The state of Pennsylvania has announced that it will revise its original plan to ban milk processors from using labels that such as “No BST” from milk and dairy products. Instead, new guidelines will require that labels not be misleading and that there be a paper trail that can verify the claims made on the labels.
For instance, a label cannot read “No BST,” which is short for bovine somatotropin, since the hormone occurs naturally in cows. A dairy can, however, label its milk as coming “from cows not treated with rBST” — for recombinant bovine somatotropin, the synthetic version — as long as a disclaimer is included that says that “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.” (A dairy can preface the disclaimer with “The F.D.A. says.”)
The decision was hailed by some dairies and consumer groups, who had complained that the planned ban disregarded consumer demand. The state’s agriculture secretary, Dennis Wolff, issued a notice of the ban in October, arguing that the labels were confusing and impossible to verify.
The ban was supposed to go into effect on Feb. 1. It caused such an uproar that Gov. Edward G. Rendell’s office intervened. On Thursday, in a statement, the governor said, “The public has a right to complete information about how the milk they buy is produced.”