おかえりなさい、お姫様

i think nowadays, most milk usually contains a disclaimer that it doesn't carry growth hormone... right? at least at my supermarket i see "doesn't contain rBST" or whatever.

this all sounds great but trying it is difficult in practice.
to buy 100% grass-fed meat i have to go the farmer's market on saturday early in the morning or pay jacked up prices at WF. (and generally grass-fed meat can be $4-$5 more per lb, without the "WF tax"). (also, most cows are grass-fed until the fattening/feed-lot stage, so you need to find 100% grass-fed...)

but yea monsanto's policies should be so widely publicized by now, i don't understand how they still get away with the crap they do.
and recently bill gates came out in defense of monsanto, saying GMOs are necessary to feed impoverished nations. i don't get it.
how the hell are they even able to patent seeds and charge people for that?

yeah, you really need to be careful with what you eat, especially in America. You should also take care to note that some labelling is counterintuitive... "grass fed" is not the same as free range or organic, and is just as likely to be stuffed full of chemicals. I think i recall reading somewhere that even the "free range" and "organic" labels are counterintuitively used to trick customers at times too.

btw, for anyone interested in Monsanto, here's "the world according to Monsanto" dubbed into Japanese:
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v14247268KysQ … 5%E3%80%8D

and in english (in case Aijin hasn't seen it:)): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYO2k_o16E0

i also read that this milk with hormones in is thought to be one of the possible causes of the rise in twins and other multiple births in humans because it causes the ovaries to be overstimulated, but i don't know how concrete that is.

Last edited by IceCream (2012 February 10, 4:11 pm)

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

'free range' and 'organic' are meaningless unless they are the USDA certifications by those names (sometimes words are worked into product names to imply things that aren't true, or other similar terms that don't require certification are used.)

True, and even the USDA certification is pretty meaningless for a lot of those terms. For poultry especially "free range" means nothing, since to get that label from the USDA all that's required is "an opportunity" to access the outdoors. There aren't requirements about size and condition of the outside area, stocking densities, etc. So a lot of people are happy to pay the extra cash at their grocery store for "free range", thinking that it's healthier or that the chickens were treated more humanely than at factory farms. But in reality you still have tens of thousands of birds cramped into areas, with terrible health conditions, and their only access to outdoors is a tiny little exit to a filthy strip of land.

And for eggs it's even worse, since the USDA doesn't even regulate the "cage-free" labels. No third-party certification is in place for it, so really all people do is pay more money for the same quality eggs most of the time.

"USDA Organic" is the most extensively regulated of all the labels, but even for that things like stocking density, flock size, outdoor access levels, and other things haven't been set last time I researched it. So while the label might help a bit for consumer health, the terrible factory farm conditions still usually exist.

Ah, dairy is not really replaceable with anything less than an army of chemical engineers and those products taste rather awful, to be honest. The whipping and emulsification properties of butter and heavy cream are rather special, though it's true that milk as a drink can be replaced as long as you don't mind the taste - and price - of soy or rice milk

True, it's hard to get the same results using replacements, but it really depends on what one's making. For all my baking I now use "Earth Balance" and it works the same way butter does for crusts, icings, and everything else. Plus it's healthier and I like the taste more than butter. Can't make cream out of soy milk like you could by whipping milk, but there are some super delicious soy-based whipped creams out there. Eggs are the trickiest ingredient like that to emulate, and I don't have any personal experience with egg replacements, but one of my good friends is a chef at a vegan restaurant in Berkeley, and the flan/creme brulee and other custards he makes taste just as amazing as the real thing, so there are definitely options out there. Just would have to ask someone that's a better cook than me

I think the market for animal product alternatives has grown so much in the past few years that really anything can be pretty well emulated. I went to Millennium (arguably the top vegan restaurant in the country) in San Francisco a while ago, and there's NO WAY anyone would be able to tell there weren't eggs/milk/butter in any of their desserts unless you told them. Tasted just as amazing as the desserts I've had at places like The French Laundry.

kainzero wrote:

think nowadays, most milk usually contains a disclaimer that it doesn't carry growth hormone... right? at least at my supermarket i see "doesn't contain rBST" or whatever.

