Bovine Growth Hormone, Genetic Engineering and the New World Order
by Mitchel Cohen
Page 2
Is rBGH Safe for Cows?
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone is like “crack” for cows. Bi-weekly shots “rev” up their system and force them to produce more milk for perhaps a few years, and then their milk production declines dramatically. rBGH also makes them sick.
Their udders swell and develop painful, bloody lesions -- an infection known as "mastitis," which is “treated” by giving cows huge doses of antibiotics. The cows suffer through shortened life spans and increased birth defects, rates of metabolic disease, infertility and stress.
What's more, there's pus in the milk. Farmers must buy heavy doses of antibiotics to treat rBGH cows' frequent infections, which occur seven times as often in cows treated with rBGH than in those who are untreated, last six times as long, and leak pus, blood, bacteria and increased levels of antibiotic residues into the milk. Shockingly, the very companies that produce rBGH add to their profits by manufacturing antibiotics and tranquilizers which they then sell to dairy farmers to combat the side effects -- which end up in the milk. High levels of antibiotics passed along to the mother or to children could impair the development of the immune system in children, cause the growth of resistant strains of bacteria and viruses, and lead to serious health problems.
High School students at a “No rBGH” parade and rally in Brooklyn in February 1997, organized by the Brooklyn Greens, were quick to point out that they were moved to participate upon learning of increased levels of pus in rBGH milk. Some of the students altered Dairy Council ads, and made signs out of them. Instead of “Got Milk?,” the signs read “Got Pus?” Ben & Jerry's donated free non-rBGH ice cream for the protest.
Cows into Cannibals
The use of rBGH intensifies the already unhealthy confinement of animals in industrial-scale dairy production.
Factory farming of animals is immoral; some cows spend their whole lives tethered to machines. Increasingly, they're viewed as “units of production” instead of sentient beings. Some Florida dairy herds grew sick shortly after starting rBGH treatment. One farmer, Charles Knight, lost 75 percent of his herd due to the injections while Monsanto and company-funded researchers at the University of Florida withheld from him the information that the same thing was happening to other farmers and their herds. Knight says Monsanto and the university researchers blamed him for the high death rate.
Even in death -- which, in general, comes earlier to rBGH-injected cows -- the animals are seen as part of the machine, the “production process.” In recent years the industry has taken to “rendering” animal carcasses, which means grinding up dead and often diseased cows into animal feed and other meat products. (Some ad agencies have added their own “spin” on the practice, calling it “recycling.”) Approximately 40% of the “rendered” beef is used to make hamburgers. The rest is mixed into cow feed, along with sheep brains and other “rendered” animal parts. Cows, like many animals, are by nature vegetarian.
Turning cows into cannibals is gruesome enough. But now, with meat being derived from diseased rBGH-treated cows, each burger or bucket of feed contains an increased proportion of antibiotics, synthetic hormones, viruses, bacteria, and chemicals. The ratio intensifies each time around the cycle of death.
The situation is compounded by genetically engineered hormones. rBGH-injected cows require more protein than normal. So they consume even more rendered meat in their feed, which concentrates the amounts of synthetic hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals even further.
Just a short time after this practice became widespread, health officials began to notice a dramatic increase in the rate of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- “mad cow” disease -- which is caused by “prions” found in diseased and waste animal body parts, offal and blood. Prions cause infected cattle to literally develop holes in their brains, suffer seizures, fall down and die. Recent studies indicate that mad cow disease is linked to the devastating Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
A prion is a form of protein having the normal chemical composition but is shaped differently. When it comes into contact with normally-constructed proteins it causes them to relapse into the deformed shape, triggering a chain reaction. Prions are able to withstand severe heat, such as pasteurization and even irradiation. There is no known way to defuse them. They may incubate for 30 years, and are passed to humans who eat meat from sick cows, regardless of how well one cooks the meat.
The U.S. government, of course, maintains that no BSE-infected cattle have been discovered in the U.S. But, as Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn write, the disease may have appeared in the U.S. before the outbreak in England. “Richard Marsh, a veterinary scientist at the University of Wisconsin, was raising the alarm about BSE in American cattle back in 1985. Marsh discovered an outbreak of spongiform encephalopathy at a mink farm in Wisconsin. The mink had been fed a protein supplement made from rendered cows that had supposedly died from `downer cow syndrome.' Marsh believes the cows had actually succumbed to a previously undetected form of BSE.” [St. Clair & Cockburn, “Dead Meat: Why Mad Cows Are the Least of It,” City Pages Online, April 2, 1995.]
Around 100,000 cows a year die from downer cow syndrome in the U.S. Most of these dead cows are rendered into protein supplements to feed other cattle. As Cockburn and St. Claire see it, “if this is true, the U.S. cattle population may already be infected with BSE and American meat consumers may have already contracted CJD.
All of this has severe environmental and economic as well as health consequences. Groundwater becomes even more polluted as mutated, drug-resistant viruses, fungus, and bacteria develop in response to the increased use of antibiotics and genetically engineered chemicals and, through waste run-off -- often used as fertilizer -- enter the water supply and soil.
