It would seem that the problems confronting Chicago’s public school system couldn’t get any worse. Well, now comes a complaint that the system is endangering the health of thousands of children by serving them milk from cows injected with a potentially dangerous synthetic hormone.
The larger nationwide debate on this issue really started raging last November, when the federal Food and Drug Administration approved the use of rBGH. This was an enormous victory for Monsanto, whose scientists insist rBGH is nothing more than a laboratory-engineered variant of a natural lactating hormone that all cows have. By injecting cows with rBGH farmers can increase the amount of milk each cow produces–and decrease the number of cows they have to care for, which decreases their costs. Or so Monsanto argues.
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“What we’re doing is accelerating the process of genetic selection,” says Collier. “To get an equivalent increase in milk production without using rBGH it would take about 25 years of breeding the highest-producing cows with the highest-producing bulls. This is a situation where there are many benefits and no risks.”
On top of all this, says Durschmidt, it’s inhumane to make cows bear the weight of more milk than they would naturally carry. “Think what you’re doing to cows by making them carry 20 percent more milk. It’s amazing that alone doesn’t kill the cows. You can understand why this issue makes animal-rights people go berserk.”
Dominguez’s persistance left board officials in a quandary. With all the headaches of running a billion-dollar operation, the last thing they wanted to do was get in the middle of a fight over milk. Yet they couldn’t completely disregard her, as they do with most gadflies, because she’s married to Len Dominguez, Mayor Daley’s chief educational advisor (her husband has pledged to stay out of the debate). So they returned her phone calls.
Ballis organized a task force to study the matter, and two hearings were held. Collier and other Monsanto officials flew up from Saint Louis and Washington, D.C., to testify that there was no research whatsoever to support any of the allegations made about rBGH. “Ninety-nine percent of scientists who have reviewed this data have solidly reiterated that [rBGH] food is safe,” says Collier. “Ms. Dominguez has some fears that aren’t justified.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Yael Routtenberg.
