In Wisconsin, Battle Lines Form Over Milk Hormone

It seemed a logical enough plan: Make a drug that enables cows to produce more milk, and take it to the place with the most cows. Maybe though, before the companies making the drug crossed the Wisconsin state line, someone should have reminded them of the Great Margarine Wars.

Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, urban in reality yet pastoral in its heart, was the last to surrender in the wars. By the time it lifted its ban on sales of colored margarine in 1967, butter-protection laws in other states were quaint memories, recalled in grandmas’ stories of kneading yellow coloring into the lard-white margarine, or of shopkeepers keeping the margarine partitioned away from the “real” dairy items.

And now in the face of a new perceived threat to dairying, Wisconsin, where the tradition of progressive politics often becomes handmaiden to the milkmaid, is ready to fight back with the More Milk Moratorium.

Sometime today, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson must decide whether to veto a bill that would place a moratorium on a still-unapproved synthetic protein called bovine somatotropin, designed to increase a cow’s milk output by 10% to 25%. Many who fought for the bill see it as a crucial step in protecting the state’s dairy industry and especially in saving the family dairy from the perils of overproduction and resultant lower milk prices. Still others present it as a safeguard for the quality and healthfulness of milk, or against inhumane treatment of cows.

The common thread uniting these interests is a skepticism about the new. What’s new isn’t trying to increase milk production--dairy farmers have been doing that for decades with equipment and herd breeding and management practices. What’s new is the use of biotechnology to do so; bovine somatotropin (BST) is a genetically engineered product.

The battle over BST has been taken up by farm, consumer, conservation and animal welfare organizations--even an upscale ice cream company--and is now spreading from dairy state to dairy state. Its outcome will have a direct impact on the four companies that already have spent many millions of dollars developing bovine somatotropin: Monsanto, Eli Lilly, American Cyanamid and Upjohn.

Clues to Future

It is also being closely watched by other companies using the tools of genetic engineering, who are facing an increasingly sophisticated and diverse wave of opposition to biotechnology. These often-fragile companies fret over whether the costs of defending their products will break them and, at the same time, weaken America’s already tenuous leadership role in the science.

“There is clearly a new wave of anti-genetic-engineering protest coming and it is a more sophisticated wave. Any of us who think about it have to be concerned,” said Charles H. Baker, president of BioTechnica Agriculture of Overland Park, Kan.

Skeptics have followed genetic engineering since the first successful gene-splicing experiments, their numbers increasing as companies congealed around the experiments and shaped the results into potential products. Now, with a steady stream of genetically engineered ideas being readied for fields and barns and drug and grocery stores, opponents who have often raised the specter of the unimaginable are now taking aim at the specific and tangible.

Among those are plants being developed with their own tolerance to herbicides and pesticides. BST and herbicide-tolerant plants are expected to be among the first significant genetically engineered products for agriculture to gain approval for sale and use from government regulatory agencies. Because of this, they are primary targets for critics of biotech who are upset with how business is applying the science.

Stop and Think

“We want to say to the world, ‘Stop for a moment of time and think about it,’ ” said Jeremy Rifkin, one of genetic engineering’s earliest and most vocal critics and founder of the Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends.

Industry executives believe there’s no stopping the science, that biotech will bring life-saving and life-enhancing products into general use. But too long a delay, they warn, will hobble pioneering American companies, exact a steep price from our economy and perhaps even blunt the promise of the technology.

“The real danger in killing BST and (other genetically engineered products) is that companies have to use so many resources defending their products, they divert resources from inventing the next products,” said Jerry Caulder, chief executive of Mycogen, a San Diego-based company developing genetically engineered biological pesticides.

For instance, he suggested, it might be possible that there are hormones in cows that regulate cholesterol, which BST-related research might discover, and that could lead to a synthetic drug to produce cholesterol-free milk. But companies would not devote time and money to such work, he said, “if they see they cannot get these kinds of products through” to the market.

Foes’ Sophistication

That BST opponents have been able to capitalize on the almost mythic image of milk and dairy products in our culture, and especially the protectiveness of states toward their dairy farming interests, says as much about the growing sophistication of the opponents as it does about the product itself.

Opponents contend that bovine somatotropin “has no redeeming value” except as a profit-maker for its developers.

“We do not see any rationale for this product,” said John Stauber of the Foundation on Economic Trends, who has been working full time since 1988 in Wisconsin on the BST issue. “It will, though, hasten the demise of the family dairy farm, undermine consumer confidence in dairy products and lower the money farmers are paid for milk. It may harm the dairy cows and there are questions of safety to humans” of the milk from BST-treated cows, he said.

Milk from cows treated in BST trials had been sold in some Wisconsin areas for nearly two years when opponents began their campaign, calling BST by its other name, bovine growth hormone (BGH). They stressed the negative images of injected hormones and passed out bumper stickers that showed a huge needle labeled “HORMONE” being stuck in a cow, with the slogan, “No BGH in my milk!” Stauber said: “The last thing consumers want is milk from cows injected with hormones.”

BST is a hormone, but it is a protein-type hormone, not a steroidal hormone like those used by some athletes to “bulk up” their muscles. Actually, BST is a synthetic copy of the hormone that already exists in cows and that already accounts for milk production levels. BST is present in milk regardless of whether the cow is treated with the synthetic version; and research results show that use of synthetic BST does not increase levels of somatotropin in milk.

