Heard of rBGH?
rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) is given to cows to make them produce more milk. Monsanto manufactures rBGH under the name Posilac and has done so since February 1994.
rBGH is banned in:
The European Union
Australia
New Zealand
Canada since January 1999
but NOT in the United States!
Long story short:
Two reporters at tv station WTVT in Tampa, Florida produced a report on:
In late 1996, Steve and I were hired as investigative journalists for the
Fox-owned television station in Tampa. Looking for projects to pursue, I
soon learned that millions of Americans and their children who consume milk
from rBGH-treated cows unwittingly have become participants in what amounts
to a giant public health experiment. Despite promises from grocers that they
would not buy rBGH milk "until it gains widespread acceptance," I discovered
and carefully documented how those promises were quietly broken. I also
learned that health concerns raised by scientists around the world have
never been settled, and indeed, the product has been outlawed or shunned in
every other major industrialized country on the planet. Clearly, there is
not "widespread acceptance" of rBGH, not in 1996 when I began my research,
and not today.
Monsanto didn't like it:
After nearly three months of investigation that took me to interviews in
five states, we produced a four-part series that Fox scheduled to begin on
February 24, 1997. Station managers were so proud of the work that they
saturated virtually every radio station in the Tampa Bay area with thousands
of dollars worth of ads urging viewers to watch. But then, on the Friday
evening prior to the broadcast, the station's pride turned to panic when a
fax arrived from a Monsanto attorney.
Confronted with these threats, WTVT decided to "delay" the broadcast,
ostensibly to double check its accuracy. A week later after the station
manager screened the report, found no major problems with its accuracy and
fairness, and set a new air date, Fox received a second letter from
Monsanto's attorney, claiming that "some of the points" we were asking about
"clearly contain the elements of defamatory statements which, if repeated in
a broadcast, could lead to serious damage to Monsanto and dire consequences
for Fox News."
Never mind that I carried a milk crate full of documentation to support
every word of our proposed broadcast. Our story was pulled again, and if not
dead, it was clearly on life support as Fox's own attorneys and top-level
managers, fearful of a legal challenge or losing advertiser support, looked
for some way to discreetly pull the plug.
The station where we worked recently had been purchased by Fox, and
we soon discovered that the new management had a radically different
definition of media responsibility than anything we previously had encountered
in our journalistic careers. As Fox took control, it fired the station manager
who originally hired us and replaced him with Dave Boylan, a career salesman
without any roots in journalism and seemingly lacking the devotion to serve
the public interest that motivates all good investigative reporting.
Not long after Boylan became the new station manager, Steve and I went
up to see him in his office. He promised to look into the trouble we were
having getting our rBGH story on the air. But when we returned a few days
later, his strategy seemed clear. "What would you do if I killed your rBGH
story?" he asked. What he really wanted to know was whether we would
tell anyone the real reason why he was killing the story. In other words,
would we leak details of the pressure from Monsanto that led to a coverup
of what the station had already ballyhooed as important health information
every consumer should know?
the outcome?
After three judges, 27 months of pre-trial wrangling and five weeks of
courtroom testimony, the jury finally had its say. On August 28, 2000, it
awarded me $425,000 in damages for being fired by TV station WTVT
in Tampa, Florida. WTVT is a Fox station owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The verdict made me the first journalist ever to win a "whistleblower"
judgment in court against a news organization accused of illegally distorting
the news.
Fox appealed and prevailed February 14, 2003 when an appeals court issued a ruling reversing the jury, accepting a defense argument that had been rejected by three other judges on at least six separate occasions.
"We (the Fox TV network) paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is." -David Boylan, WTVT station manager
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/moreakrestuff.cfm
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/fox.html
http://www.vpirg.org/campaigns/geneticEngineering/rBGHOverview.html
oh, two last things on how this crap even got approved in the USA:
QUICK QUIZ: HOW U.S. DEMOCRACY WORKS
Question: How is it that every industrialized nation in the world has banned Monsanto's rBGH as unsafe, but it's legal (and unlabeled) in the United States?
Answer: In order for the FDA to determine if Monsanto's growth hormones were safe or not, Monsanto was required to submit a scientific report on that topic. Margaret Miller, one of Monsanto's researchers put the report together. Shortly before the report submission, Miller left Monsanto and was hired by the FDA. Her first job for the FDA was to determine whether or not to approve the report she wrote for Monsanto. In short, Monsanto approved its own report. Assisting Miller was another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen. Deciding whether or not rBGH-derived milk should be labeled fell under the jurisdiction of another FDA official, Michael Taylor, who previously worked as a lawyer for Monsanto.
HOW MONSANTO'S POLICIES HAVE BECOME U.S. POLICY
Prior to being the Supreme Court Judge who put G.W. in office, Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's lawyer. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (Anne Veneman) was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Calgene Corporation. The Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle pharmaceuticals. The U.S. Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor. The two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the last election were Larry Combest (Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee) and Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Source: Dairy Education Board)
