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MOUNTAIN VIEWS: DOWN ON THE FARM, THINGS JUST AREN'T WHAT THEY USED TO BE MANY YEARS AGO

By John Hanchette

OLEAN -- Farming isn't as simple as it used to be.

Almost half a century ago, when I was a callow teen trying to make the high school wrestling team, the coach thought it would be good physical training to work on a dairy farm for a summer.

So he got me a job on one near the shores of Lake Ontario and my parents' summer home in Jefferson County. I made about $35 a week. Indeed, it was one of the best experiences of my life. Two other friends and I baled hay and got it in the barn for a penny a bale each. You mow it, you rake it, you bale it, you load it, you haul it, you stack it in the haymow. Sometimes you had to tamp down fresh, moist silage to remove the air spaces that might overheat. I would emerge from the silo looking like the Jolly Green Midget.

The best job, which rotated, was driving the old Case tractor slowly around the field in the hot summer sun, dragging the creaky hay wagon while your colleagues were sweating bullets and swearing a blue streak as they threw the heavy bales from the field up to the wagon bed. Soon it would be your turn to heft and throw. You used a dangerous hay hook in one hand and gripped the thick twine in the other. Every couple of hours in the hot afternoon, the farmer's wife would bring out lemon slices to slake the dryness in our throats. Sometimes, she'd bring unsweetened iced tea -- to the accompaniment of our loud cheering. The air was clear and fresh. You could see the dark blue waters of the lake from your field.

The milking -- oh, yes, we had shiny Surge milking machines way back then -- was even more productive in terms of body-building. I weighed 104 pounds and the milk cans seemed to weigh a ton as we lifted them into cooling vats to await the dairy truck.

Times and farming methods have changed, of course, and these simple bucolic procedures -- fulfilling and predictable -- have become more sophisticated and efficient.

Farming, though, has become more complicated -- and to many practitioners, a huge headache.

Consider the use of artificial growth hormone in dairy cows.

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone -- also known as rBGH or bovine somatotropin -- was made available to dairy farmers a decade ago and was the first genetically engineered food product approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. Canada, the European Union, and most other industrial nations have banned its commercial use.

The growth hormone is a normal product of a cow's pituitary gland. To synthesize it, a tiny fraction of cow DNA carrying the hormone coding is snipped out, inserted into a culture of e. coli bacteria DNA, and grown in vats. When injected into cows, the growth hormone stimulates milk production by 10 to 20 percent.

The dairy cow's metabolism is spurred -- about one-third more blood is pumped through the hearts of injected cows, and key organs, glands and the udders are enlarged.

The bovine growth hormone is thought to be used in about a quarter to one-third of this country's nine million dairy cows.

The only approved seller of the growth hormone is the controversial mega-giant chemical and biotech firm Monsanto.

Monsanto enjoyed about $300 million in annual sales of the growth hormone in recent years, but there is some evidence recipient cows are more susceptible to disease and experience negative side effects. The FDA's own mandatory warning labels, which Monsanto must insert with shipments, list almost two dozen potential bovine health problems associated with use: uterine disorders, cystic ovaries, decrease in calf birth weight, retained placentas, premature calving and, maybe the most serious, increased risk of mastitis, a serious inflammation of the udder.

Dairy farmers dread mastitis because it means milk with pus in it, lost revenue because dairies won't accept it, and expensive treatment with healing antibiotics, which leave a residue in the milk suspected by many health experts of causing health problems in humans.

All this has prompted concerned consumer groups, organic product advocates and many farmers to swear off bovine growth hormone, which Monsanto markets under the trade name Posilac.

The controversy over the hormone continues to grow. When several milk producers started labeling their cartons with the phrase "No Artificial Growth Hormones," Monsanto responded aggressively. While one might think this is merely truth in advertising and a welcome commercial approach to consumer information, Monsanto claimed the labels constituted deceptive marketing practices and were "misleading representations" that "directly disparage" the company's growth hormone product and the milk that flows from its use. The huge company claimed such labels insinuated milk from treated cows is somehow unsafe.

Monsanto last summer sued in federal court in Boston the small Oakhurst Dairy of Maine. It left the impression Monsanto was picking on smaller businesses. The widely distributing and successful ice cream maker Ben and Jerry's Homemade of Vermont carries a similar label on each pint of its ice cream, noting its supplying farmers have pledged to refrain from using artificial growth hormones, but escaped suit from Monsanto.

Monsanto noted in its lawsuit and accompanying press releases that the FDA has approved the hormone use, and that the FDA has stated it basically can find no difference in milk drawn from cows injected with the hormone and cows that haven't been injected. (Some critics of the FDA have been calling it "Monsanto's Washington Office.")

Monsanto insisted in the filings there is no chemical or nutritional difference in the milk from hormone-injected and hormone-free cows, and that the growth hormone is derived from natural cattle protein.

The National Dairy Council backed up the big company, calling Posilac "repeatedly proven safe."

Consumer groups, health advocates and organic farmers howled in anger, however.

Jim Hightower, noted Texas public advocate and liberal commentator, called Monsanto a "biotech bully" and wrote in his monthly newsletter that "the dairies are not making any such health claim -- they're merely informing us that the corporate additive is NOT in their milk. What's false or misleading about that?"

Hightower claims, "Monsanto can intimidate dairies into dropping the labels. They let Oakhurst Dairy in Maine know that they would spend a quarter of a million dollars or more on lawyers -- leaving Oakhurst no choice but to alter its label."

Which Oakhurst Dairy did. In late December, the small milk producer near Portland caved in and agreed -- through formal legal settlement -- to relabel its milk cartons this way: "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones Used."

And then at the carton's bottom, these words -- recommended by the FDA, but not required -- must be used by Oakhurst: "FDA states: No significant difference in milk from cows treated with artificial growth hormones."

Ben and Jerry's, by the way, carries that exact same wording on its labels.

Some feared the out-of-court settlement would rapidly spread to artificially strained labeling of other foodstuffs.

Maine dairy farmer John Nutting, who used to be in the Maine legislature, told the Bangor Daily News that might happen: "Who's next? Will organic farmers have to put a disclaimer on their carrots?"

Then, a surprise. A few weeks ago, Monsanto announced it would cut its supply of Posilac for 2004 by 50 percent, due to "a combination of factors including necessary corrections and improvements at our supplier's manufacturing facility" -- which is in Austria.

Starting last month, the cutback in supply is expected to last at least a year.

The only expanded explanation from Monsanto was that a November FDA inspection of the production plant found more batches of the hormone than expected were failing quality control tests. Oh, and Monsanto upped the price of Posilac nine percent.

This may have been good news to the unknowing dairy cows, but they still suffer a worse existence from modern agribiz practices than did dear Old Red, the docile lead cow I used to tend long ago as she trudged in at the front of the herd from her pastoral setting near the big lake.

Most dairy cows these days don't see as much green pasture, instead being forced to spend most of their lives standing on huge rotating cement platforms for automatic milking from udders that now alone routinely weigh as much as a mature human. Such dairy cows these days understandably develop early leg and hoof problems, going lame and having to be culled for slaughter around four or five years of age.

Ah, for those rock-fenced fields of long ago, when honest sweat at day's end was rewarded with a cooling dip in a lake -- instead of a lawsuit.


John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com April 6 2004