FDA Urged to Ban Milk, Beef Linked to Hormone : Health: The GAO says questions remain about the experimental growth drug and its relationship to antibiotic use in cows.

The government should ban the sale of milk and beef from cows treated with an experimental growth hormone until the Food and Drug Administration can answer lingering safety questions, according to a General Accounting Office report released Monday.

The report also called for the FDA to withhold final approval of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, or rBGH, until the issue is resolved.

FDA and industry officials insisted, however, the products are safe.

While the report does not suggest the hormone endangers consumers, it found that rBGH, which is used to increase milk production, causes more incidents of mastitis, an inflammation of the udder that must be treated with antibiotics. The FDA does not have a testing procedure in place to guarantee that milk from these cows is not tainted with dangerously high levels of those antibiotics, the report said.

Two of the most common antibiotics given to cows with the inflammation are penicillin and tetracycline. High doses in cow’s milk could prompt allergic reactions or cause consumers to build up resistance to the drugs, which also are used to fight human diseases.

“I am profoundly disturbed by FDA’s failure to adequately study the risk to consumers from antibiotic residues in the milk of rBGH-treated cows. It is even more outrageous that FDA allows the milk industry to sell this experimental milk to an unknowing public,” said Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House government operations subcommittee that oversees the FDA.

In 1985, the FDA permitted research to proceed on the safety and effectiveness of the hormone. Those studies are now being evaluated by the agency before final approval is given. At the same time, however, based on the outcome of preliminary safety tests, it approved the sale of both milk and beef from hormone-treated cows.

“We haven’t seen any data that suggests that there is a problem,” said FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan. She added that the synthetic hormone is identical to a naturally occurring growth hormone found in all milk.

The FDA has not yet determined whether use of the hormone actually leads to higher rates of mastitis, as the GAO claimed, Cruzan said.

A spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation said the industry tests its products more stringently than the FDA requires, and charged Congress with playing election year politics by raising the issue.

“Milk is one of the most tested commodities people consume,” said Karl Hoyle, the federation’s communication director. All milk is tested for traces of penicillin and subjected to random tests for other types of antibiotics, he said.

Independent studies have shown very low levels of antibiotics in the milk that reaches store shelves, said Hoyle.

The problem with those studies, one congressional staffer said, is that the FDA has not shown that the testing process is accurate. “The industry does test, but these methods have never been validated by anyone. That’s the type of testing that needs to be done by our government,” the staffer said.

In a separate report released last week, the GAO found that states routinely test for only four of 82 drugs that can leave residues and are approved for use in dairy cows. The four drugs are all members of the family of antibiotics that includes penicillin.