In today's society really anything goes. For many years now the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been giving permission to a company called Monsanto to sell a drug called POSILAC to dairy farmers. It is a genetically engineered copy of natural occurring hormone produced by cows. This drug-engineered hormone is also known as BGH, rBGH, BST, and rBST. These re-produced hormones are also injected into cattle for beef sales. This is supposed to be a good thing because it causes the cattle to grow larger and produce more milk, but is it?.
What does it exactly do?.
When POSILAC gets injected into the dairy cows, the milk percentage that the cows produce increases anywhere from 10 to 15 percent. This has been legally done since 1994. This has been researched to be un-safe for the cow's health but it is still done. It is shown in some studies that it increases mastitis by 79%(an infection in the udder), which in turn, makes it necessary for the use of more antibiotics. After exposing cows to all of these different drugs it has the effect of reducing pregnancy rate, increases susceptibility to uterine, ovarian, digestive disorders, lacerations, enlargements and calluses of the knee. rBGH also alters the nutritional value of the milk and makes it sour before it is suppose to be, making increased amounts of bacteria in the milk produced by these rBGH injected cows. Typically cows live for about 15 to 20 years. The cows that have endured these hormone treatments live about two and a half years after treatments start! The reason that this is still being done is not clear, but the farmers were already able to produce enough milk naturally for the public, perhaps even more than enough. .
This is causing a lot of the small family farms' survival to be threatened. The family farms are better for the land, the water and the animals, but yet still these larger, chemically operated producers are over powering these small timers.
