NEWS: Which Cows do You Trust? - NYT 10/07/06

[Guest guest]

In spite of Monsanto's aggressive marketing, it looks like more and more

farmers are turning away from bovine growth hormone.

 

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hkdd

 

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October 7, 2006

 

 

Which Cows Do You Trust?

 

By ANDREW POLLACK

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dex.html?inline=nyt-per>

 

MONROE, Wash. -- For demanding consumers, some dairy producers are

demanding less milk from their cows -- and charging more for it.

 

The dairy companies are bowing to the natural-foods trend by shunning

milk from cows treated with genetically engineered growth hormone.

 

By labeling milk free of the artificial hormone, the dairy industry can

ride the popularity of natural foods, without the greater expense and

special feeds required to produce milk that can be fully certified as

"organic."

 

As a result hormone-free milk can be priced higher than conventionally

labeled milk, but less than organic.

 

At a Safeway

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etwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=SWY>

near central Seattle, for example, a half gallon of conventional

Lucerne-brand whole milk was recently selling for $1.69, while the

Horizon organic brand was priced at $3.69.

 

Priced neatly in between, at $2.79, was the Darigold milk labeled as

"coming from cows not treated with the growth hormone rBST*"

 

The asterisk referred to tiny letters near the bottom of the carton

indicating that the Food and Drug Administration

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rug_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org>

says there is no difference between milk from treated and untreated cows.

 

Some milk producers have long avoided the hormone rBST, which is made by

Monsanto

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etwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MON>

and was approved by the F.D.A. in 1993. Still, it has been in wide

enough use since then, as a way to increase a cow's milk supply by a

gallon or more a day, that many of the nation's dairy products probably

contain milk from cows injected with the hormone.

 

Many pure-food advocates oppose the hormone's use on health grounds,

saying it can require cows to be treated with extra antibiotics

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tibiotics/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>

and can result in milk with higher amounts of a separate hormone linked

to cancer

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ncer/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>

in some studies. But only recently do more consumers appear to be paying

heed to those concerns, as part of the growing interest in whole and

natural foods.

 

Experts say that avoiding the hormone is the main reason people buy

organic milk, whose sales have been growing rapidly the last few years.

But organic sales still account for only about 3 percent of the total

milk market, so marketers see an opportunity to tap the demand for

organic milk by simply eliminating the hormone.

 

"It seems to be an explosion in the industry," said Kurt Williams,

general manager of Lanco-Pennland Milk Producers, a cooperative in the

mid-Atlantic region, most of whose members do not use the hormone. "All

of a sudden we have national processors like Dean Foods taking entire

plants hormone-free."

 

In June, Dean Foods, the nation's largest milk producer, stopped

accepting milk from hormone-treated cows at a big bottling plant it owns

in Florence, N.J., which sells milk under the Tuscan name. That means

most of the Tuscan milk sold in the New York metropolitan area is now

free of the artificial hormone.

 

Dean Foods is now beginning a similar shift at its New England plants,

which market the Garelick Farms brand, and is considering a similar move

in Texas. Still, Dean Foods says only 10 of its 100 milk processing

plants around the country offer milk from untreated cows.

 

"Are we doing a wholesale shift? No," said Marguerite Copel, a

spokeswoman for Dean. "Are we seeing movement? Yes."

 

Darigold, which is owned by the Northwest Dairy Association, a large

cooperative, recently began selling milk only from cows not treated with

growth hormone. Several other dairy companies in the Northwest have

recently done likewise.

 

"I think it's going to become a competitive disadvantage if you are not

rBST-free," said Randy Eronimous, the director of marketing for

Darigold. He said surveys had shown that use of the hormone was

beginning to affect consumer decisions on what milk to buy.

 

But at least one of the co-op's farmers, Jim Werkhoven, says he is not

convinced that consumers are really clamoring for milk from untreated

cows -- or at least would not be without prodding from marketers.

 

"It's really about milk processors trying to position themselves on the

grocery store shelf," said Mr. Werkhoven, 47, who has been farming since

1979. "All they're doing is selling fear, and I think that's a miserable

deal."

 

For about a dozen years Mr. Werkhoven, who runs a herd of 800 cows on a

farm in Monroe, about 25 miles northeast of Seattle, injects his cows

every two weeks with the hormone.

 

"It's worth 10 to 12 pounds a cow a day, a little over a gallon a day,"

Mr. Werkhoven said, explaining that the hormone raised a typical cow's

daily output from over 70 pounds of milk to somewhat less than 90. He

showed a visitor through his barns, where cows with yellow

identification tags in their ears munched on a ration made mainly of

corn plants or lolled about in sandy stalls.

 

Mr. Werkhoven said it was difficult to estimate the effects on his

profit because that depends somewhat on the price of milk. But he is

convinced the hormone lowers his cost per gallon.

 

For now, Mr. Werkhoven can continue to use the hormone, because the

co-op's ban applies only to bottled milk, which is consumed in large

quantities by children, and not for other dairy products like cheese.

