I'm opposed to the use of rBGH. Stating falsehoods doesn't help the cause.
The absence of evidence that rBGH ends up in milk isn't for lack of trying to find it.
I get organic milk because it tastes better. I suspect that means it's more nutritious, and further suspect that's because of the growth hormone, not the absence of some pesticides (but not others!) in the feed.
To preemptively correct a misconception which many people have: nutrition labels are based on what the government legally allows producers to claim, it isn't the result of some test performed on the food inside the package.
Just like a huge tomato doesn't have much more lycopene than a smaller one with the same genetics, it makes sense to me that most of the increased lactation from rBGH is just water.
Might be bad for the cows too, I mean I doubt it's good for them. But I consider it cheating and think we'd be better off without it.
I don't think I've seen milk that's not rBST free, even the cheap store brands. Where are you even finding it?
Organic milk is often UHT pasteurized which gives it a slightly scalded flavor. That might be what your tasting, rather than any nutritional difference.
Could be placebo, I grant you. 90% of my milk consumption is as yogurt, I get the UHT stuff by preference, so I don't have to scald it in the Instant Pot myself. The comparison is apples-to-apples along that dimension.
Your claim surprised me, so I've done a bit of looking into it, and it seems that milk from cows given rBGH/BST was never particularly prevalent, and has steeply declined over the past ten years! Also, the FDA never required the disclaimer about rBGH milk being found to be identical to non-rBGH, that's tacked on out of fear of lawsuit.
I guess next time I make yogurt I'll try the store-brand UHT and see what I think. Organic certification does have some animal welfare requirements which I support, but I eat almost a quart of yogurt a day and the difference could buy me dinner at a decent restaurant every month.
I will say that the difference between expensive eggs and cheap ones is completely obvious, while that between organic milk and the regular is subtle enough that I might just be fooling myself.
And I think even if you put on your milk container that it contains no rBGH, you legally have to put an extra note on there saying that rBGH is not proven to be dangerous.
Is there good scientific evidence that rBGH is bad for you? I don't know a lot about this, but my first guess is that "naturalness" / "organicness" partisans are opposed to it for reasons related to the non-scientifically-supported ideas they have that are rooted in purity instincts.
In the US, on every carton of milk that advertises itself as being rBGH-free, there's a statement mandated by the FDA, who was apparently lobbied by the industrialized farms who thought such advertising unfair:
"The FDA has determined that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBGH-supplemented and non-rBGH-supplemented cows"
Sure, but that could be true or false. Granted, in either scenario people who use rBGH are incentivized to want it to be true. I assume the fact that it's on cartons at all is a loss for the industrialized farms, though.
Yes, but I think it depends on the location. At my local grocery store in Chicago, milk has been $2 per gallon ($0.53 per liter) for years, as long as you buy 2 gallons or more. When I was in Florida for a few months, I couldn't find it for less than $3.79 per gallon ($1 per liter) anywhere.
The cheaper milk in the upper midwest tastes better too, as it all comes from Wisconsin and Indiana where the cows can feed on green grass that grows naturally because it gets plenty of rain, etc.
Unlikely. The article mentions something that sounds related:
> This was in the heart of America’s dairyland by the way, to the point that federal milk pricing used to be based on how many miles away from here you were.
This sentence cites a WSJ article from 1997 [1].
BTW, California has had bigger dairy production than Wisconsin for decades [2].
Hey, you know you may be right - I guess I just assumed about the source of the milk. Try this out: go to Aldi [1] and choose grocery pickup for anywhere in Illinois or Indiana, and you’ll see a gallon of milk for somewhere between $1.95 and $2.50 per gallon (depending on the store location). Click on the milk and you can clearly see the “Real California Milk” label.