Ever-greater quantities of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, fertilizers and other toxic chemicals are applied to the land to deal with the new strains of resistant germs, blights and diseases, further contaminating soil and water. These are manufactured by the very companies that produce rBGH and other genetically-engineered products. So are the antibiotics and tranquilizers sold to dairy farmers to combat the “side effects” of rBGH. For Monsanto, as with other corporations, the name of the game is profits, profits at any cost.
A Method to Their Madness
Monsanto is playing the same game it once played in developing the herbicide 2,4,5-T, used in Agent Orange, another Monsanto product. Back in the 1960s, Monsanto, working closely with the Pentagon and the Veterans' Administration, intentionally falsified key data on the effects of Agent Orange on human health in order to sell the deadly defoliant to the government for “use” in Vietnam. [Jeff Nesmith, “Monsanto Altered Dioxin Study, EPA Memo Says,” Indianapolis Star, March 23, 1990, p. A3.] Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that the government's exoneration of Agent Orange was “politically motivated ... to cover up the true effects of dioxin, and manipulate public perception.” [Affidavit in Agent Orange case, Ivy v. Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Co., et al., CV-89-03361 (E.D.N.Y.) p.8.] Similar concerns erupted over Monsanto's manufacture of Aspartame, the
chief ingredient in NutraSweet and in diet soda, which causes brain lesions in laboratory rats.
And then there's Monsanto's manufacturer of PCBs. Monsanto's Sauget, Illinois plant discharges an estimated 34 million pounds of toxins into the Mississippi River. The facility is a major producer of chloronitrobenzenes, bioaccumulative teratogens detected at levels as high as 1,000 parts per billion in fish over 100 miles downstream. The factory was the world's only manufacturer of PCBs until Congress finally banned them in 1976. They are still present today, 22 years later, at high levels in Mississippi River fish and are ubiquitous in the global ecosystem. [Greenpeace, “Monsanto: Greenpeace Corporate Criminal Report.”]
Monsanto also manufactures butachlor (trade names: Machete, Lambast), an herbicide which poses both acute and chronic health risks and can contaminate water supplies. Although Monsanto manufactures butachlor in Iowa, the herbicide has never been registered in the U.S. or gained a food residue tolerance. In 1984, the EPA rejected Monsanto's registration applications due to “environmental, residue, fish and wildlife, and
toxicological concerns.” Monsanto has refused to submit additional data requested by the EPA. Despite its recognized dangers, Monsanto sells butachlor abroad. Dozens of countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa use the product, primarily on the paddy rice which constitutes almost all of U.S. rice imports. [ibid.]
Clearly, Bovine Growth Hormone is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Monsanto, Hoffman-LaRoche and other manufacturers of vaccines injected, often involuntarily, into GIs, are working “behind the scenes to contain the government investigation of Gulf veterans' health problems.” [Tod Ensign, “Gulf War Syndrome: Guinea Pigs & Disposable GIs,” “Covert Action, Winter 1992-93. Also, Mitchel Cohen, “The U.S. Government's Secret Experiments with Biological & Chemical Warfare,” available from Red Balloon.] Monsanto and other pharmaceutical companies continue to cover-up the dangers in genetically-engineered drugs, herbicides, pesticides and uranium weaponry -- a cover-up essential to ensuring mega-profits, business as usual. [See Mitchel Cohen, “The U.S. Government's Secret Experiments With Biological & Chemical Warfare.”]
As in the cases of dioxin/Agent Orange, PCBs and Aspartame, neither Monsanto nor the FDA have performed the appropriate long term studies on the effects of rBGH on the environment or on the health of people. Nevertheless, rBGH was fast-tracked through government, with strong support from the Clinton-Gore administration. Meanwhile, Monsanto flouted the law at every opportunity. One law, for instance, required Monsanto to notify the FDA about every complaint the company received from dairy farmers such as
Charles Knight, whose situation we discussed earlier. But four months after Knight complained to Monsanto, the FDA had still heard nothing from the company. Monsanto officials say it took all of those months to figure out that Knight was complaining about rBGH!
After witnessing so many lies, it is no wonder that people across the country -- indeed, throughout the world -- don't trust a thing Monsanto says. For instance, the company claimed that every truckload of milk in Florida is tested for excessive antibiotics. But Florida dairy officials and scientists on camera say this is simply not true.
Likewise, Monsanto says that Canada's ban on rBGH had nothing to do with human health concerns. But Canadian government officials say just the opposite, and that, in fact, Monsanto had tried to bribe them with offers of $1 to $2 million to gain approval for rBGH. (Monsanto officials say those funds were for “research.”) No wonder that outraged consumers have forced legislation to be introduced requiring labeling of dairy products derived from rBGH cows in state after state, only to be torpedoed as often by Democrats as Republicans at the behest of Monsanto. Instead, new legislation pending before Congress limits the liability of corporations, and is receiving fervent support from the pharmaceutical industry to fend off consumer lawsuits against genetically engineered products.
Both major parties fill their war chests with campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. Taking their cue from Washington, many so-called progressive Democrats such as 1997's NYC mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger and Bronx Boro President Fernando Ferrer have gone to bat for the industry and opposed labeling, under the delusion that genetic engineering is the key to progress.