Safe as Milk: The Story Behind Bovine Growth Hormone

By Dr. Samuel Epstein

The biotech industry hasn’t published a single article in a peer reviewed journal or anywhere else on the safety of genetically engineered foods.  In any discussion or debate with them, they will cite to you a variety of authorities, a variety of institutions (indentured authorities, indentured institutions) who supposedly lend powerful support to the safety of genetically engineered foods.  The industry says, “Trust us. Would we do such a thing to U.S. agriculture?  Would we do such a thing to world food supply if we weren’t absolutely sure that what we’re doing is for the benefit of human kind, quite apart from the profit of our shareholders?”

The quick answer to that is, “Where’s your data?”  The second answer to that is, “Look, you guys have a two decades long track record of manipulation, suppression, distortion of data when it comes to rBGH [bovine growth hormone given to cows to increase milk yields], and by examining your track record on rBGH we have come to the conclusion that we cannot accept ‘trust us’ assurances unless and until there are well published, peer reviewed scientific data on the short-term and the long-term environmental and public health implications of GE technology. Until then, we want a total and absolute ban.”

This is infinitely preferable to demands for labeling, which is full of loopholes.  One of the lessons of the rBGH story is that if ever there was an appropriate occasion for the rigorous application of the precautionary principle, it’s GE foods.

In the spring of ’89, I started getting some calls from farmers in this country and elsewhere who were asking, “What do you know about rBGH?”  I said, “Really, I don’t know anything at all.”  They said, “We’re giving the stuff to our cows and the cows are getting sick, and if the cows are getting sick, surely this must do something to the milk.”  I said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”

Then after about the tenth call of this kind, one farmer came across like this: “What the hell do you mean, you don’t know anything about it?  You’re in public health, aren’t you?  If it’s harming my cows it must be harming people.” 

That was my wake-up call. I started a fairly thorough search of the medical and public health literature, and could find nothing whatsoever on rBGH. I then came across two supplements to the Journal of Dairy Research, that were devoted to rBGH, the 1987 and the 1988 supplements of the Journal of Dairy Research, which were devoted exclusively to reports on rBGH. There must have been about 300-350 articles on rBGH, fairly short articles, each with an abstract and conclusions.

As I started going through the listing of authors in the organizations in these 300 or so articles in these two supplements, the first thing I noticed was that all these articles fell into two categories: either they were by Monsanto scientists and the other companies involved, including Eli Lilly, or from land grant colleges. Over the decades, land grant colleges have become so closely allied with the agrochemical industry that they are literally extensions of agrochemical interests, largely funded by Monsanto and by other biotech companies.

When you read those 300 articles carefully you find very often that there’s a peculiar disconnect between the abstract at the beginning of the article and the actual data in the article.  The majority of scientists, who are busy people like all of us, tend to read abstracts and perhaps the conclusions at the end, but they don’t tend to go through the actual hard data.

The abstracts, universally and uniformly said, “We did milk production trials giving cows rBGH (and most of these milk production trials were based on very small numbers of cows—about five to ten cows). There were no adverse effects reported, and we got an increase in milk production. So everything is fine. No problem whatsoever. This is going to be a great boon.  It’s going to reduce the price of milk, etc.” 

However, I went through the data with a fine-toothed comb and found some very interesting findings. The first was that there was a high incidence of mastitis, inflammation of the udder, either clinical mastitis, in which you actually found pus in the milk, or sub-clinical mastitis, in which you have an inflammation of the breast or the udder of the cow, but no visible pus, but when you examine the milk microscopically you find pus cells floating around.

The second was a high incidence of reproductive problems of a wide range: decreased birth weight, miscarriages and what have you, and one or two references to a growth factor known as IGF-1, which is short for Insulin-like Growth Factor 1.

In all of our bloodstreams and the bloodstreams of all mammals, there’s a growth factor known as Insulin-like Growth Factor1 secreted by the liver in response to growth hormone. Growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland, so that growth hormone stimulates the liver to produce IGF-1, and the IGF-1 serves to act to stimulate cell growth, proliferation and maturity. Colostrum is the richest source of IGF-1 because infants need this growth factor to help their cells develop and to grow, so it plays a very critical role in normal growth and development.

