Fearmongers exposed
It’s a conundrum when food service owners tout the purity of their products, but don’t really understand the realities. When a business owner says there are no hormones in the milk they use, the milk has no antibiotics, and the fruits are organic and non-GMO, an educated reader will know that the purveyor is more interested in fearmongering than facts. Apparently, those claims are meant to convince potential patrons that their drinks and foods are superior, but a knowledgeable consumer knows these claims are bunk.
Let’s look into the statements. According to The Scientific American magazine, “Conventional milk contains naturally occurring estrogens, primarily in the form of estrone and estradiol, because it is produced by lactating cows. The level of these hormones is higher in milk from pregnant cows, which is common in modern dairy farming. All milk, whether from cows, goats, humans or porpoises, naturally contains small amounts of various hormones, including estrogen and progesterone. Organic milk contains about the same amount of hormones as conventionally produced milk.”
In other words, hormones in milk comes about naturally, not from anything being added. Hormones are never added to milk.
As far as antibiotics in milk, I can speak to that from first-hand experience. We had a Grade A dairy for five years. We had 150 cows and a 2,000-gallon-bulk milk tank. Infrequently cows needed to be treated with antibiotics. The federal law says any milk from a cow receiving antibiotics must be separated from the bulk milk for a certain number of days, cannot be sold, and must be discarded. The milk from the bulk tank is sampled by the milk truck driver to be sure there is no antibiotic residue. If there is, the entire tank of milk has to be dumped. You can bet that dairy farmers are careful about keeping contaminated milk out of the food supply.
There are no antibiotics in milk.
One of the most annoying descriptions or labels is “non-GMO.” For one thing, I’d bet there is not one non-farm person out of 100 who knows what GMO stands for and how they help agriculture producers. They just read the GMO boogeyman may be out there. The fact is there are only 10 GMO crops currently on the market: summer squash, soy beans, corn, cotton, papaya, canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, potatoes and apples. Within those, many varieties are not GMO, so you can’t paint all apples or potatoes with the broad brush.
The reason GMOs exist is genetically modified crops have had their genetics altered to reduce the use for chemical pesticides, something the public said they wanted. It saves passes over the field equaling time and money saved. Most of the GMO crops in the U.S. are for animal feed, not human consumption. Yet, even after years of research to achieve the goal of using less pesticides, some people aren’t satisfied.
Labeling a product as “non-GMO” is misleading to the average consumer who isn’t aware about the actual number of GMO crops. It’s a dishonest ploy.
In an age when consumers are asking for transparency, they certainly are not getting it.
Sanders writes from the family farm in South Dakota.