No labeling is required, but companies that don't use growth hormones will label themselves that way just to attract the consumer base that is seeking milk free from rBST. No labeling is required for genetically modified meats, or meat from cloned animals as well, last time I checked. You can see that court case in the film Food Inc. where Monsanto used their influence to win over the courts. Basically the court's verdict was that it would cause unnecessary panic and worry in consumers if they knew the meat they were buying was genetically modified or from a cloned animal. "Ignorance is bliss" tends to be the food industry's policy here :\

this all sounds great but trying it is difficult in practice.
to buy 100% grass-fed meat i have to go the farmer's market on saturday early in the morning or pay jacked up prices at WF. (and generally grass-fed meat can be $4-$5 more per lb, without the "WF tax"). (also, most cows are grass-fed until the fattening/feed-lot stage, so you need to find 100% grass-fed...)

Buying healthier, and more humane food products is always going to be more expensive than the cheap stuff. But you gotta remember the reason that the cheap stuff is so cheap to begin with is because corporations take every shortcut possible to maximize their profits, which is what creates the horrific living conditions for the animals, and the terrible health effects for us consumers. As consumers we're so used to a food culture where cost and ease of obtaining are the two most important factors outside taste, but for our health, the health of the animals, and the health of our planet itself, it's definitely worth the extra time and money

Yes, I have two of the Millennium cookbooks, but I haven't had the opportunity to eat there or work there. Still, they have a lot of clever tricks for making very rich vegan foods - although I can tell instantly that they don't have cream or butter in them because they don't have that unique butterfat taste, but they can be just as rich and flavorful as a cream or butter dish, it's true.

Still, there are many things that cannot be satisfactorily replicated without dairy products, IMO. The best work of Millennium and others is when they take a whole new direction towards 'rich' flavors, starting with the cashew or coconut or whatever base flavor and building on that. You can really get somewhere with that, while straight-up imitations will always be lacking something.

Anyway, as far as it being 'worth it' to buy organic, that really depends on the individual's situation. Food is expensive and getting more so, and there is a large portion of the population that simply cannot afford to eat organic food. That's doubling or tripling your food cost, which is achievable for most full-time employed individuals... but much less achievable for families. Unfortunately, incomes are effectively declining as wages stagnate while prices continue to rise - never mind organic food, too many families buy far too much in the way of cheap white flour and sugar convenience products. In sheer calories per dollar it feeds everyone pretty efficiently, so while I don't like it I do understand why they do it. It's certainly worthwhile for an individual earning $50k or more to buy organic, but not remotely practical for a family of four with an income of $20k (or less!) annually.

As long as the 'cheap stuff' is available, lower-rung wage earners are never going to be paid enough to buy anything else. (Actually, I don't expect wages to change substantially regardless of inflation or food cost increases for quite some time, people will just have to work more hours - across multiple employers, of course, so that they remain 'part-time' and denied benefits at each employer.)

Aijin wrote:

The entire time I've lived in the United States I've drank milk, and eaten dairy products, completely unaware that the entire time I was consuming a product linked to cancer and human health effects, as well as huge increases in serious health problems for the cows. I had no idea that unlike Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and every country in the European Union, America never banned the use of artificial bovine growth hormones.

I went and read up on this just a bit. My general (uneducated) stance on the media surrounding "Genetic Engineering" and "horomone" use, till now, has always been that the proponents against it and screaming loudest in the media for the ban on it were probably reacting on an emotional level to the thought of "Science in their food." Plus it always had an air of tinfoil-hat conspiracy to it.

The thread has since switched track and is now discussing animal rights, but I did want to ask about the original post.

I'm going to guess the (original) claim being made here is:

Use of recombinant Bovine Somatotropin is harmful to humans.

Everything stems from that claim.

In my reading of the wiki article what I have gathered is this. BGH is a naturally occurring hormone in cows which is secreted by the pituitary gland and regulates various functions in the body of the cow. One of these functions is the production of milk. Monsanto found a way to artificially create BGH, rBGH, and inject it into the cows and increase the milk production and growth of the cows.