But there were some little clues here and there that all well was not with the IGF-1 levels.  Elevations of IGF-1 were mentioned and then brushed aside as being within normal limits. Well, they certainly were within normal in the colostrum very shortly after birth.  But when you looked at normal milk, the elevation was quite striking.

I began to smell that something wasn’t kosher here. I sent an editorial to the L.A. Times expressing my concerns.  I pointed out that on the basis of preliminary information, there was evidence showing that rBGH produces significant alteration in milk and an increased incidence of mastitis among cows. When you have an increased incidence of mastitis then you have to treat the cows with antibiotics.  So antibiotics will spill out into milk, and several problems can ensue. One can be increased antibiotic resistance, which has become an enormous problem nationwide. Apart from that, a significant number of people have allergic and hypersensitive reactions to antibiotics. Thirdly, there are some antibiotics in common use that are carcinogenic.

The points I made to the L.A. Times were: There’s evidence of veterinary hazards to this, including mastitis, and the mastitis leads to problems with antibiotics.  Secondly, there’s an increased level of IGF-1, and it’s known that IGF-1 plays a very important role in the whole progression of cancer and the ability of malignant cells to grow.

When you give a cow the genetically engineered growth hormone, suddenly there’s a massive explosion and concentration of IGF-1 inside the breast cells, inside the epithelial cells. What’s happening is that the rBGH is without any question elevating IGF-1 levels, and the IGF-1 is concentrating itself within the breasts, the udder cells, and epithelial cells.  So in the L.A. Times article I suggested that there could well be cause for concern as to the potential of IGF-1 in relation to breast cancer.

I talked to some of the editorial staff of the L.A. Times and they said, “Did we tell you about Monsanto’s visit?  Shortly after your article, your piece appeared in the L.A. Times, we got a visit from Monsanto’s team and some lawyers.  They said you can’t rely on anything Epstein says because he’s an extremist.”  It turns out Monsanto has a hit squad, an extremely well organized way of dealing with critics and a masterly way of handling the media.

After that, I directed my concerns to the Food and Drug Administration. This was an exercise in futility, which I recognized fully well having a long track record of experience with the FDA, knowing how in particular their Center for Veterinary Medicine is in bed with the agri-business industry, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I prepared a 20-page report with solid scientific documentation and addressed it to the Commissioner of the FDA and expressed several concerns, and for each of them provided detailed documentation and references, in some instances to industry data and in other instances to scientific literature. I got no response.

Then the legislature of Wisconsin held some hearings in the fall of that year and they invited me to express my concerns on rBGH. All the major departments of dairy sciences and agronomy were lined up.  It was a major public hearing and I spoke for about an hour, and then after that, there was an extraordinary display of emotional vitriol by the indentured scientists in the Department of Agronomy and Dairy Sciences. The emphasis was more on personal attack than on substance.

By that time, I had started to systematize the information in preparation for publishing an article in the International Journal of Health Services.  Then toward the end of October of 1989, I came into my office one morning and there was a vast box with no return address.  I opened the thing and it was a whole stack of confidential Monsanto files, which some idealistic criminal had either stolen from Monsanto or copied from FDA files.

This whole phenomenon of getting envelopes and packages of stuff has been a factor in my life since about the late ‘60s when people in federal agencies who know that something is wrong but don’t want to lose their jobs or academics who stumble into some information, or people in industry who don’t want to be identified started sending me stuff anonymously.

I went through the whole big stack of stuff.  It took me a week.  Extraordinary information.  There was documentation clearly and unequivocally that showed that contrary to FDA and Monsanto assurances, cows injected with rBGH developed a very wide range of diseases.  As an ex-pathologist, let me just use the language of pathology: disseminated granulomatis infiltration.  In other words, all over the body, the heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, there were small areas of chronic inflammation.  In addition to that, there was a markedly elevated incidence of mastitis and a markedly elevated incidence in reproductive problems.

I passed this information on to an old friend of mine, Congressman John Conyers. By March 1990, Conyers had completed the examination of these documents and then sent a letter to the Inspector General and a copy to the FDA and to Monsanto, charging the FDA and Monsanto with conspiring to suppress critical information adversely impacting veterinary and public health. This was followed shortly afterwards by publication of an article of mine in the International Journal of Health Services which was a detailed amplification of all these concerns with citations that I think was basically unchallengeable.

