Milk Battle : Cow Drug Fight Is Taken to Consumers
The battle over a drug designed to increase cows’ milk production has been long, highly charged and without precedent. And, it seems, the real fight is yet to come.
Opponents of bovine somatotropin, a genetically engineered protein, say they expect the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve the drug within a few months. In anticipation, they are now taking their campaign to consumers.
Across several states, they have stepped up a drive urging grocers and dairies to pledge not to handle milk from BST-treated cows, and last week, a group placed advertisements in two nationally circulated news magazines, calling on the public to help block use of the drug, which they say is inhumane to cows.
The four large drug companies making BST, Monsanto, Eli Lilly, American Cyanamid and Upjohn, are still debating what, if any, response they might take to the ads without incurring the wrath of the FDA. The companies have been stepping gingerly since January, when the agency warned them to stop “promoting” BST while it is still under investigation.
And the FDA itself has taken some unusual actions in its handling of BST, in part, officials there said, because never before has a veterinary drug aroused such heated debate.
Caught in the middle are the nation’s dairy farmers, who are cautiously measuring the drug’s potential to enhance productivity against worries that the BST debate will sully milk’s almost mythic image with consumers as the purest of natural foods.
In California, where milk products are the single biggest agricultural commodity, many dairy farmers say consumer reactions are their chief concern. California’s dairy farmers pride themselves on being the most efficient and modern in the world. With fewer but bigger dairy farms, the state has climbed to No. 2 milk producer, behind Wisconsin, and has been steadily closing the gap. Many farmers see BST as the tool that will help California move into first place within the next decade.
In Wisconsin, where dairying is a source of pride as well as income, opponents have charged that BST will endanger the state’s small-farm economy. The debate over the drug rose to new emotional heights last month as frustrated state legislators engaged in a raucous shouting match before finally agreeing to extend until June, 1993, the state’s year-old moratorium on commercial use of BST.
However, Gov. Tommy G. Thompson has said he will “most likely” veto the legislation before the Dec. 6 deadline and could do so as early as today. His veto would also pull the plug on a similar measure in neighboring Minnesota. In an unusual arrangement that illustrates how closely the two state’s dairy interests are allied, the Minnesota moratorium extension will go into law only if Wisconsin’s does.
In Vermont, where opponents have twice failed to introduce a BST moratorium, a yearlong battle with the University of Vermont over its BST research came to a head this week. Two state legislators Monday vowed to introduce legislation that would require the university to submit for prior review and approval any proposals to conduct private, company-funded research.
The drug is a copy of the cow’s natural protein that regulates milk production. Reports from research indicate that injections of BST increase a cow’s milk output from 10% to 25%. Since the 1950s, dairy farmers have been using an ever-more sophisticated array of herd management techniques to improve milk production. But BST became a lightning rod for a variety of interest groups because it is genetically engineered.
Experts agree that states such as Wisconsin, Vermont and Minnesota, where the small-farm operations dominate the dairy industry, have cause to worry. The structure of the industry is changing, favoring the large farming operations so prevalent in California.
“Wisconsin dairy farmers are already endangered; this (BST) would hasten that endangerment,” said Fred A. Douma, a dairyman whose farm near Hemet, Calif., boasts 18,000 milking cows. “It’s a simple fact that, as a general rule, dairymen in Wisconsin and Minnesota are operating in an era and with a mental attitude of 50 years ago and haven’t changed. That is the reason for their lack of acceptance of a technology like BST.”
Douma said California is “poised to move in” to capture the share of the market that Wisconsin will lose if its “efficiency doesn’t change, if their attitude toward dairying in today’s world doesn’t change.”
The FDA has already ruled that milk and beef from BST-treated cows pose no danger to humans. In an unprecedented response to BST opponents’ criticisms of the FDA, the agency published its findings in a scientific journal last year. Other agencies, including a special panel formed by the National Institutes of Health, have reached the same conclusion, putting a damper on opposition groups’ attack of the drug as a human health issue.
But the FDA is still investigating the drug in respect to efficiency and animal safety. Dr. Gerald B. Guest, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, said no other drug has ever been put through such rigorous, extensive testing.
The Cream of the Crop
Wisconsin and Minnesota together make up the most powerful dairying block in the country, accounting for a combined 23% of the the total 1990 U.S. milk production of nearly 148.3 billion pounds. California, where dairying is the No. 1 agricultural endeavor, has been steadily closing the gap between it and Wisconsin over several years and continues to lead the Midwest in production per cow.
Source: California Dept. of Food and Agriculture
