What do asbestos litigation and milk have to do with each other? Read on.
I mentioned in Got Milk?® - Part 1 that I prefer to get milk when I eat out. Every restaurant seems to get different suppliers for their milk, so I have plenty of opportunity to read labels and see what the difference is.
At one place I ate at recently (that doesn't sell burgers and touts itself as being particularly healthy), I was able to get a full 12 ounce bottle of milk by only paying 40 cents more than if I got soda with my meal combo. I won't touch the irony of that. But as I was looking at the label, I noticed a seal on the front that read, "No rBST. Our cows are not treated with the growth hormone rBST.*" Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) is a hormone that has been manufactured by someone in a lab taking different sections of DNA and putting them together to do something that the naturally-occuring hormone isn't doing (or doing enough) of in the body. When rBST is injected into cows, their milk production increases to much more than would naturally occur.
Curious as to why the asterisk was there, I turned the bottle around and saw a small box on the back, which read, "No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST treated cows." So the manufacturer of the milk was proud that it came from rBST-free cows, but they wanted to make sure we all knew that didn't matter anyway?
I know of a manufacturer for certain building materials used in construction and remodeling of habitable structures. It's been around for quite awhile, and there are plenty of photos shown of how things have changed and grown in their facilities every decade. One old photo that was taken down awhile ago showed men eating their lunch on a pile of--wait for it--asbestos. That's right. These workers were looking for a place to eat their PB and Js and joke with each other on lunch break, and so they found the nearest mound of asbestos (that they worked with in their jobs) to sit on, much like someone might picnic on a small hill.
It's an incredible photo to look at. If we could actually jump into the photo Wonderland-style, I'm pretty sure we all would--making sure we took along a breathing mask. We would tell those smiling, unknowing men that they needed to leave immediately and not come back until the asbestos was all cleaned up and they had assurances of better air quality. But we can't. All we can do is look helplessly at the train wreck in slow motion and wonder what became of them.
I am not a scientist and haven't read reasearch studies on rBST. However, my logic and personal preference tells me that I don't want to expose myself to something that mimics a hormone in a perfectly good dairy cow who could produce milk herself, if we'd just let her--albeit less than if she was treated. The manufacturer of the milk I was drinking must have felt something akin to this to take the time to tell me the cows didn't receive this injection. They also must have known what they were up against to add a silly disclaimer on the back as they did.
The manufacture of rBST, which a quick Google search tells me has been going on around 15 years (yes, correct me if I'm wrong on that time frame), doesn't really have enough time under its belt to prove if it is harmless or not. It may very well be fine--I don't know. But why on earth are they making producers of non-rBST milk tell us that it would be okay if we drank rBST milk?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.