Posted 1:54 PM by Tevita
What’s Really in Your Food?

From : Independent Weekly

by Suzanne Nelson
It’s one thing for a manufacturer to avoid disclosure about a product’s ingredients. It’s quite another to prevent another company from providing information to its customers, but that is exactly what Monsanto has been up to. The biotech giant is the sole producer of artificial growth hormones given to cows to increase milk production.
A growing grassroots backlash over the use of hormones has prompted restaurant chains such as Chipotle to pledge to only use dairy products free of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also known as bovine somatotropin (BST). Grocery chains Kroger, Publix and Safeway also have restricted their private-label milk to that from cows not given the drug, although Safeway has thus far made the move only in the Pacific Northwest. Starbucks has indicated that all of its coffee shops will be rBGH-free by early 2008.
Despite studies-many funded by Monsanto-indicating that the growth hormone is safe, questions about the injections’ implications for human health have persisted since its approval in 1993. Milk produced by cows given the drug contains elevated amounts of insulin-like growth factor, which some studies have shown to increase the risk of breast, colon and prostate cancers. (No direct link has been shown between milk from cows given the hormone and increased cancer rates.)
The hormones are banned in every other industrialized country. If Monsanto has its way, it will become increasingly difficult for American consumers to even determine whether it is in their milk and what that might mean for their health. As it stands, the FDA doesn’t require milk from cows treated with the hormone to be labeled at all.
Monsanto told its investors last November that growing demand of “rBGH-free” milk could affect the company’s bottom line. A couple of months later, the company petitioned the FDA to issue “stronger guidance” regarding milk producers’ indications on the carton that their milk is free of the artificial growth hormone.
Under 1994 guidance from the FDA-which approved the use of rBGH and maintains that it’s completely safe-most dairy processors that market milk from cows not treated with the hormone include a disclaimer on the label indicating that “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.” Monsanto asked the agency to revisit the issue, as the company deems that this disclaimer is not enough to “balance” what it asserts are deceptive claims by producers that milk from cows not treated with the hormones is healthier.
The company also petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to take action on grounds that milk processors “mislead customers by falsely claiming that there are health and safety risks associated with milk from rBST-supplemented cows.”
In response, the FDA reaffirmed its commitment to the current guidance for labeling rBGH milk. The FTC requested that several companies amend the way they label milk from cows free of the artificial hormone. The companies complied., according to Monsanto.
To Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association, the premise upon which Monsanto petitioned the FDA and the FTC is absurd. Monsanto claims that the two milks are identical and that companies implying health attributes to milk from cows free of the hormone are somehow misleading their customers. Cummins says those claims are demonstrably false.
“There is a difference, that’s why it’s patented. There is a difference, that’s why it’s banned in much of the industrialized world. There is a different amino acid chain at the end,” Cummins says.
Milk naturally contains a bovine growth hormone, but the rBGH is synthetically engineered and has a different chemical composition, he explains.
The FDA maintains there is no difference in milk from cows treated with the artificial hormone and those that are not, but Cummins says that’s because the agency is not testing for it. He says the agency has admitted at various points that a dozen chromatography machines around the country have detected its presence in the milk.
A Monsanto spokesman says the FDA has not conveyed any such information to the company and that such allegations run contrary to the “FDA’s very voluminous ruling on this matter.” Both the FDA and Monsanto assert that there is no “compositional” difference between milk from cows treated with the hormone and cows that are not.
Either way, Cummins says, the agency is flouting the law and its own regulations.
“You are not supposed to get an animal drug approved unless you have a detection plan for it, the idea being that if you legalize an antibiotic in animal feed, they want to be able to test to make sure that there is not a dangerous level of antibiotics in the milk,” he says.
In Monsanto’s view, the distinction is that rBGH is a hormone, not an antibiotic or pesticide.
The fact sheet provided by the FDA explains that long-term research to assess the safety of rBGH was unnecessary because studies demonstrated that bovine growth hormone “is biologically inactive in humans even if injected,” the artificial version is “orally inactive” and the natural hormone and the artificially created version are “biologically indistinguishable.”
FDA spokesman Michael Herdon declined to comment on the issue further, stating that the “FDA’s current position on rBGH is well-documented.”
The issue of antibiotics is a whole other subject. According to Cummins, the FDA rarely tests milk or meat for antibiotics given “off-label.”
“Veterinarians can sell a drug to a farmer that is not approved for that use,” Cummins says. “Europeans are appalled that U.S. dairy farmers have access to 50 to 100 antibiotics, whereas [the FDA] only tests for four.”Chocolate by any other name?
The FDA is also currently pondering a somewhat sweeter question: What makes “chocolate” chocolate? The dark delectable has long been understood as a confection made from crushed cacao beans, which provide the solid cocoa mass, as well as cocoa butter. The cocoa butter is responsible for the “melt in your mouth” goodness.
Trouble is, cacao beans are expensive, and industrial chocolate manufacturers have petitioned the FDA to allow them to replace the cocoa butter with cheaper fats and still call the resulting edible “chocolate.” Cocoa butter has become increasingly prized for cosmetics and lotions, so the companies could make a bigger buck selling it for skin creams.
The petition came as part of a block of more than 200 proposed changes to food standards requested by the Grocery Manufacturers Association. In response to widespread press coverage, much of it negative, the FDA released a statement indicating that cacao fat, “as one of the signature characteristics of the product, will remain a principal component.” What it didn’t say, however, was just how much cocoa butter manufacturers will be able to substitute with vegetable oil and still call their product “chocolate.”A theme of nondisclosure
The number of ingredients, processes and modifications not disclosed on food labels is long and growing.
Just in the past year, the FDA has determined that meat from cloned animals can be allowed in the human food supply without disclosure.
And the agency also recently announced that manufacturers of deli meats are free to spray ham, bologna, salami and the like with a mix of six genetically modified viruses to combat potential contamination with Listeria, a bacteria that makes deli meats one of the top contributors to food-borne illnesses in the United States.
Consumer groups have criticized the USDA for years for failing to get meat processors to clean up the plants so that Listeria and other microorganisms couldn’t find a hospitable home in foods commonly served to children without further cooking. Instead the FDA decided to let the companies spray the meats with viruses engineered to consume the potentially harmful bacteria.
“Who knows what these things do?” asks Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which helps people return to traditional and whole food diets. “They could be toxic in their own right, and it’s no substitute for cleaning up their act.”
Also in the meat case, the federal government has declined to intervene in the now-widespread practice of “modified atmospheric packaging,” whereby “fresh” meat is preserved with carbon monoxide and other gases. Meats packaged in polystyrene trays with plastic wrap have a shelf life of less than a week, but gas packing allows beef to stay bright red for weeks or even months. Trouble is, the meat may look fresh without actually being fresh. Last year Consumer Reports found that three out of 10 gas-packed ground beef samples had spoiled by their use-by date, even though the meat still appeared red.
There are no disclosure requirements for the use of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen to preserve the appearance of meat, however, consumers can tell whether their beef, poultry or pork was packaged that way by a taut plastic seal not touching the meat.