Milk Stimulant Hormone Found Safe by Federal Panel : Health: A group of doctors and veterinarians reports that the synthetic material has no impact on the nutritional quality of dairy products or meat.
Milk and meat from cows treated with a synthetic growth hormone that increases their milk production are safe for consumption, a federal advisory panel said Friday.
The experimental use of recombinant bovine somatotropin, a synthetic version of a growth hormone that occurs naturally in cows and their milk, has raised concerns about the possible health implications for humans who consume products from treated cows as well as for the animals themselves.
“This is a new technology,” said Dr. Melvin Grumbach, emeritus chairman of the department of pediatrics at UC San Francisco and chairman of the panel. “There is a lot of concern . . . about the safety in terms of our food chain and in terms of the health of the dairy cows.”
But the panel of medical and veterinary experts, which was convened by the National Institutes of Health, concluded that the milk and meat from treated cows are safe for humans and that the hormone has no impact on the nutritional quality of the products.
“This is not like an antibiotic. This is not like a synthetic steroid,” Grumbach said. “This is a variant of a natural hormone we all have circulating in our blood.”
The group acknowledged, however, that it based its judgments on available data and did not have access to a large body of information involving the drug’s effect on animal health that is under review by the Food and Drug Administration.
The panel agreed that the hormone “does not appear to affect appreciably the general health of dairy cows,” but it called for more research in that area, particularly on the incidence of mastitis, or udder infection.
The panel said that use of the hormone “can be a very important management tool for American dairy farmers.”
Consumer and public interest groups criticized the panel’s findings.
“We remain unconvinced . . . that the use of bovine growth hormone in dairy animals poses no threat to human or animal health,” said Michael K. Hansen, a research associate with the Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Consumers Union.
Consumers Union earlier this week urged the FDA to reconsider its 1985 decision that milk from treated cows was safe.
“We are seriously concerned that the data now in public hands may not present a complete picture of human and animal health problems,” Hansen added.
Food Animal Concerns Trust, a Chicago-based public interest organization that deals with issues affecting the livestock and poultry industry, charged that use of the hormone would cause more animal disease. This, in turn, would result in a greater use of antibiotics to treat the ailments and would further increase “dangerous residues” of antibiotics and other veterinary drugs in milk and beef, the group said.
“There is widespread disease throughout the U.S. dairy herd because of the demands put on each cow to produce abnormally high quantities of milk,” Robert A. Brown, president of the organization, said. “If you use (bovine growth hormones) to increase milk production even further, you will get more disease, more veterinary drug use and more drug residues in our food supply.”
At least four U.S. companies are seeking FDA approval to commercially market the drug. Monsanto Co., one of those seeking approval, Friday praised the panel’s report.
“We hope this finding will be reported to all American consumers so that they continue to feel confident that the milk they enjoy is safe and wholesome,” said Lee A. Miller, vice president of the company’s animal sciences division.
The panel’s decision should “quiet . . . critics who have tried to create needless concern among consumers about (the hormone’s) safety,” Miller said.
Although the drug is currently in experimental use only, the FDA has declared the products safe and has allowed milk from treated cows to enter the regular food supply. FDA officials said, however, that milk from treated cows makes up about only 1% of the milk supply.
