Bovine Growth Hormone, Genetic Engineering and the New World Order
by Mitchel Cohen
Page 3
Radiation and Milk
Cows' milk and other dairy products have been associated with serious health problems even before recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone was given the go-ahead by the Food and Drug Administration in late 1993. Atomic bomb tests caused radioactive isotopes like Strontium-90 to enter cows' milk in the 1950s. It became the subject of protests and national debate, and played a role in winning the first comprehensive test ban treaty on nuclear weapons.
The issue was raised again following the disastrous accidents at the Three Mile Island (March 1979) and Chernobyl (April 1986) nuclear power plants. For the first time, statistical evidence was gathered directly relating the large increases in total and infant mortality that occurred across the United States in the summer of 1986 to the heightened amount of radioactive iodine, cesium, strontium, and barium in rain and milk -- fallout from Chernobyl halfway around the world. [Dr. Ernest Sternglass, “Nuclear Radiation and the Destruction of the Immune System,” published by the Red Balloon Collective. Also, “Fallout, Thyroid risk higher in Vermont,” The Burlington Free Press, August 8, 1997.]
Radioactive isotopes in milk have, by now, compromised the immune systems of an entire generation. While protests have forced a few of the most dangerous chemical sprays like DDT off the market, new and even more dangerous sprays have taken their place. Chemical, hormone, antibiotic and radioactive residues in dairy products continue to contribute to the rise of asthma, cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.
The direct injection of rBGH into cows raises the issue once again. As long as kids drink milk or eat butter, ice cream, cheese or yogurt, they are especially susceptible to radiation, pesticide residues, impurities, and, in the case before us, the high levels of antibiotics and increased hormonal levels found in rBGH-derived dairy products. Monsanto claims that the government monitors antibiotic levels, and that they are safe. But the FDA generally tests for only four types of antibiotics. “Both the GAO and the Milk Industry Foundation, which reports on drug testing, have found that a wide variety of drugs are used and not tested for. Thus, an increased use of antibiotics in response to a rise in rBGH-induced mastitis would likely go undetected in the milk supply.” [Multinational Monitor, June 1994, p.16.]
While most milk companies now oppose rBGH and have pledged not to use it, New York City public schools continue to contract with Tuscan, which refuses to sign rBGH-free pledges and continues to contract with farmers for milk that may come from cows injected with rBGH. “If I can't test for it, I'm not going to put our company's neck on the line by making that kind of pledge,” said Peter Stigi, senior vice president of Tuscan Dairy Farms. [NY Daily News, 4/17/97.]
But the FDA, Monsanto and Tuscan _are_ able to test for it; they've chosen not to. In 1991, the American Medical Association said that it was possible to develop a test to distinguish between the natural hormone and rBGH. But incredibly, the FDA refused to develop an rBGH detection test. Nor did it require Monsanto to do so. Then, a German company announced that a test could easily be developed to detect rBGH in milk. But no one thought it important enough to develop it. As long as no test existed, the FDA and Monsanto could pretend that rBGH is indistinguishable from the natural hormone, implying falsely that the two hormones are identical.
Angry members of the National Farmers Union (NFU) decided to take on the bureaucracy. The NFU raised contributions and hired a laboratory, Kara Biologicals of Stanton, New Jersey, to develop a low-cost strip test to detect the presence of rBGH in milk. And now, two Cornell University researchers, Vitaly Spitsberg and Ronald Gorewit, have developed another way to detect rBGH in milk. [Solidarity Notes, Albany, February 1998.]
As it turns out, Monsanto's claim that there is “no difference” between the natural hormone made by the cow and the synthetic hormone manufactured in the lab is but another false pearl in its necklace of lies. The synthetic hormone is detectable in milk because it has an additional amino acid sequence, methionine, compared to the naturally produced hormone. How will this affect those who consume milk derived from rBGH-injected cows? No one knows; those tests have never been done.
Nevertheless, Monsanto continues fighting tooth and nail against consumer demands to require appropriate labels on dairy products. And now, the giant pharmaceutical companies are gearing up for the real battle, in which rBGH is only the opening salvo: The right to patent, own, and profit from the very substance of life itself. [See Mitchel Cohen, “Genetically Engineering the New World Order,” Red Balloon pamphlets, 1998.]
What Is Genetic Engineering?
Genetic Engineering is the process of redesigning DNA molecules to create new forms of life. Scientists are recombining genes from plants, insects, bacteria, animals and humans to more fully exploit the commercial possibilities of agricultural and pharmaceutical production.
