A lot of cows are being routinely injected with performance-enhancing drugs; synthetic hormones, to be precise.
But there's an official code of silence. No need to broadcast the fact on the side of a milk carton. In fact, best not to mention their absence (in all-natural milk), even, lest a consumer get the wrong impression; the drugs boost milk production, but they haven't in a single study been proven unsafe for humans.
As things stand - albeit unsteadily - Dennis Wolff, the state ag secretary, has ruled that the whole business is really none of your business; that milk is naturally replete with hormones, and without a reliable test to detect the Monsanto-made artificial extras, dairies who label it "Hormone-Free" or even "No Synthetic Hormones" are, well, making unverifiable or, worse, misleading claims.
This has not gone over well with some dairies - central Pennsylvania's Rutter's Dairy chief among them - that advertise their milk as free of added hormones. And it hasn't sat well with a number of retailers. Or with a slew of consumers freshly concerned about weird chemicals in food.
So instead of the hammer coming down for good on Jan. 1, as was planned, the no no-hormones labeling deadline has been postponed until Feb. 1; and a whiff of strategic retreat is in the air.
No current test has revealed a human health threat from Monsanto-ized milk. (In fact, ice cream lovers buying Ben & Jerry's no-added-hormone pints might better look to the saturated fat levels on the label if they're worried about their health.)
But as a former dairy chemist at the show pointed out, it took decades to pin down the human health hazards of formaldehyde and asbestos.