The composition of milk has been studied in over 200 different rBGH studies. They have found consistently that the composition of milk (ph, vitamin content, freezing point, thermal properties, fat content, nutritional value and manufacturing characteristics) is the same when comparing rBGH and non-rBGH cows. The only point of concern is with a hormone created by BGH, Insulin-Growth factor (IGF), which occurs with natural and artificial BGH alike, in both humans and cows. IGF fed orally to an organism has no effect because its broken down (denatured) in the stomach, nor is it absorbed in the stomach or intestines.

I only bring IGF up because the wiki article mentions that injected IGF actually causes problems. Injected and naturally occuring IGF are implicated in the formation of tumors. Injected levels of IGF-1 have been shown to be linked to increased levels of breast, colon, and prostate cancer. But again, this is injected IGF. IGF is neither absorbed by the body when induced orally, nor does it make it out of the stomach.

So based on what I've read in the article on Wiki. So your claim that dairy products from cows that have been injected with rBGH are harmful to humans seems to be unsupported by what I've read so far.

regardless of what they're feeding/injecting the cows, the fact is milk is something designed by nature to make an infant grow. It's loaded with protein, fats and other nutrients to make you grow. It's not designed for adults, so it has all sorts of awful side effects if you keep drinking it beyond infancy.

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 February 11, 3:59 am)

Surreal wrote:

Even if you ignore that, the effects of rBGH which lead to increased antibiotics use also means that human health is negatively impacted since in the long run there will be more resistent bacteria/virus strains around to infect us as well as cows

Antibiotics do not affect viruses.

Surreal wrote:

vix86&yudantaiteki:Please notice how under the section "Human Health" on the wikipedia page there are three points introduced, one of which is "secondary effects, e.g. the increased use of antibiotics to treat mastitis". It's never discussed in the section any further. Experiments that test for effects of rBGH would of course usually be trying to isolate the direct effects of rBGH so that secondary effects don't confound the findings. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's what you do to examine particular effects, it's sound science. However, using that as an argument that "the use of rBGH has no detrimentary effects on human health" is an error, since the secondary effects still do exist and so rBGH might indirectly decrease the milk's quality.

Ah you're right, I completely missed that. Good catch. I guess then the issue would be researching to see if the use of antibiotics continues on down the food chain through the products. Googling doesn't give me any quick and easy to read articles on it so I can't really offer up a point on that I guess. But if it is the case that secondary things, like the use of antibiotics are the harmful, then the debate shouldn't be about "rBGH is harmful to humans!" it should be about "Antibiotics/whatever is harmful to humans." If you eliminate the use of of the secondary then it becomes impossible to use rBGH. But I think its a bit intellectually dishonest to say rBGH is harmful when the direct agent isn't rBGH.

Even if you ignore that, the effects of rBGH which lead to increased antibiotics use also means that human health is negatively impacted since in the long run there will be more resistent bacteria/virus strains around to infect us as well as cows.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant antibiotic->Bacteria because kusterdu is right; antibiotics only work on bacteria. You are right though, rampant use of antibiotics anywhere creates an ideal environment for antibiotic-resistant strains. Whether or not this is a good enough reason to avoid its use though I'm not sure, especially considering that even in the absence of the antibiotic it is still possible an antibiotic-resistant strain could arrise (many many times more unlikely, but not outside the realm of the impossible).

I also think that the worsening of the animals' living conditions is a problem in itself, but you might disagree with me on this point.

I'm ignoring animal rights discussions. That's further into the realm of philosophy/ethics than I care to argue.

Edit: Oh and please do remember that wikipedia is open to everyone, including corporate PR agents.

Yep well aware. But I checked a few of the actual papers cited in the article that I thought might be possibly planted research, and they seem sound enough.

