Date: Sat, 18 Jun 1994 23:05:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Competitive Enterprise Institute Subject: CEI LIST - UDDER NONSENSE To: Jeff Chan UDDER NONSENSE By Alexander Volokh, CEI Policy Analyst appeared in *CEI Update*, 4/94 In the ongoing bovine growth hormone controversy, everyone is either a villain or is in imminent danger of becoming one. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved rbST, or recombinant bovine somatotropin, a drug that increases dairy cows' milk production by an average of 12%. rbST is the first bioengineered agricultural product; sixty other such products, including slow-ripening broccoli, insect-resistant cabbage, and individual-sized lettuce heads, are expected to be approved in the next five years. The first villain in our story is the community of environmental extremists who have never seen a technology they liked. (Moderates generally don't mind genetically-engineered vaccines.) Anti-biotech guru Jeremy Rifkin has led the fight to squelch all genetically-engineered products. Rifkin believes that biotechnology threatens "a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust, and even more profound." Fortunately, Rifkin and his allies failed to get the FDA to impose a labeling requirement on milk from rbST-treated cows. Nonetheless, they are determined to stop rbST through a massive consumer boycott campaign. "This product will be dead on arrival," Rifkin tells his supporters. CEI's comments on the proposed labeling requirement, filed with the FDA last May, pointed out that if the rbST status of milk is something that consumers really care about, all anti-rbST forces need do is proudly advertise that their milk comes from non-rbST-treated cows. A labeling requirement could only be justified if rbST posed risks that would be unappreciated by consumers, which it doesn't. Some have argued against rbST because rbST-treated cows have more udder infections than their untreated counterparts and have to be given more antibiotics -- but milk is already screened for antibiotics, and any milk with excessive antibiotic levels would never reach the consumer anyway. bST levels are about the same in milk from rbST-treated cows and milk from non-rbST-treated cows, and no laboratory test has yet been able to distinguish between them. In any case, there is no evidence that bST has any effect on humans. Which brings us to the second villain, the FDA, which is now in the process of devising regulations for the labeling of NON- rbST milk. Some claims are clearly false -- "bST-free," for instance, since bST also occurs naturally in cows. But our beef with the FDA begins when it starts objecting even to such innocuous phrases as "from cows not treated with rbST" which, it says, can be "misunderstood by consumers." The FDA suggests that saying "No significant different has been shown between milk derived from rbST-treated and non-rbST-treated cows" would "put the claim in proper context." But perhaps we should consider what would happen if this philosophy were applied to, say, kosher food. There is no significant nutritional difference between kosher and non-kosher food, but a lot of Americans believe that the kosher status of food is important -- including many who do not keep kosher but consider kosher food healthier than non-kosher food. Similarly, some people, rationally or not, feel that rbST milk is worse than non-rbST milk. In additional comments filed with the FDA in February, CEI said, "Let them." Being irrational is not a crime (at least not yet). Both the environmentalist extremists and the FDA couch their arguments in terms of the public's "right to know." Of course, if one accepts the "right to know," there is no limit to what can be mandated -- information regarding domestic content, union labor, environmental friendliness, company support of unsavory political causes, you name it. All of these are issues which the public might want to know about. But when the public truly cares about an issue, government-mandated labeling requirements are superfluous; companies seek to provide consumers with the information they desire as a means of expanding market share and increasing customer loyalty. Only a tiny minority of American consumers keep kosher, but this minority is enough to make kosher labeling of foods commonplace. The political drug approval and labeling process is in danger of making the Monsanto Corporation, which markets the drug, into the third villain. At the moment, rbST is Monsanto's cash cow. Understandably, Monsanto is concerned about the environmentalists' scare tactics and the economic damage that non-rbST labeling could cause it. Monsanto has a lot at stake in limiting the rights of health food stores and non-rbST-using dairy farms, and is eagerly supporting the FDA in its new regulatory efforts. In a free society, disputes over what information is to be revealed are settled in the market. If people care about something, information about it will become available -- either because rbST-using farmers will advertise that they have it, or because non-rbST-using farmers will advertise that they don't. Farmers choose their drugs; stores choose their farmers; people choose their stores. FDA meddling can only skew the process. As it happens, each side is busily at work trying to milk the political process for its own insidious ends. Fortunately, the rbST moratorium, which Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) pushed into the Budget Reconciliation bill last year, expired on February 5. But Senator Feingold, uncowed, has hit a new low. He now wants to bypass the FDA and write mandatory rbST labeling into law. At the turn of the century, the dairy industry tried to kill margarine in much the same way; margarine had to be painted pink and sold in five-pound batches, ostensibly so that consumers wouldn't be confused and think it was butter. Similarly, mandatory rbST labeling could go a long way towards killing rbST. Given the FDA's own complicity in the concern over rbST (it took an inexcusably long time to approve the drug), perhaps the FDA should play an active role in persuading the public that rbST is safe. But in the meantime, labeling requirements, whether for rbST milk or non-rbST milk, should be put out to pasture. Regardless of the scientific irrelevance of a product's rbST status, producers have a right to inform consumers of that status. It is a right on which the FDA should tread carefully. _______ __________ ___________ / | / | | | |__________ | | | | \ | | \ _______ |__________ ___________ COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW #1250 Washington, DC 20036 202-331-1010, fax 202-331-0640 Permission to copy granted as long as these lines are left intact. To subscribe to the cei list, send a message to cei@digex.com. "The Virtual Hand: CEI's guide to the information superhighway" is available for $5. CEI's monthly newsletter, "CEI UpDate," is free to contributors of $25.