“They play on the use of the word hormone, but ignored that it occurs normally in milk. They played cynically and recklessly on lack of public understanding,” said Larry J. O’Neill, public information director of the animal sciences division of Monsanto Agriculture.

The critics, he said, have been “especially irresponsible in trying to alarm people about the safety of this milk . . . . Milk and meat from BST cows are safe and not significantly different” from nontreated cows.

Nearly every stage of the technology has been dogged by warnings of dire results of gene splicing gone awry, of genetically engineered organisms mutating out of control, poisoning the environment or infecting other life forms. So far, though, there have been no such catastrophes, and scientists generally discount the probability of such occurrences in the future, especially considering the rigid controls under which such experiments take place.

Yet some Wisconsin consumers were alarmed. Protesters picketed grocery stores and five of the state’s largest supermarket chains agreed not to sell milk from BST-treated cows. And BST foes persuaded many milk processors and distributors to pledge not to use or distribute milk from BST-treated cows.

“The protesters have become more sophisticated, but they latched on to a lucky break when they got (the supermarkets) to pull it off their shelves. That’s a pretty big step for supermarkets. The milk practically had the (Food and Drug Administration’s) endorsement; it had been tested for five years, drunk for two,” said Baker of BioTechnica.

This was, in and of itself, a significant victory for biotech opponents, because it showed public sentiment can be used to dry up the market for a product even if regulators and legislators pass on it. BST also could become a political weapon in Wisconsin; insiders say if the popular Republican governor vetoes the moratorium, it could give his opponents the issue they need to mount a serious challenge to his upcoming reelection bid.

Neighboring Minnesota is considering legislation that would ban BST there providing Wisconsin’s moratorium takes effect. BST opponents now are targeting Washington state and Vermont, where local favorite Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream has joined the fray. Cartons of the high-butterfat ice cream now list a BST information hot line; callers get a recording that decries BST and its potential harm to the family dairy farm.

Makers of the drug, of course, dispute this. They say that unlike expensive machinery and other modern farming techniques, BST is scale-neutral, meaning it is just as cost-effective for the small farm as for large farming operations.

“It’s a phony issue to say BST will hurt the small farm,” Monsanto’s O’Neill said. “We believe it is a cost-cutting management tool for farmers . . . . It will give relatively more milk per unit of feed.”

Small-farm economics is important in Wisconsin, which produces about 17% of the nation’s milk on about 36,000 dairy farms, where the average herd is about 50 head of cattle. California is second, producing 13% of the nation’s milk, but does it with only 2,400 farms.

Many of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers worry that if their competitors are using BST, they may be forced to follow suit. The moratorium would make them wait for six months after FDA approval or through July, 1991, whichever is later.

William G. Barlass’ family has been farming in Janesville, a rural community in southeastern Wisconsin, for generations. Now Barlass, his parents and brothers run two farms with a total of 120 cows. Like many of his neighbors, he hasn’t made up his mind about BST, but he said: “If we have to use it, we can use it.”

“All of us dairy farmers are concerned about the consumers’ acceptance of milk from herds with BST . . . consumers don’t seem to want additives in their milk. The (Department of Agriculture) has done an outstanding job of proving there are no problems with it, but the consumers have not been convinced of this,” Barlass said.

Small-farm economics is not such an issue in California, where average herds are about 400 head. In California, the primary concern is also what the consumers might think, said Ria deGrassi of the California Farm Bureau.

Already, some California dairies, including Alta-Dena of Hawthorne, have pledged not to use milk from BST cows, and some groups are forming strategies to bring the issue more into the public arena.

Michael Picker, California director of the activist group National Toxics Campaign, said a recently formed task force on biotechnology may push for state legislation mandating labeling of milk if it contains milk from BST-treated cows; similar measures have failed in both Iowa and Wisconsin. The group also may publicly identify dairies, supermarkets and processors that deal in BST milk.

Biotech executives agree with BST opponents that the Wisconsin legislation represents a new level of success for biotechnology critics, who until now have counted success in terms of the number of weeks or months they’ve stalled genetic engineering experiments.

And some in the industry even agree with Rebecca Goldburg of the Environmental Defense Fund, who said: “Given the public apprehension of biotechnology, (BST) was not the smartest product to bring out first.”

Among those concurring is Roger Salquist, chief executive of Calgene, a Davis, Calif.-based company that is working to develop herbicide-tolerant plants. Salquist doubts whether BST is even wanted by the potential customer.

Salquist has his own trouble with biotech opponents, though. The Biotechnology Working Group, a large coalition that includes Goldburg, the National Toxics Campaign and Rifkin, has targeted Calgene and other companies working on herbicide-tolerant plants, charging that the plants will lead to greater use of environmentally harmful weed- and pest-killers.

Salquist, though, insists that Calgene’s work is environmentally sensitive; it is developing plants that will enable farmers to use herbicides that are safer for the environment than many of those currently in use, Calgene officials say, and will reduce use of more toxic herbicides.

Picker of the National Toxics Campaign said: “Our concern is the trend the industry is taking, and it’s taking the wrong direction” by working in herbicide tolerance.

Many opponents hope that regulatory agencies will help turn the science around. But Caulder worries about using the regulatory process to debate biotech. “They’re asking people to rearrange social agendas with regulation. Regulatory agencies (are to be concerned with) safety, quality and efficacy and not whether consumers need or want a product--the market should determine that.”