^^^ See my point about why GM crops, pesticides, fertilizers are used. Unless you want to argue that humanity become vegetarians then we'll continue to use science to push for more and more product production. Be that meat or milk. That means our animals can't die before they reach market or use their value up (hence we need to pump them full of chemicals). Whether this is right or wrong I'm not sure, but thats the case.
EDIT: Sorry I just realized I threw the baby out with the bath water. The real point isn't humanity being vegetarian its that people will need to either decide to continue to use antibiotics to meet demand of consumers. Or accept that prices on finite animal resources like meat or milk will flucuate and potentially become expensive; as a result of banning antibiotic use to protect our selves from crazy resistant bacteria outbreaks. (The unstated point that I think we will all agree on is that animals shouldn't suffer for great lengths of time simply for their product. But this is a grey region and obviously leads to the vegan argument and the slaughtering of animals)

Javizy wrote:

You should try telling that to physicians in the UK. Assuming the antibiotics do make it into our systems, the negative impact on our gut flora would make us less efficient at combating viruses and generally lower our immunity anyway.

The article in question you seem to be refering to. Note at the end it mentions that they weren't immuno-comprimised by the antibotics.

Antibiotic-treated mice didn’t have generally weakened immune systems, though. The antibiotic-treated mice were still able to fight herpes, because the immune system fights off herpes and some other viruses using a different molecular weapon.

What herpes had to do in this though I'm not sure...maybe they used herpes as their variable to determine if the antibiotics were compromising their immune system in some way.

Its important to note though that the study mainly mentioned the flu viruses in this, but I can believe that gut microbiota probably fight all kinds of other viruses as well. But its important to remember that there are multiple different kinds of antibiotics out there. There isn't simple some drink labeled "antibiotic" and it works on everything, and we just happen to also give it to our cows, pigs, and chickens too. This study in particular looked at Neomycin. It could be that other antibiotics given to animals don't effect the gut microbiota at all. Lets not put everything under one umbrella without checking them out first.

"Conventional" animal products also contain traces of viruses, which may or may not be infective, but can still trigger immune responses, just like dead bacteria can in pasteurised milk. If you add residues of pesticides and steroids to this list, you can see how a pint of milk makes a nice little cocktail of healthy goodness even without the growth hormones.

This is about the equivalent of an OCD hand washer going on at length about the hundreds of thousands of different bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc. growing on you hand, keyboard, doorknob, toilet handle, light switch; and why oh why they must wash their hands all the time.
Fact of the matter is that 1) The immune system is very good at fighting bacteria and viruses. 2) If the pesticides and steroids are inactive, broken down, never absorbed by the human body in anyway; then why is it an issue?

Non-organic animal products

You got an example of this because this sounds like an oxymoron to me.

----

Its important to remember that part of the reason for the use of pesticides, antibiotics, fertilizers, genetic engineering, and all the other "nasty icky science stuff"; is because of money. BUT WAIT! Lets not all jump on the "bash the corporation" bandwagon just yet. The population has been increasing. This means we need more food for the people. However the number of farmers out there have not been increasing in the same proportion; in fact I would not be surprised to learn they have been decreasing (not fact checked). So if a farm puts out the same amount of food each year but the number of people have been increasing each year with no increases in farming, that means the demand went up with no increase in supply. In other words food will get more expensive. People bitch when stuff is expensive. Not only that they can't buy as much, which incidentally also hurts corps profit margin.

So scientists worked to solve the problems causing farms not to output the max amount of food per plot of land.
Maybe it was because of bugs eating so much of the crops. So they got better pesticides and crops that make their own pesticide naturally. More crop goes to market.
Maybe it was because the weather has been getting worse and its drier. So they make crops that can take less water by breeding and splicing in genes from other plants built for hardy climates.
Maybe the crops just put out meager fruit. So they'll tweak the crop's genes so the fruit is larger, which also means it sucks more nutrients so we need to feed it better when growing. Improved fertilizer.

Modified, 'pesticided', chemically fertilized crops are not going to vanish because they result in more at less cost. Meaning lower prices compared to the other organic stuff which is going to suffer from the same problems that resulted in modifying the crops in the first place. If you are well-off then you can afford those fancy organic non-GM foods. But if you are almost always broke and living check to check, you'll have to settle for the GM stuff. And as long as humans continue to procreate this will continue to be a growing issue.

