We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is. Monsanto has put years and millions into a hormone, which, when injected every two weeks into a cow can raise her milk production by 10-20 percent. The genetic engineering is in the bacteria, not the cows, not the milk. All along the company has met with resistance to this product.
Some people hate the very idea of tinkering with genes.
Some are worried about artificially cranking up the metabolism of the cow. The squashed series, made by reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre for Fox-owned WTVT in Tampa, hits that concern hard. It does quote a Monsanto spokesman who cites the long approval process Posilac had to go through and the assurance of regulators that rBGH-produced milk is indistinguishable from any other. But it quotes rBGH skeptics harder and longer, and, as is typical in TV reporting, one has no idea whether they are representative scientists or a few selected cranks. Wilson and Akre do document unsettling facts about corporate heavy-handedness, suppressed data, even an attempted bribe of regulatory officials in Canada.