faith in the presumed health benefits of their holistically produced food.  In The Future of Food, a full-length anti-biotech movie, Canadian farmer Marc Loiselle explains, “the underpinning of my conversion to organic food is not so much the economic point, it’s the health point, to protect my health, to protect my family’s health and my neighbors’.”   Irrespective of whether they buy into the health rhetoric or not, western consumers have been led to believe that organic farmers are never allowed to use toxic chemical pesticides.  In fact, this carefully cultivated beliefs is simply false.  Pyrethrin (with the formula C21H28O3) is one of several common toxic chemicals sprayed onto fruit trees by organic farmers (even on the day of harvesting); another allowed chemical is rotenone (C23H22O6), a potent neurotoxin, long used to kill fish, and recently linked to Parkinson’s disease {Betarbet, 2000 #1258}.  

How can organic farmers justify the use of these chemical pesticides? The answer comes from the delusion that substances produced by living organisms are not really chemicals. Since pyrethrin is extracted from chrysanthemums and rotenone comes from a native Indian vine, they are deemed organic instead.  However, the most potent toxins known to humankind, including ricin and strychnine, are all natural and organic.

In fact, all currently used pesticides — both natural and synthetic — dissipate quickly and pose a miniscule risk to consumers….

Full blog post at Scientific Blogging.

MSN Health & Fitness
Rich Maloof

Excerpt…

The synthetic growth hormone is used to help cows produce milk more efficiently.

Growth hormones exist naturally in a dairy cow and in the milk she produces. The hormone, called bovine somatotropin (bST) or bovine growth hormone (bGH), is a determining factor in how much milk the cattle can produce. In 1993, a synthetic growth hormone was approved for use. When injected in a cow, the synthetic hormone extends the cow’s lactation period, increasing her milk production by at least 10 percent. Treated cows produce more milk with less feed and less animal waste, making an entire herd as efficient as the farmer’s best cow.

The growth hormone was developed using recombinant DNA technology, a feat of genetic engineering in which naturally occurring genes are “recombined” to create virtually identical versions of the originals. Of course, it’s the “virtually” part that gets people upset. But the same technology has successfully yielded new vaccines and insulin products. Recombinant bST (sometimes written rBST) is manufactured in the U.S. by Monsanto under the name Posilac.

The risks of drinking milk from injected cows are unsubstantiated.

A leading criticism is that recombinant bST increases an insulin-like hormone in cows and cow milk, and that increased levels of the same hormone in humans have been associated with cancer. Cornell University’s Dale Bauman, former president of the American Society for Nutrition, helped us unpack the facts regarding this hormone, IGF-1. Bauman has been on the front lines of the bST controversy since the beginning.

“The amount of IGF-1 in milk is insignificant compared to the amount already produced in our bodies every day,” he asserts. “We swallow it in our saliva, and the amount we swallow daily is equal to the amount of IGF-1 in 95 quarts of milk. The amount produced in our whole body every day is equal the amount in 3,000 quarts of milk.”

Bauman further explains—and the American Cancer Society concurs—that there is no cause-and-effect chain linking bST, high levels of IGF-1, and cancer. “In fact, elevated levels are actually to be expected [when cancer is present] because IGF-1 is involved the turnover and repair of cells, including tumor cells.”

No one has been able to determine any differences in treated cows or in their milk.

“If one cow was treated with bST and you tested every cow in the herd, you could not determine any difference in the milk of the treated cow. There really is no difference that can be tested,” says Bauman. He and a team of nutritional biochemists analyzed over 200 herds—and over 200,000 lactations—looking for bST-related problems and came up empty-handed.

“We compared the five years before and five years after bST was used, analyzing herds that did and did not use it. We looked at all sorts of indexes for animal health, infection, health problems, reproduction. … There just were no differences. The only distinction was that in herds that used bST, the cows gave more milk per day and were more efficient in their use of nutrients.”

It is established that bovine growth hormones are harmless in the human body.

Back in the early 1960s, biotechnologists had hoped that growth hormones from cows might be used to treat a certain type of dwarfism, just as insulin from pigs was being used to treat diabetes. To test the theory, bovine somatotropin was injected directly into the bloodstream of human subjects. It was found to be biologically inactive. The human body simply broke down and absorbed the bST with no consequence.

Experiments in recombinant DNA were in their infancy at the time and withstood close evaluations by virtually every regulatory agency concerned with human health. To date, not even staunch opponents of recombinant bST can cite a known hazard….

Full article at MSN Health & Fitness

“Reality Check: Bovine Growth Hormones” has been reviewed for accuracy by Dale Bauman, professor of nutritional science and of animal science at Cornell University. Bauman is endowed with a Liberty Hyde Bailey professorship and is former president of the American Society for Nutrition.