Last edited by vix86 (2012 February 11, 5:56 am)

Surreal wrote:

Sure, we need biochemistry and chemistry like I said in my previous post. What at least I have been saying about this particular use of rBGH though is that it is a short-sighted, unsustainable way of increasing production that on the whole costs society more than it benefits society. I do believe that the criticism is valid and that the non-American countries that chose to ban its use made a good choice. We have food needs today that make GM foods a must and that's not even necessarily a bad thing - what is a problem is when GM and other artificial methods are used in a way that is not sustainable and only because it happens to make some peole's wallets a bit fatter.

What part is unsustainable? The fact that using rBGH requires us to us antibiotics to counteract increased infections + animal suffering, which could lead to superbugs? Theres nothing to say we couldn't develop new antibiotics for the superbugs. Therefore I wouldn't say its necessarily "unsustainable." I would say the flow of capital is probably unsustainable at its current level since at some point superbugs will force you to sink tons into research for a new antibiotic.

As far as doing it for the sake of money though, I agree, actions shouldn't be solely motivated on the on the desire of money. I think the point of arguement would then turn to whether to turn meat/dairy into a luxury item then if it means only those with lots of money could buy it.

Edit:

I agree, but then I don't have too much invested in this topic. I just don't like how the media thats anti-GM plays it off with the air of "No science in my food!" It comes off as dangerously close to the ignorance surrounding anti-evolution and the anti-vaccination BS being perpetuated.

Javizy wrote:

With the milk, we're talking about residual amounts that may have only a subtle impact on your health over time. This is something you're going to have in your coffee for the next 50 years

This is all stuff that gets tested for in the FDA drug trials though. Instead of waiting 50 years though they simply give large doses of a drug/chemical to animals and see what happens. If they decide the results are not acceptable, like saying "after consuming this quantity which would amount to 30 years of consumption you have a 4% increase chance for liver cancer." then they don't pass the drug.

How many antibiotics are able to target specific strains of bacteria? This is the direction things are heading in, but the majority of prescriptions for humans are broad spectrum varieties that decimate the gut flora. Animals are given antibiotics as a preventative measure, so they're going to be full spectrum without a doubt.

You are right that most antibiotics are broad spectrum usually and a bit of googling shows me that stuff like penicillin is used on cows. I think arguing against antibiotics use with animals, over the fact that it might harm gut flora is kind of petty issue, seeing as if it did lead to harming you (destroying gut floral and there in leading to immuno-disorder) the FDA would ban use. Surreal had it right though that the more important issue is probably the wide overuse leading to potential superbugs. However, while googling to find more answers concerning antibiotics in animals and in food I found some articles suggesting that its probably not as big as an issue (resistant strains) as some might make it out to be.

Animal Biotics and Food saftey
If farm animals receive antibiotics, does that put me at greater risk of getting an infection that is resistant to antibiotic treatments?
Experts recently reviewed all of the scientific literature on this subject and concluded that the extent to which antibiotic use on the farm contributes to increases in antibiotic resistance among bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses in people is unclear[1].  Moreover, the experts noted that extensive scientific studies confirm that people are most likely to get a resistant  infections as a result of their own use of antibiotics.   With regard to foodborne illnesses, fortunately for most healthy individuals, the vast majority of foodborne illnesses, including those caused by resistant bacteria, are not severe enough to require antibiotic treatment.  However, to help reduce potential risk, FDA’s antibiotic approval process includes a specific process to determine if using that particular antibiotic increases the risk of resistance.  It also imposes, if deemed appropriate, conditions for use of the antibiotic that would impede resistance development.

Does the use of antibiotics in food animals pose a risk to human health? A critical review of published data
*snip*

The low dosages used for growth promotion are an unquantified hazard. Although some antibiotics are used both in animals and humans, most of the resistance problem in humans has arisen from human use. Resistance can be selected in food animals, and resistant bacteria can contaminate animal-derived food, but adequate cooking destroys them. How often they colonize the human gut, and transfer resistance genes is not known.

*snip*

Even if resistant pathogens do reach man, the clinical consequences of resistance may be small. The application of the ‘precautionary principle’ is a non-scientific approach that assumes that risk assessments will be carried out.

