Monsanto Says Hormone-Pumped Cows are Good for the Environment

Cornell University researchers, along with Monsanto, have said that injecting dairy cows with Monsanto’s recombitant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is good for the environment. They claim that rBGH makes each cow produce more milk, so we would then need fewer cows, therefore we’d need less land and resources to raise dairy cows. In effect, according to the researchers, for every 1 million cows supplemented with the hormone, the reduction in carbon footprint would be equivalent to removing about 400,000 cars from the road or planting 300 million trees.

The Daily Kos has, er, beef with that argument, and has explained it thusly:

Why It’s a Load of Bull: Their entire argument assumes that you need to feed cows corn. You don’t. You actually shouldn’t. Cows evolved to eat GRASS. They evolved to graze. Grazing requires very little resources and energy. Here’s why:

First, grass is a perennial. You don’t need to plant it every year like you do with corn and soy. You plant it once, it grows, the cow eats it, it grows back. Planting stuff takes energy. Less planting = less energy.

Second of all, when cows graze, they harvest their own food. Harvesting food requires energy. You must harvest corn. You also have to process it and transport it before the cows can eat it. That takes energy too.

From what I’ve read, feeding cows grass or grain isn’t entirely an either/or. You can feed them a mix of both. What is important is not whether they eat any grain, but how much grain they eat. With a diet of mostly grass, the cows can tolerate some grain and stay healthy.

Ok, well, why not switch to feeding cows grass instead of grain, so they’re healthier and require less antibiotics, and we can cut out the need for growth hormone all together? Oh, wait. That’s right. Cows fed hormones need more calories than grass alone provides – they need grain. Monsanto produces grain. Patented grain that has been genetically engineered not to self-seed so that farmers have to buy new seeds from Monsanto every year to produce more grain. More grain, which is fed to all of these cows that will then need Monsanto’s growth hormone in order to produce more milk to supposedly help the environment. Because Monsanto’s all about helping the environment, right?

Link [The Daily Kos] via [Groovy Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user joi

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