AN ORGANIC APPLE costs a little more than a conventional one.  But an organic steak costs a lot more.  (This makes sense, because it takes a lot more input to raise cows than apple trees.)  So, given the expense, I’m going to need some convincing if I’m going to buy organic milk, meat, and poultry.

    There are three things of potential concern in animal products: pesticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones – let’s look at them one at a time.

    The National Dairy Counsel says on their website, “thorough FDA and USDA testing shows that milk ranks among the lowest of all agriculture products in detectable residues” (i.e. pesticides).  Now, the National Dairy Counsel exists to promote milk, so maybe they’re not telling the whole story.  The Organic Center, a source I think can be trusted, reviewed the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program testing of milk in a 2008 report.  They looked at the data from two years of testing: 1998 and 2004.  Basically, almost all the milk samples they tested had some detectable pesticides, and these were mostly DDT derivatives.  DDT is a long-banned pesticide that breaks down slowly and is everywhere – in organic and non-organic farms alike.  The organic samples were similar to the non-organic ones in the kinds of pesticides detected.  The levels were low – quite a bit below EPA tolerances.  So, there is very little pesticide in milk, and no more in conventional than in organic milk.  The Organic Center said of meat and poultry “contemporary use pesticides are rarely detected in [them].”  So pesticides are not a concern in milk, meat, and poultry.  But what about antibiotics and growth hormones?

    Frequent exposure to low level antibiotics can cause microorganisms to become resistant to them, so they are ineffective when needed to fight a human infection.  This is a growing problem, and some bacteria are now resistant to ALL approved antibiotics.  Overprescribing of antibiotics is the main cause of bacterial resistance, and most resistant infections are contracted in hospitals.  But in recent years, otherwise healthy people have started getting antibiotic resistant infections outside of hospitals and no one really knows where the bugs are coming from, but antibiotic use in agriculture is a likely culprit. 

    Most livestock is fed antibiotics from cradle to grave.  Getting actual antibiotics from your milk and meat is not likely – a 2008 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found no antibiotics in retail milk of any kind and it’s equally unlikely that you’ll get actual antibiotics in meat.  It’s the antibiotic resistant bacteria that you have to worry about, and it’s becoming clear that the resistant bugs humans are contending with can be traced back to antibiotic use in animals.  For instance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the FDA approved the use of the antibiotic fluoroquinone in chickens, fluoroquinone-resistant bacteria began showing up in humans.  So this is really a public health issue.  Some professional medical and scientific associations are taking a stance against giving antibiotics to animals that aren’t sick, but it seems like the industry is a long way from changing its practices.

    Almost all dairy cows receive recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST).  It increases milk production – a lot.  It works by increasing the levels of another growth hormone called IGF-1, which is identical in cows and humans.  Elevated IGF-1 is linked to cancer in humans, and studies have shown that drinking milk can increase IGF-1 in the blood.  Whether it elevates IGF-1 levels enough to cause cancer is of course not known.   rBST also significantly increases mastitis in cows, which is no surprise given that the poor cow’s udders get engorged from producing huge quantities of milk.  (And mastitis is very painful for the cow, as it is for any mother, I can tell you from personal experience!)  A mastitic cow can’t be used for milk, but it will be treated with antibiotics, which adds another source of antibiotic resistant bacteria. 

    Beef cattle are given a mix of anabolic steroids to make them grow faster: three are natural hormones, estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone, and some are synthetic estrogens and androgens.  Steroid hormones are powerful modulators of development, and a 2007 study showed that the sons of mothers who ate a lot of beef while pregnant (more than 7 meals per week) had 25% lower sperm concentrations and were three times more likely to have fertility problems.  Yikes!  I ate a lot of hamburgers when I was pregnant (not more than 7 a week, though).

    Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the EU have all banned rBST based on human and animal health concerns.  Our country probably isn’t going to ban it any time soon.  Luckily, it’s getting easier to find milk without rBST. Dean’s milk doesn’t have it, and that is what I currently buy.  But I’ve never seen hormone free beef in the grocery store.  It looks like the only way to get that is to go organic.

    Finally, there’s another important reason to think twice about conventional meat and milk.  Without this turning into a stomach-turning guilt trip, let me just say that conventional, aka “factory” farming of livestock is not a nice business.  The cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys most of us have recently eaten most likely had a wretched existence before they were put out of their misery and sent to the grocery store.  Their lives begin by being almost immediately taken away from their mothers and fed a continuous regime of antibiotics in order to keep them “healthy” through the grim conditions they’re going to live in.   Those conditions include a living space that is cramped in the extreme, filthy, and probably never includes getting to be outdoors.  If cats and dogs were treated this way, their owners would be considered terribly cruel. 

    But, I really like dairy products and meat, and I’m afraid I’m not willing to give them up completely.  However, I can certainly consume less of animal products, and those of a different kind.  You can get organic milk (which means the cows get some pasture time), grass-fed beef, pasture raised pork and poultry, and free range eggs if you’re willing to pay the price.  For me, that would mean I could afford to eat meat a lot less often.  Maybe that’s only right.  For most of the world, meat is a delicacy, not a staple.  The Word of Wisdom (the Mormon dietary code) says that the Lord ordained the flesh of beasts and the fowls of the air “for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly.”  I think this part of the Word of Wisdom is mostly ignored, but God can not be indifferent to the suffering of his creations, and I think the injunction to eat meat sparingly could be His way of encouraging us to be caring stewards of the animals.  I’m grateful to the cows that make it possible for me to have the ice cream and steak I like so much, so I want them to have a decent existence while they’re alive.