Ban Monsanto's artificial growth hormones from mi lk

[Cassandra Lista]

Wow. Over 162,000 activists have joined you in signing our petition to the FDA about banning Monsanto's artificial growth hormone in milk!

Now it's time to increase the pressure, and make sure the FDA –“ which has been responsive to public outcry in the past – gets the message loud and clear. Can you help us reach 175,000 signatures before we deliver the petition to the FDA next week?

Click here to share this action with your friends and family via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Or just forward the e-mail below.

Thank you for speaking out.

- Josh

P.S. You can go directly to our petition to the FDA by clicking here.

 
Tell the FDA: Ban Monsanto's artificial growth hormone in milk

Tell the FDA:
“Ban the use of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin in dairy cows.â€

Add your name:
 

Dear Cassandra,
 

Breyer’s, one of America’s largest and oldest ice cream producers, recently announced that it will stop making its ice cream with milk from cows treated with Monsanto’s widely used artificial growth hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin, better known as rBST or rBGH, which is linked to prostate, colon and breast cancer.

That’s a decision that Ben & Jerry’s made all the way back in 1989.¹

While it’s great when a company makes the decision to protect consumers and rid its products of substances that could harm them, using milk tainted with rBST shouldn’t even be an option. It’s already banned in the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. It’s time for the FDA to do its job and ban it here, too.

Tell the FDA: Ban the use of artificial growth hormone rBST in dairy cows now. Click here to sign the petition.

Approved by the FDA in 1993, rBST was invented by none other than Monsanto before later being sold to the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. At the time it was approved, the FDA was criticized for inadequately assessing its safety, relying on a single study that was itself administered by Monsanto and never actually published.²

More recent studies have shown that the use of rBST increases the rate of deformities in calves and increases the rate of severe bacterial infections in cows, while also affecting reproductive functioning and shortening lifespan.⁴ But rBST’s use in cows poses a very real health threat to not only cows, but humans as well.

Milk from cows treated with rBST has been shown to contain higher levels of insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a hormone that occurs naturally in both cows and humans. Higher levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with prostate, colon and breast cancer.⁵

Furthermore, the negative health effects caused by rBST on cows – bacterial infections in particular – greatly increases the needd for antibiotic use in dairies. Widespread antibiotic use on livestock has long been a major public health concern because of its effects on increasing antibacterial resistance, which renders critical lifesaving antibiotics for humans much less effective.

Breyer’s recent decision to drop rBST from its products should be applauded. But when companies make that kind of decision in response to consumer demand, the FDA should realize it's on the wrong side of public opinion.

Tell the FDA: Ban the use of artificial growth hormone rBST in dairy cows now. Click here to sign the petition.

Thank you for your activism.

Josh Nelson, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

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1. " Ben & Jerry’s: rBGH"
2. " GRACE Communications Foundation: rBGH"
3. " rBGH: Anything But Green,"Food & Water Watch, July 2, 2008.
4. " Report of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association Expert Panel on rbST," Health Canada, November 1998.
5. " Potential Public Health Impacts Of The Use Of Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin In Dairy Production," Consumers Union, September 1997.

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