Maven changes course on rBST in milk

I hope you notice the tagline on the top of my blog: Challenging your assumptions, one idea at a time.

I said it, and I mean it.

Personally.

For several years, since my diagnosis with advanced breast cancer, I have been avoiding milk with rBST in it - at a premium cost, I might add.

In this months’ edition of the University of California, Berkeley, Wellness Letter, the front page article is about the debate over rBST in milk.

Here’s what they said, that caught me:

“Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) is a growth hormone for cows, identical to the hormone they produce on their own. Cows injected with rBST produce more milk from the same amount of feed. This has ecological benefits: fewer cows making more milk saves feed, water, and farmland. It also might help reduce milk prices. But it makes cows more vulnerable to mastitis ( an udder infection ) and thus may require cows to be treated with antibiotics. There is no evidence that milk from cows injected with rBST is harful to humans. Their milk is the same as any other milk - no chemical differnece can be detected. All foods contain hormones naturally, and all milk contains BST. Still the public has been wary, and some producers now advertise that their milk comes from untreated cows and strongly imply it is safer. You can buy untreated milk if you wish, but there is no reason to fear rBST.”

That pretty much told me that I was worried about naught.

Here’s the bottom line for me: If all things are equal - price, that is - I will probably continue to choose the non-rBST milk. But, when price is an issue, I’ll go with the conventional rBST containing milk.

I think it’s an interesting angle here that non-rBST milk may actually be easier on the environment - since agricultural run-off, animal waste which produces methane ( one of the worst contributors to global climate change), not to mention that additional feed that is required for non-rBST cows are all things we can control to some extent in the marketplace.

One less thing to worry about.