According to Jim Hightower's web site today, corporate ag-chem giant Monsanto has put its Posilac business up for sale. This is good, because it means the company could not force the American people to accept milk laced with an artificial sex hormone.
It's news because Monsanto had unsuccessfully sued to keep farmers and dairies from advertising their milk as free of the product.
And it's a little, little good news because this is just one brand-name of artificial growth hormone. Posilac buyer Eli Lilly will keep the additive available.
But stock share prices for Monsanto went up considerably on the news, and those of Lilly fell slightly.
It's too much to hope for that public reaction will stop the use of these artificial hormones in our milk, or have an impact on CAFO-style dairy operations.
Do these look like happy cows to you?
Yet, these cows have it good, comparatively. Cows in bigger CAFO operations have less room and are in far less hygienic conditions, often. California's environmental regulations -- which the Governator hasn't yet seen fit to gut as the President has done with federal regulations and enforcement, or as W did with Texas' regulations in the 1990s -- have driven many of these operators out of California.
What bothers me is the ones who've come to Texas don't seem to be as interested in the cows' welfare as the operator of the Iowa dairy pictured above.
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That IS good news
Thanks, Sarah -- and I hope you're doing well!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
But..but..but those ads show Happy California Cows! In pastures,
telling boorish bulls to butt off. Remember? It's so pretty in Adland.
Those ads are
cheesy
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“When someone engages in divisive behavior, any resulting division is their responsibility” - Melissa McEwan
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“I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat.” - Will Rogers
Doin' real good, Lambert, thanks.
Learning curve on my new job looks a lot like the flight path of an unpowered B-58 when you invert the chart...
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Excellent!
I take it, then, that things are not dull!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
That'd be, understatement, huge, one each. Yep. N/T
We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
As long as you keep it in the air, Sarah
until it is time to land then the flight is considered a success even if part of it is conducted upside-down. “Interesting” is not the same as “disasterous.”
What's your issue with Posilac? I'm bothered by the increased need for antibiotics due to a higher incidence of mastitis, but that can be managed by better hygiene and increased basic nutritional supplements in the feed. The r-BGH doesn't pass through in milk, and what increase there is of IGF-1 in the milk is very small on an absolute scale, trivial compared to a human's own daily production, and likely destroyed in the gut rather than absorbed. There's no reason from a biological standpoint to suppose that either r-BGH or milk-borne IGF-1 has any effect on humans at all, and certainly no evidence.
Like so many other things, if used properly Posilac seems to me to pose no big problems. While it wouldn’t break my heart to see Posilac disappear, it isn’t on my radar as a meaningful threat. Am I missing something?
Oh, and yes, those are some happy-looking cows in a very fine barn. A happy cow is a quiet cow; when they're unhappy, they are not at all shy about expressing themselves. Or kicking you. Or trying to run you down. You haven’t fully lived until you’ve had to put udder balm on a cow that’s gotten her teats hung up in the barbed wire, and then tried to milk her. Some kind of rodeo let me tell you what, and a lot more dangerous to your health than a hormone supplement.
yay!
i love it when 'teh market' bites the big corps in the butt, even if it's not really all that visible.
What's my issue with Posilac? Hmm. How about what it does to
the cows?
It mucks with the health of their hormone system, and when it does what the chem-mages want it to, it creates an overproduction that stretches the cow's udder out of all proportion to nature; the result is a strain and a breakdown, and yes, a susceptibility to mastitis. I can't help thinking anything that's that bad for the cow isn't good for the milk, or anything/body drinking the milk. Yes, I know it makes money out the wazoo for the ag industry. No, it doesn't make a lot more money for the farmers. Yes, I hate the stuff.
It's an adulterant. It's unnatural. It's unnecessary. It's not good for the cow.
And, as a matter of fact, yes, I have had to tend to a cow with a torn teat. And milk. And it sucked, because she was a gentle old Jersey who never kicked, or put her foot in the bucket, or any of the thousand other things cows do -- the end of a cow's tail, slapped smartly across your face, is no fun either. She developed that habit while her teats were healing, and she bawled every time her bag was touched, fit to break the hardest heart in the county.
As far as the increased need for antibiotics ... don't get me started. CAFO ought to be ill-damn-legal, retroactively. Those cows in Iowa are not in bad conditions. Cows in big massive dairies in other places are not in anything like as good a shape as those Iowa cows.
And nor is the milk harvested from them as clean as milk should be.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18