Shuddup and drink your milk!

Shuddup and drink your milk!  I think that’s the message we’re being sent by the FDA and Elanco, the manufacturer of the synthetic growth hormone Posilac.  If you don’t like it, too bad.   Well  I don’t like it and I won’t buy it.

This whole story makes me very angry.  When I set out researching the subject at the urging of a couple friends, I had no idea of the magnitude of the subject.  The more checking I did the more information I was finding.  What really gets me so angry is that the whole story is so OLD and I was relatively unaware of any of this prior to my digging.  I realize part of the fault is definitely mine.  I’ve never been too concerned about food safety before.  I always placed my trust in the FDA and the USDA and all the other organizations we tax payers foot the bill for.  I thought they had our backs.  Antibiotics in our meat supply was something I was somewhat familiar with, but OMG, this whole antibiotics/hormone/genetically modified organisms thing is like a pus oozing cancer, just waiting to burst open on all of us.  The research just isn’t there.  They don’t know if it’s safe and yet we’re eating it!

We have to question things.  It’s very evident there aren’t any questions being asked or truthfully answered at the FDA.  There is a lot of money involved because these are some HUGE companies with really deep pockets.  Monsanto would not have us question the safety of its products.  Monsanto made Agent Orange, PCBs and dioxin.  The government said they were safe.  Monsanto said they were safe.  Yet they’re among some of the most horrific things that have been visited on us, aren’t they?  Now we know more questions should have been asked.  Now we’re wiser, …. aren’t we?

So what am I doing about it- meaning the lack of standards, the laws being adjusted to suit big agribusiness and big biotechnology companies?  For one thing I’m spending my food dollars a lot more judiciously.  I’m buying free-range and grass-fed when I can (and I’m buying bison meat, too).  When I can’t, I just cut back on my purchases- some days going meatless.  I buy organic dairy products and eggs now and organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible.  And I’m alerting you to what’s going on with our food supply, too, so you can be in the know.  So what are you doing about it? 

More shared talent at the FDA & Who stood up to Monsanto and said NO!

Taylor wasn’t the only talent Monsanto and the FDA shared.  Margaret Miller, a researcher at Monsanto, prepared a report requested by the FDA which was to present evidence that the growth hormone Posilac was safe.  Just prior to the submission of the report by Monsanto to the FDA Miller left Monsanto and was hired by the FDA as Deputy Director of the Office of New Animal Drugs where her first task was to approve or disapprove the report she had just put together at Monsanto.  She approved it.  (is that a conflict of interest? dishonest? mind-blowing?  Naw!  It’s all in a day’s work at your MonsanFDAto.)  And while Miller was in this position at the FDA she increased the allowable amount of antibiotics cows can be given by 100 times.  (The correlation between the use of synthetic hormones and antibiotics appeared in my post on Antibiotics in milk and bovine health, part 1, posted July 5^th) .  Other Monsanto transplants into the FDA were Susan Sechen and Nick Weber.
 

So the FDA with no mention of a conflict of interest (the revolving door between Monsanto and the agency) accepted Monsanto’s “evidence” (written at Monsanto, approved at the FDA, all by the same person- the writer and the "approver" were one and the same) as to the safety of its products over the objection of scientists.   I have a problem with that.

Scientists at Health Canada said they had grave misgivings over the safety of Posilac during hearings conducted there.  They stated that they were being pressured and coerced into giving the drug approval.  Dr. Margaret Haydon testified that Monsanto had made an offer of between $1 million and $2 million to Health Canada, which the scientists there interpreted as a bribe. Additionally she noted that notes and files critical of the data provided by Monsanto disappeared from a locked cabinet in her office.  (It could be noted here that Nick Weber, Margaret Miller’s direct underling at the FDA, passed to Monsanto the European Commission’s confidential documents outlining their misgivings about rBGH.  I believe he was terminated.)  Health Canada turned Monsanto away.  They were not persuaded of the safety of the drug, quite the contrary.

Additionally the World Health Organization, the United Nations Food Safety Agency which represents 101 nations worldwide, ruled unanimously in favor of the European moratorium on genetically engineered hormonal milk.  Their Codex Alimentarius, Latin for the Food Book, provides written guidelines and is the internationally recognized collection of food standards, guidelines and codes of practice to protect the health of consumers.  So I guess that leaves the U.S., Mexico and South Africa as the nations who have approved it.  Lonesome ain’t it?

Fox TV and synthetic hormonal milk, part 1

The investigative team of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson had been hired expressly by the television station WTVT in Tampa to do just that…. conduct investigative reporting.  In fact Wilson had received 4 Emmies for his reporting, and Akre had received an Associated Press award for her work.  Shortly after the husband and wife team was hired on, the station was sold to new owners- Fox TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and thus begins our story.  Akre and Wilson had been writing an in-depth report on Florida’s dairy industry and were turning up all sorts of negative information relating to the use of rBGH in milk cows and that gave them great concern.  They had conducted lots of interviews, had shot a lot of footage, and had done plenty of investigative digging into the subject.  This was going to be a BIG story.  It was scheduled to air in four parts beginning on February 24, 1997, and in anticipation of its airing during that sweeps week Fox was paying for ads on radio as well to stimulate public interest.  Just before it was to be aired the Fox News Chairman received what could be viewed as a threatening letter from a powerful New York attorney representing Monsanto.  “There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto but also for Fox News and its owner,” concluded the New York attorney John J. Walsh in that letter.  It was received virtually on the eve of the scheduled broadcast of the first segment of the report.  Walsh asked for a week for Monsanto to prepare material to defend itself from what they perceived as an attack on their product, Posilac. The investigative series was postponed while attorneys and reporters poured over the material but found no inaccuracies.  The reporters offered to interview a rep of Monsanto to explain their side of the story.  Walsh then ridiculed that idea.  The series was postponed again.  Over a period of months Fox tried all sorts of means to get Akre and Wilson to drop the story entirely or to change it to the extent that it would have ultimately been completely false.   How did it turn out?  Did the truth win out?  Check it out tomorrow.