Troy L. Ott, Ph.D., PAS
Associate Professor of Reproductive Biology
Department of Dairy and Animal Science
The Pennsylvania State University

Hold on to your wallets ladies and gentlemen. A number of large dairy processors are getting ready to pull the old “smoke-and-mirrors” trick that will result in you paying more for your milk while at the same time hurting the environment. “How could this be?” you say. Here’s the scam: retailers will sell “rbST-free” milk to you for a premium of about 40 cents to $2.20 per gallon. As discussed in Terry Etherton’s Blog, the milk is not different in composition from other milk, but you will have a vague feeling that it is somehow better. Never mind that rbST has been determined by the FDA to be a safe and effective way to increase milk production by 10-15%. Never mind that it has been shown to be an effective tool to increase the efficiency of dairying. Never mind that it has been approved for use for over 10 years without any documented problems. NONE!

That’s the smoke, now what about the mirrors? Well, it doesn’t take a rocket (or animal) scientist to figure out that if you take away a safe and effective tool to increase milk production by 10-15%, farmers will need to increase cow numbers to make up for the lost milk production. These cows will use more resources (grain, forage, water) and generate more waste (manure, odor, methane) and take up more space. This will increase the environmental impact of dairying in your communities. In addition, because productivity and efficiency will be reduced on many of our nations’ dairies, they will be less profitable. “What’s wrong with that, I don’t like big corporate farms.” you say. Here’s what’s wrong with that. When dairy processors force our dairies to give up using rbST, those dairies will experience a cash flow problem. What do you do when that happens at your home? You cut corners on spending. On a dairy, things like facility modernization, herd health vaccinations, cow comfort upgrades could be delayed or scrapped. Furthermore, employees’ wages will suffer as dairies scramble to reduce costs to stay in business. The dairies, their employees and the cows all suffer. Without this effective tool to increase efficiency, smaller dairies will be squeezed to either get larger or get out of the business.

Sadly, there is another big cost. One that you will never see, but believe me you will feel it in your pocketbook. That cost will be the technologies and improvements in dairying that will never see the light of day. This is because the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry will have learned an important lesson. That it does not matter if you do things the right way and provide safe effective technologies to animal agriculture. Some marketing “guru” with his smoke machine will come up with a way to conjure up another niche in the market. He’ll let anti-technology fanatics fan the flames with unsubstantiated claims of health or safety, and convince you to pay more for less. Bottom line: The true environmentalists among us should see this scam for what it really is. Safe, effective technologies like bST that increase the efficiency and profitability of dairying benefit all of us, the cows, and the environment.