The timing of this was rather fortunate the European Union was just on the point of considering action on rBGH.  Europeans have an instinct for food purity. We don’t have that in this country, unfortunately. What we seem to want is cheap food that won’t kill us from food poisoning. It doesn’t matter what the hell else is in it as long as it’s cheap.

But the Europeans have almost a mystique when it comes to food purity. The idea of messing around with Mother Nature isn’t an attractive concept to them. The American response to this European reaction is, “They’re damned hysterical.  This is an example of consumerism versus science.”  My article in the International Journal of Health Services enabled the Europeans to say, “Now look. We do have a little science on our side.”

 The European Union came out with a moratorium on the use—not a ban, a moratorium—on the uses of rBGH. 

In 1980, Genentech had synthesized rBGH, a genetically engineered version of a natural Bovine Growth Hormone. In 1982 they sold the rights to Monsanto, and Monsanto immediately thought they had a winner because it was a very powerful hormone that increased milk production by about at least ten percent. The FDA and Monsanto started working hand in hand on it from 1982 on. From that time, the FDA had all the files of Monsanto’s progress and work. By 1985, Monsanto had set up large scale clinical trials all over the country at land grant colleges whereby big herds of cattle were being injected with rBGH, and the milk was being sold to an unsuspecting public, which of course isn’t exactly consistent with a consumer’s right to know, a fundamental principle of democratic norms in our society.

Vast amounts of this milk were being sold.  FDA and Monsanto were assuring the public that it was totally harmless, no different from normal milk. It was safe and a great boon to the American economy and American dairy farming. But the FDA had a whole file of every single study that Monsanto had done that proved otherwise. The FDA did admit that the rBGH hormone was a little different from the natural hormone, just a two or three percent difference in molecular structure. But a two or three percent difference in the overall chromosomal can be very, very significant. Just one amino acid difference can give you, say, the difference between, in a whole long DNA chain, somebody who gets sickle cell anemia and dies from it, and someone who doesn’t.

Monsanto suddenly realized that they’d made a little mistake. Consumers are very sensitive. When you use the word “hormone” it puts them off. So Monsanto decided then to change the name from Bovine Growth Hormone to Bovine Somatotropin. This is typical. For instance, to give you an example, there’s an enormous push by a wide range of industries and regulatory agencies to irradiate virtually the total food supply of the country with levels equivalent to about 200 million times the dose of a chest x-ray. Up till now there’s been a label saying “irradiated,” which the industry and regulatory agencies and the House and Senate Appropriations Committee members (who receive heavy industry campaign donations) want to change the term “radiation” to “electronic pasteurization” or “cold pasteurization” which sounds very benign. The use of euphemisms is a very useful way of digging oneself out of a hole. But the words “Bovine Growth Hormone” had become fixed in the U.S. literature and they were unable to change it, but in Europe, it’s called BST.

The fact is that rBGH milk is a totally different product from natural milk, contrary to the insistence of the Department of Commerce, the FDA, USDA, the biotech industry and Monsanto. Their indefensible claim is that natural milk is indistinguishable from genetically engineered milk and that therefore there’s no legal basis for requiring its labeling.

This ignores two facts. First, there are contaminants in the genetically engineered milk.  There’s the genetically engineered hormone itself, rBGH. There’s pus from mastitis.  Sometimes you can actually see little clots of pus, which is not terribly appetizing, but perhaps worse still are what we call disseminated cells which is just a polite way of saying pus cells which are not sufficiently frequent that they clot together. You have to find them under a microscope. And then there are antibiotics, both legal and illegal.

Incidentally, one of the key files in the box, which I received towards the end of ’89 was a document called the Ephard File, which contained accounts of a wide range of drugs, illegal and legal, which were being used to treat animals that had been injected with rBGH, and also a wide range of veterinary drugs. So those are the contaminants.

Then there are quantitative abnormalities in GE milk. First of all, there’s a reduction in casein levels, which could hurt the cheese industry. There’s an increased concentration of long-chain fatty acids, which of course would be a great boon to cardiovascular surgeons, but not to very many other people. There’s an increased thyroid hormone enzyme, and finally the increased levels of IGF-1 that I mentioned earlier.

Clearly, their claims about the equivalence of rBGH milk with normal milk, and the product’s safety are wrong, and Monsanto and the FDA’s behavior in this affair is reprehensible, and unfortunately, far from an isolated episode. 

 This article is a transcription of a Bioneers Conference presentation