How can consumers be trusted, encouraged by advertising to investigate prescription treatments for every ailment under the sun and remember lists, of possible complications and concerns, to share with our doctors, but we can't select a container of milk from an untreated cow without being victims of ignorance?
What's wrong with consumers choosing between milk from treated and untreated cows?
Alex, tireless champion for eliminating Monsanto competition, will explain why it is this issue is so important.
Somebody is getting rich off of milk that is labeled one way, but is exactly the same compositionally- and I guarantee you it’s not the dairy farmer who has given up their right to use rbST to earn a living. No…it’s not them.
Yes, the farmers who get greater volumes with hormone treatment have a supply and demand price point below the Organic farmers who have far smaller total quantity of milk and higher costs to feed and forage their cows.
That cost is passed along to consumers who speak with their dollars to find a supply demand, price point and free market solution. What becomes the problem is that Monsanto's share of the market for hormone dairy is shrinking as consumers realize it's a factor and turn away in droves. Among those making money on rBGH/rBST was Dennis Wolff, Monsanto dairy farmer as he said to the farmers rallied to support this move,
The key word is: choice. I used rBST from day one of its approval to the last day that I milked cows. It was an important management tool on my dairy farm. What we oppose is the negative advertising or the selling of fear. If producers are asked to give up a production efficiency, and if that efficiency nets them $3000 or $10,000 a year for their dairy farm… That’s a lot of money.
Now the initial challenge to the lost market by CGFI was made in 2003.
Center for Global Food Issues to preview Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly Program
CGFI - October 29, 2003Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly Seal of Approval offers farmers and consumers more choices
The Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues (CGFI) will preview its new Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly Seal of Approval project to the food and dairy industry this week at the Worldwide Food Expo in Chicago. A farm and environment friendly seal of approval offered as an alternative to organic and other production-related niche marketing, the CGFI seal will assure consumers that products bearing the seal are produced in a manner consistent with the best available scientific, health, environmental and quality standards and technologies.
Ah, but the Hudson crowd believe deeply that the milk from treated and untreated cows is identical and they want the rest of America to accept their position. Beginning in 2003 they set out to create their own FDA standard and to have it applied to foods that employed the full "tool box of productivity enhancing methods" offered by Monsanto and still bear a homespun looking label, they tried to have backed by the FDA!!
Well the label flopped when it was identified as a way to hype the price of some of the most cheaply produced and pharmaceutically potent dairy on the market.
The market can only be saved by letting Monsanto hide their hand. Now it may be that some producers are trying to cheat and adding Posilac treated cow's milk to the organic mix. It seems to me we could identify those farmers by the sales data for Posilac if catching cheaters was the goal. Registered users couldn't unload at organic processing plants, problem solved, oops, that wasn't their problem
This isn't about consumers getting the purity they pay for, this is about making sure the dairy farms supporting Monsanto's bottom line don't face any resistance from consumers. Much of the movement has been built on carefully worded claims of scientific measures but nothing is less scientific in a consumer's mind than food selection. Few people if any would choose a red apple, over a yellow or green one, based on relative fiber and trace mineral values or anything that would resemble a scientific comparison. Nor should we have to.
We consumers use the most irrational process afforded by a free market and pick what ever we want, any reasons or no reasons at all, because we can. That's a free market system. I could want goat milk gathered by the Sherpas under the light of the moon. Whether I'm totally daft to pay for it isn't the point, as long as the person selling it has given me what I paid for.
Regardless of how silly or serious a point of information a consumer relies on for making a purchase, from the social details of fair trade, or intangibles like shade grown coffee, to the boasts of added antioxidant properties and beneficial health effects, consumers weigh the benefits that matter to them before buying.
Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said in a news release that “The ban includes claims that cows are not treated with rbST because no test can distinguish between the natural hormone in milk and traces of the 99.5% identical biotech version.
In his own words lest any bias of mine creep in to it! Breaking News, 99.5% identical isn't identical. It's close but no cigar. Identical means 100% unless you're cutting a corner, to pull a fast one.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