Some milk bottlers, including Darigold, are paying small premiums to

farmers who sign affidavits certifying they do not use the hormone.

(Since there is no test to distinguish milk from treated and untreated

cows, claims of hormone-free milk are based on the honor system).

 

A Department of Agriculture survey in 2002 found that 22 percent of the

nation's dairy cows were being injected with the hormone. Currently,

about one-third of the nation's dairy herds are managed using the bovine

growth hormone -- though not every cow in each herd gets it, according

to Monsanto.

 

The substance, one of the first applications of genetic engineering to

make its way into food production, is a synthetic version of a natural

cow hormone called bovine somatotropin, or BST. Monsanto makes its

version -- recombinant BST, or rBST -- by splicing the cow gene for the

hormone into bacteria.

 

Critics say that milk from treated cows contains higher levels of a

different hormone -- insulin-like growth factor 1 -- that has been

linked to an increased risk of cancer in people. They also say that

inducing the cow to produce more milk increases the risk of udder

inflammation, which then leads to increased antibiotic use.

 

Canada has not approved use of the hormone because of its harmful

effects on cows.

 

But Monsanto and other proponents of the technology say the amount of

extra insulin-like growth factor in the milk is insignificant compared

with the amount made naturally in the human body. They also say milk is

screened for antibiotics before it can be sold. Dairy companies that are

now rejecting the hormone say they are doing so not because milk is

unsafe but simply in response to customer demand.

 

"People have become more educated on what they buy," said Heidi Horn,

marketing manager for Wilcox Family Farms.

 

At the company's milk processing plant in the bucolic countryside south

of Tacoma, about 110 gallons of milk a minute are pasteurized,

homogenized and squirted into cartons amid a near-deafening clatter of

machinery. Since July the cartons have borne the name "Wilcox Natural"

instead of just "Wilcox," because the company eliminated milk from

hormone-treated cows.

 

Executives of the dairy said they had been getting requests for

rBST-free milk from consumers as well as from school boards, hospitals

and retailers, including a big customer, Costco.

 

Judging the true level of consumer demand is difficult. Susan Ruland, a

spokeswoman for the International Dairy Foods Association, a trade

group, said that in studies her group helped sponsor, only 30 percent of

consumers said they were aware of any issue regarding hormones

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rmones/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>

and milk. And 70 percent of those who were aware said they did not care

about it, she said.

 

But when one dairy company makes the shift to rBST-free, it puts

pressure on others.

 

The move away from the hormone has been strongest on the West Coast and

in the Northeast. But there are signs the trend is spreading. For

example Shamrock Farms, a major dairy company in Arizona, recently went

rBST-free for all its products.

 

The Prairie Farms Dairy in Carlinville, Ill., has started a review of

its policies, said Gary Lee, vice president for procurement. "It's

moving toward the Midwest," he said.

 

Monsanto is worried enough that in late August it mailed brochures to

its farmer customers urging them to defend their rights to use the hormone.

 

"Consumers have choices ... but so do you," said the brochure. It

included a sample calculation to help farmers assess how much money they

would lose if they gave up the hormone and asked them to demand

compensation.

 

Monsanto does not disclose its sales of the hormone, which it calls

Posilac. Kevin McCarthy, an analyst at Banc of America Securities,

estimates they will be $250 million this year out of Monsanto's total

sales of $7.2 billion, which will come mainly from seeds, both

genetically engineered and conventional, and herbicides.

 

A few years ago Monsanto sued Oakhurst Dairy in Maine, saying its

labeling of milk as coming from cows not treated with the hormone was

misleading. The dairy added a sentence to the effect that the F.D.A. had

found no significant difference between the milk from treated and

untreated cows.

 

Some farmers and dairy marketers say that advertising rBST-free milk

pits one form of milk against another and could undermine consumer

confidence in conventional milk.

 

"If certain products can make these unsettling claims, what does that

then say about the milk my family has been drinking for years?" Jerry

Kozak, president of the National Milk Producers Federation, a trade

group, said in his monthly message to members for September.

 

To be sure, many farmers do not use the hormone, either because they are

philosophically opposed to it or because its use requires more work for

them and more food for the cows.

 

"It's like steroids

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eroids/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>

for athletes," said Stephen H. Taylor, New Hampshire's commissioner of

agriculture, markets and food and a dairy farmer himself. He said he had

tried the hormone but it put stress on his cows and made them thinner.

 

Last month, his wife signed an affidavit, requested by Agri-Mark, a big

New England co-op, certifying that the couple's 80-cow farm does not use

the hormone. "A lot of people in the dairy industry say goodbye and good

riddance to BST," he said.

 

But in Monroe, Mr. Werkhoven, who has a refrigerator full of boxes of

Posilac, each containing 25 syringes, said his cows had not had any

problems.

 

The move to eliminate the hormone, he said, "puts at risk a valuable

tool for agriculture and it adds cost to the customer with absolutely no

benefit," he said. "If this is a technology that's going to go away, I'd

be shocked and stunned."