Arrogant Americans or Conservative Canadians - A look at the rBST controversy

AS and A Level Healthcare

Arrogant Americans or Conservative Canadians

A look at the rBST controversy

Thomas Ammerlaan

Prepared for

Mr. Reynolds

English for FMT FMTP-084-001-

October 2004

McGill University, Macdonald Campus

Biotechnology, as everyone knows, is becoming every day more widely used in as many fields as one can imagine. Agriculture, of course, is of no exception. Although many have been declared safe, the use of Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST) in cattle, in order to stimulate milk production, is still uncertain, even after proofing.

RBST actually is a laboratory clone of a natural protein produced by the pituitary gland: Bovine Somatotropin (BST), also called bovine growth hormone (BGH). But why use rBST? Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin allows cows to produce up to 15 % more milk with an implementation cost of less than 5 %. Excellent, right? Then what is causing so much tumult? As always, health and safety are the biggest concerns. Before the approval of the product by the United States of America, numerous enquiries had to be conducted in the name of public safety. Having been accepted in the US, Monsanto Chemical Manufacturer, the manufacturer of rBST, was looking for other potential clients. Canada was of course their next probable consumer. Unfortunately, Canada was more doubtful and requested additional testing, even going to the extend of having their own scientists, the ones working for Health Canada, to do their own analyzes. As suspected, they came to a conclusion that the former experimentations were bad science. “The data had been misinterpreted, certain pieces of data had been overlooked, or over-generalizations had been made about the safety of rBST based on only 2 studies.”

But, what rBST actually does is that, like other hormones, it is produced in small quantities and is an active agent in regulating metabolic processes of the cow. Acting as a growth hormone during the early stages of a cow’s life, BST mobilizes body fat to use for energy and diverts feed energy more toward milk production of a lactating cow. Knowing its virtues, scientists have been able, through the use of recombinant DNA gene splicing, to produce BST from bacterial cells found in the stomach. The result is that, from then on, it can be massively produced ...

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As previously stated, doubts were still roaming around the synthetic protein. Although cow health modifications had been observed such as increased mastitis problems, lengthened reproduction period, loss of fertility, increase of calf embryo death rates, weight loss, premature death due to burn out; they were all dismissed in the US because scientists said that these transformations could be observed in any high producing cow.

As for the milk itself, it has always contained natural BST proteins and studies haven’t proven that any difference can be noticed between the natural and lab conceived ones. Even with traces of BST and RBST, they do not have any significant influence on humans because 80% of it would be broken down into amino acids and peptides throughout the digestive system. In addition tests have shown that human somatotropin and BST aren’t even compatible, so no harm should come from it’s presence in the human body at least, that is what the American scientist claimed. Canada is still carrying out research.

Although rBST is widely used around the world in high milk producing countries, Canada is still reluctant to put the drug on the market. Only the future will tell if and when the government will approve of it in order to have it hit the Canadian market.

http://www.tv.cbc.canewsinreviewmar99milkintro.htm