• Milk and RBGH
June 10, 2007
Here’s what I’ve found out so far:
1) Publix supermarkets has banned RBGH milk. I’ve e-mailed them and asked about their other store-brand dairy products and will post the answer here when I get it. (Update from June 12: I heard back from Publix: “Publix Milk is made from cows that have not been treated with artificial hormones (it is rbST-free). All other items produced in our Publix Dairy Plants are made with fluid milk that is rbST-free. This includes all Publix brand cottage cheese, sour cream, cup yogurt and ice cream. However, in making these products you have to add a little bit of powdered grade A non-fat milk solids. This powdered milk is not guaranteed to be rbST-free, therefore we can’t make the claim on these products. Other Publix brand products like butter, cheese and cream cheese are made by different companies and are not guaranteed to be rbST-free.” [RBST is another name for RBGH.]
2) Safeway supermarkets and Starbucks are both moving toward RBGH-free milk. (You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find it.) What “moving toward” means is that a percentage of their milk products are now RBGH free and they’re apparently looking to increase that.
3) Walmart, Kroger and Dean Foods say they’re looking to switch but I don’t know if they have yet. Kroger owns Fred Meyer, for those of you in the northwest.
4) I’ve contacted Sargento to see if their cheese is made with RBGH-free milk. No response yet. If you contact someone and get any information re any national brand of dairy product, please let me know and I’ll post it here.
I suspect all of these organizations changed in part because of consumer pressure — TALK TO YOUR GROCER!! And vote with your dollar if you possibly can.
Here’s a link to a source of information on raw milk. I’m not advocating this particular switch, but here’s the info if you’re interested.
June 10, 2008 at 12:25 pm
does this cause the price of milk to increase..and what has rbst been proved to do to harm us??
thanks..
August 3, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Price-wise, not in my local market, and my market chain doesn’t sell anything BUT RBST-free milk. I’ve bought RBST-milk all over the country in the last 12 months and haven’t noticed a huge price difference from what I think of as normal unless the milk happened to be organic — that word raises the price a lot regardless of what’s in the package.
Re health issues, the ones I know of are covered in my initial post on this subject in re antibiotic resistance of bacteria and hormone linkage to tumors. I haven’t heard of any other health issues from it, nor do I know to what extent these issues are speculative vs the proof you ask about. For me this issue is only partly about human health — it’s also partly about humane treatment of other creatures. And there’s also an intuitive leap there: this stuff gives dairy cows an illness — I’m not convinced that human consumption of the byproduct of an unhealthy animal is healthy for the human. Do I need to know what the potential effects of bovine mastitis are on humans to know I don’t want to be exposed to it?