Geoff's Blog

John Robbins, on Female Infants Growing Breasts: Another Disaster From Hormones in Milk Production:

Female infants in China who have been fed formula have been growing breasts.

According to the official Chinese Daily newspaper, medical tests performed on the babies found levels of estrogens circulating in their bloodstreams that are as high as those found in most adult women. These babies are between four and 15 months old. And the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula they have been fed is responsible.

Synutra, the company that makes the baby formula consumed by these babies, says it’s not their fault. They insist that “no man-made hormones or any illegal substances were added during the production of the milk powder.”

Then what is the source of the hormones? A Chinese dairy association says the hormones could have entered the food chain when farmers reared the cows…. Bovine growth hormones are used in China, as they are in the U.S., to promote greater milk production….

Along with China, the U.S. is today one of the few countries in the world that still allows bovine growth hormones to be injected into dairy cows. Though banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe, the use of these hormones in U.S. dairy is not only legal, it’s routine in all 50 states.

Which is one of the reasons why, although soy milk is in no way a “health food,” you’re far better off drinking it than commercial cow’s milk.

The Steveosphere? Morons, utterly lost, “Evil SWPL Other,” etc.

Have you ever wondered why dairy products made from cows injected with the hormone aren’t labeled? It’s because Monsanto, the original manufacturer of BGH, has aggressively and successfully lobbied state governments in the past to make sure that no legislation is passed that would require such labeling.

As if that wasn’t enough, Monsanto has also insistently sought to make it illegal for dairy products that are BGH-free to say so on their labels, unless the labels also included wording exonerating BGH.

Up here in Canada a decade ago, So Nice soy milk vanished from the shelves for several months, ultimately from our Dairy Marketing Boards trying to prevent them from fortifying the soy product—didn’t want the competition against fortified cow’s milk, etc.

You know how the high-fat morons in the Steveosphere, from Mangan on down, are always moaning about how the reason why Americans have gotten so obese over the past three or four decades is supposedly because they’ve been consuming too many carbs and not enough meat/fat?

Yeah, that must be why Asians eating their traditional rice-heavy, low-meat diet are so disgustingly obese. (Aren’t they? According to the Steveosphere, they pretty much must be, eh?) And also why girls eating high-fat Western diets keep hitting puberty earlier and earlier. It’s all of those damned carbohydrates!

10.4 percent of white non-Hispanic girls [in three U.S. cities] had begun puberty by age 7, compared with 23.4 percent of black girls and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls. Among 8-year-olds, puberty had begun in 18.3 percent of white non-Hispanic girls, 42.9 percent of black girls and 30.9 percent of Hispanic girls….

Part of the problem could be childhood obesity. One of the big differences [since a previous study in 1997], Biro said, was the body mass index (BMI; a measure of a person’s weight in relation to their height), with girls in the recent study having higher numbers than in the past. “Overall, the girls in the United States now have a higher body mass index than they did 20 or 30 years ago. It’s not just obesity but the whole BMI has gone up,” he said.

Other studies have demonstrated a link between weight and age at which girls begin puberty.

Environmental factors might also play a role. Some household products and pesticides contain so-called endocrine disruptors, which are synthetic chemicals that, when absorbed by the body, can mimic or block hormones and disrupt normal functions, such as growth and maturation.

Not to mention growth-hormone residues in meat, eggs, and dairy….

Organic farms win at potato pest control:

A study suggesting that organic agriculture gives better pest control and larger plants than conventional farming is sure to reignite longstanding debates about the merits of organic versus conventional agriculture. It also highlights an often-neglected aspect of biodiversity.

“Organic agriculture promotes more balanced communities of predators,” says David Crowder, author of the new study published June 30 in Nature….

[T]he research by Crowder, an insect ecologist at Washington State University in Pullman, and his colleagues, shows the importance of “evenness”–the relative abundance of different species. Evenness quantifies not just the presence of different species, but whether one is dominant or whether there is an equal distribution of numbers between species….

Furthermore, the team set up an experimental field in which they manipulated the evenness of predators. Increasing the evenness led to what the researchers call a “powerful trophic cascade,” resulting in fewer potato-munching beetles and larger potato plants.

Although the work of Crowder and his group does not address the issue of yields from organic versus conventional farms, their study found that the increased evenness of organic farms compared with that of conventional farms led to 18 percent lower pest densities and 35 percent larger plants. Bigger plants generally mean greater potato yields.

I’m not psychic. But I can easily predict that there won’t be a peep about this study coming from either the Steveosphere or from the “skeptic” Phil Plait….