It’s hard to think of a more wrong headed approach to food labeling, nor one which is worse for Pennsylvania farmers and for concerned consumers than the standards for labeling of milk just recently promulgated by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. They would ban milk labeled as produced by cows without the use of rBST unless the bottler can prove it through laboratory analysis, at his own expense. Though the claim be true, it is not possible to prove it via an analysis of the milk. So what’s the big deal?

Recombinant bovine somatotropin, rBST, (also known as rBGH recombinant bovine growth hormone) sold by Monsanto Company, greatly enhances the milk production of an animal and is the country’s largest selling dairy pharmaceutical. Cows treated with rBST have higher rates of mastitis and much shorter lives in general. It is therefore banned in Canada, the European Union, Australia, and Japan. Consumers in the U.S., aware of this fact, willingly seek sources of milk which don’t involve it’s use.

Without the option to identify non-rBST produced milk, farmers who don’t use the drug are stuck in the middle because they cannot compete with the flood of milk produced by those who do. Consumers are left wondering why it’s wrong to use performance enhancing drugs in sports, and wrong to drug race horses and greyhounds, yet OK to drug Bessie.

The fact is that today’s consumers are eager to know exactly what they are eating and drinking. And the quality of both is enhanced by the distinctions. A generation ago wine was just wine, and bread was just bread, a carrot was a carrot, but today we are long past that. We’re in the era of fine varietal wines, hand crafted breads, organic produce, and artisanal cheeses. So what’s with the archaic notion that milk is just milk? Why hamper us with a regulation which can only devalue our product?

It’s the consumer’s right to know if milk is produced with hormones or not. If he/she is willing to pay the price, what harm is done? And isn’t it a fundamental American right to have the freedom to make truthful claims on product labels?

PDA, allow the dairy farmers of Pennsylvania to distinguish themselves and make the livings they deserve!

---Don Kretschmann, full time organic farmer of 30 years.