Agriculture Reference
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to increase milk production), and
if
this is true, the anti-GMO
crowd wonders, what other data were kept secret?
At that time Monsanto was saying, “There's no evidence
of any adverse effects, we don't use antibiotics,” and this
clearly showed they had lied through their teeth.
—Samuel Epstein, interview in
Ethos
, Pete McGrain,
director and writer, Media for Action, 2011.
Some may see the above quote as clear evidence of a
conspiracy, but this may not be the case. If rBST does what
it is designed to do, it will increase milk production, and
greater milk production is usually associated with higher
rates of mastitis, which requires the use of antibiotics. Both
the regulators and the company may have agreed that the
antibiotics Epstein refers to are not an adverse effect of rBST
at all, and so nothing of concern to the regulators was being
concealed.
This hasn't stopped the anti-GM crowd from associating
Monsanto with the nefarious activities of cigarette compa-
nies decades earlier. A commercial supporting the mandatory
labeling of GM foods, aired before Proposition 37 in California,
begins by remarking on the scientific support that was once
given to the health benefits of smoking, and it is true that ciga-
rette companies deliberately withheld information about the
dangers of smoking and manufactured a perception of scien-
tific uncertainty where none really existed.
Scientists have been wrong in the past, and their errors
make some discount the scientific support behind GMOs.
Scientists once approved the rendering of sheep carcasses for
conversion into cattle feed, a practice now linked to the out-
break of mad cow disease. In the case of cigarettes much of the
science was deliberately withheld, while in the case of mad
cow disease there was no cover-up. Once the link was made
between mad cow disease and rendered carcasses, the public
