California Dairies Inc. is the latest milk cooperative to ask its producers to stop using BST. The cooperative is under pressure from their customers to supply BST free milk.
Despite evidence that the rBST hormone doesn’t harm humans, California Dairies Inc. said its biggest customers such as Vons and Safeway didn’t want it in the cows. The co-op also supplies brands such as Foster Farms, Knudsen Farms and Producers Dairy.
The dairy co-op has to comply if it wants to keep its customers, Chief Executive Richard Cotta said. “Demand for this milk has exceeded our ability to supply it.” The phaseout of the hormone made by Monsanto Co., the St. Louis-based chemical giant, will be in effect Aug. 1.
Other large players in the dairy industry such as Oregon’s Tillamook County Creamery Assn. and Dean Foods Co. are also winding down its use.
Shoppers at the Smart & Final on Verdugo Road in Glendale on Wednesday generally voiced concern about whether milk from cows injected with the hormone was a threat to their health. “I’m interested in my health,” said Mike Metzler, a Glendale publisher. “I never buy milk with bovine growth hormone in it.”
Jerry Gillespie, director of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at UC Davis, said, “The idea that it might be harmful has not gone away among the public even though it doesn’t bear the light of science.”
Farmers in the co-op will still have the choice of whether to use the hormone. But if they do, California Dairies is going to charge extra handling fees to sell that milk. That expense and the cost of the hormone are expected to all but end the hormone’s use.