Sludge Watch ==> Impressive growth in sales for milk that is free of artificial hormones

[Maureen Reilly]

New parents reach for BST-free milk: Sales on rise years after dairy hormone 
controversy
23.sep.06
Knight-Ridder Tribune
Tom Webb, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
For more than a decade, government and agribusiness have declared cow's milk 
with artificial growth hormones to be perfectly safe. But more and more, 
America's new moms aren't buying it.
Sales of milk free of genetically engineered hormones are showing impressive 
growth, even as overall milk sales remain flat. At the vanguard of the 
trend, analysts say, are new mothers who are especially vigilant about the 
first foods they give their babies and toddlers.
Their protectiveness has helped boost sales of organic milk by 25 percent a 
year. But lately, they've also revived a fading product line -- conventional 
milk from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones, which is sold 
locally under brands like Kemps Select and Land O'Lakes Original.
That revival has been a bit of a surprise, since it's been 13 years since 
the big public controversy over a genetically engineered dairy hormone, 
called bovine somatotropin or rBST. Farmers began using rBST in 1993 to 
boost milk production. Initially, dairies worried about consumer resistance 
and carefully segregated their milk lines. But then the controversy faded, 
and demand for non-rBST milk almost disappeared.