Genetically engineered foods are unlabeled and, mostly, untested. The health consequences of eating genetically engineered foods are largely unknown; what has been engineered into the genetic code of such staples as corn, soy and rice has never before been part of our diet. Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans, for example, are genetically modified to withstand increased exposure to the company's herbicide Roundup. The company advertises its soy as “herbicide resistant” -- a euphemism for what is actually herbicide _saturated._ We ingest these additional chemicals, produced in every cell of the plant, along with our food.
Cows fed Roundup Ready soy produce milk with significantly higher fat content than those fed ordinary soybeans. At a meeting of the Working Group on Biosafety of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity on October 13-17, 1997, scientists from around the world concluded this to be direct proof of a substantial difference between genetically modified and ordinary soy. They also found that the application of glyphosate (such as the
herbicide Roundup) increased the level of plant estrogens of bean crops. Estrogen, including that from plants, is known to impact mammalian tissue and is one of the triggers of humans cancer.
As if all of that is not bad enough, certain diseases are, for the first time, beginning to cross the “species barrier,” following trans-species genetic implantations. There has already been some crossover between pig and human viruses, and gene modification across species also subjects us to higher levels of toxins and allergens. Genes from peanuts and Brazil nuts implanted in soy can cause severe allergic reactions, even death. Yet the products containing peanut genes have no warning labels. (Soy with Brazil nut genes were forced off the market several years ago.) Genes from flounder implanted in tomatoes to keep them from freezing, and genes from chicken spliced into potatoes to keep them from bruising raise all sorts of ethical problems for vegetarians. Genetically-synthesized scorpion toxin is brushed on fruit to keep away pests. The manufacture of synthetic vanilla
is already playing havoc with the economies of Madagascar, the Comoros Islands and Reunion Island, which depend on natural vanilla exports as their primary source of income.
Bio-engineering, backed by the might of the U.S. military, is now being used as part of a conscious policy to drive indigenous people from the lands they've traditionally shared and on which they'd grown food for themselves and their communities. Agribusiness companies, increasingly tied to pharmaceutical corporations, want profitable crops grown for export. As Oxfam puts it, “Hunger is increasing because immense wealth is flowing out
of poor countries and into rich countries. Far greater wealth -- in the form of crops, minerals, timber, labor power, skills and cash -- is being removed from poor countries and transported to the world's wealthier countries than the other way around. More than $50 billion in capital is transferred annually from the global South to governments, banks, corporations, and lending agencies based in the global North. ... [Today] the free-market revolution has only widened already extreme income inequalities and worsened poverty” throughout Latin America. [”Oxfam urges big changes at World Bank,” Financial Times, Sept. 30, 1994.] In fact, in 1973, 36 of the world's most impoverished and starving countries were chief suppliers of export crops to the U.S. And it has only gotten worse. [Mae Won-Ho, Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare, 1997.]
By newly “enclosing” agricultural lands and pasture, legalizing confiscations after the fact, agribusiness corporations, USAID, the World Bank and the IMF have been able to drive formerly self-sufficient peasants and the rural proletariat off their lands and to cities in search of work, generally as laborers in near-slave conditions in assembly- or export-zone sweatshops. The lands are then taken over by giant corporations and plundered for soil-depleting strip-farmed export crops and the extraction of natural resources.
According to the USDA, only two percent of genetically engineered foods are developed to enhance taste or nutrition. 98 percent are artificially designed to make food production and processing more profitable for the 3 percent of the world's landlords -- mostly giant corporations -- that have come to control 80 percent of the world's land and the food grown on it.
One of the ways international agencies accomplish this is by systematically dumping cheap or free food onto the local markets, undermining local producers and forcing them to drastically cut their prices to compete. (This is different from legitimate food emergencies in which short-term contributions are critical, although even there many so-called “natural” famines are in reality man-made by the policies of the IMF and World Bank.)
Since so many small producers are dependent on immediate income to stay afloat, any significant drop in income destroys their community and way of life, and enables large corporate farmers to take them over and consolidate their hold on both the production apparatus and the market. The dumping of hybrid and now cheap genetically engineered corn in Mexico, the special water and soil requirements, and the corporate patenting of seeds threaten to undermine stable indigenous communities centered around growing and
marketing local corn. The Zapatista rebellion in January, 1994, focused on opposing the importation of corn under NAFTA and the destruction it would cause to their local, self-sufficient economies.