So a mix of "still unknown" and "not likely to be of much issue."

Pesticides and steroids are synthetic toxins; why would they ever be "active"? Why do you assume they're not absorbed, and do you think they otherwise fall out of the body without taxing the liver and other organs? It may seem like OCD to you, but it seems like something worthy of much more thorough investigation to me.

When I said "active" I was referring to them not having an effect on the body. If they are absorbed in some form I would expect them to not harm the body because I put a certain amount of faith in the testing to make sure they are safe if they were consumed. Let me turn the question right back at you though, why do you assume they ARE absorbed? There are plenty of other things that make the organs of the body work just as much, unless we are critiquing every other thing that causes the liver/organs to have to work/tax them; then it seems ridiculous to me to single out pesticides/fertilizers/etc. Obviously if they over-tax the system and inevitably cause problems then ya, they shouldn't be introduced into the food chain. But this all sounds like people are making a boogieman out of anything artificial and assuming its going to make you start growing warts.

Anything that isn't certified organic by the relevant certification organisation

Oh, you are using the term in the sense of "vegan organic." Alright.

so until then it's up to you to decide what you want your body to process and what you'd rather avoid.

This is what it will come down to pretty much. The FDA can not catch all possible problems, science is not a god. It can only work through what it can see.
There is strong movement in the media to make anything "made by man and consumed" to be tainted in some way while anything "made by nature" is perfectly safe. This is a movement spawned by ignorance and the fear of the unknown.

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

Yes, I have two of the Millennium cookbooks, but I haven't had the opportunity to eat there or work there. Still, they have a lot of clever tricks for making very rich vegan foods - although I can tell instantly that they don't have cream or butter in them because they don't have that unique butterfat taste, but they can be just as rich and flavorful as a cream or butter dish, it's true.

Are you a chef? People that specialize in food might be able to taste the lack of butter or cream, but for normal consumers, and even most foodies, I can't imagine tasting a lack of butterfat/cream when there's a lot of flavor complexity in a dish. When I babysat a kid and made him breakfast I used Earth Balance on his toast and waffle and he didn't notice from taste that it wasn't butter, for example. I get the same result when I make baked goods and share with friends; nobody can tell I didn't use cream/butter/eggs. I guess we'd have to run large-scale blind tasting tests to be sure, though

Still, there are many things that cannot be satisfactorily replicated without dairy products, IMO. The best work of Millennium and others is when they take a whole new direction towards 'rich' flavors, starting with the cashew or coconut or whatever base flavor and building on that. You can really get somewhere with that, while straight-up imitations will always be lacking something.

I definitely prefer that "new direction" style in vegetarian and vegan food, rather than eating imitations, but the imitations have become insanely realistic lately. Especially the meat imitations, it amazes me how close they can get the taste and textures using things like soy protein. It's still a ways away from being a true imitation, but I wouldn't be surprised if 10-20 years from now we have meat imitations that are practically identical to real meat.

It's certainly worthwhile for an individual earning $50k or more to buy organic, but not remotely practical for a family of four with an income of $20k (or less!) annually.

Things certainly get tricky when you get into the really low wages, but if a family of four with a low income is getting financial support in the form of welfare, food stamps, etc. I think they'd certainly be able to eat healthily and humanely so long as they make their own meals. Grains are way more cost efficient in terms of calories than things like McDonald's. A 5 lb bag of rice I can buy for 4$ and that's 7,750 calories, whereas a lb of beef, about the same price in a grocery store here, is around 450 calories. Even when you factor in things like electricity cost from running cooking appliances, or gas costs from using a stove to make pasta or other grains, it's still usually way more cost effective.

I mean, yeah things like 100% grass-fed beef from ethical local farms can be out of reach of very low income families. But in those cases people should just stick to the healthy and humane foods that ARE affordable to them. So many Indian dishes are cheap, nutrient dense, and easy to make, for example. I make pretty delicious Thai curry that costs me about 10$ and lasts for 7+ meals, for example. Way more cost efficient than 10$ of McDonalds in terms of nutrient density and calories.