Monsanto is curtailing the production of one its main products and that may rekindle old controversies that used to surround it.
When recombinant bovine somatotrophin was approved for production in Nov. 1993, it wasn't without a bitter struggle. The drug was greeted with
suspicion and skepticism from many small farmers, consumer advocates and environmental organizations. Many people feared rBST would lead to health complications in cows and possibly in consumers of their milk. The focus was on the effects of the drug, not its source of production.
In January of this year Monsanto announced it would be cutting the
production of POSILAC, the trademark of rBST, by 50 percent. This came about a month after the company limited the production of POSILAC to 85 percent of its historic shipment levels. March 1, 2004 the shipments were cut by half and, at the same time, Monsanto raised the price of POSILAC by 9 percent.
Janice Armstrong, public affairs director at Monsanto, said the FDA inspected the manufacturing plant where POSILAC is produced in November. The drug is created in Austria, in a plant run by Sandoz Inc., a third party supplier. (The location of the plant is somewhat questionable, because the European Union does not allow the production or importation of milk made with rBST.)
\The FDA asked us to make some corrections and improvements to the plant,"" she said. ""In order to implement those corrections and improvements, we had to slow down the production of POSILAC.""
Armstrong said the cutback came when a higher number of usual batches of POSILAC did not meet Monsanto's quality control standards. Those batches were discarded and never entered the marketplace, Armstrong said.
While the company is on the defensive, some local farm activists are
prepared to expose this chink in the company's armor. John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders, said his group has been fighting POSILAC since it was introduced. One of the group's greatest concerns has been that its integration would push many small farmers out of business. Peck said the cutbacks may go deeper.
""People are predicting that Monsanto will have to stop producing it
altogether by the end of the summer,"" he said. ""They're saying that Monsanto can't fix its production problems.""
John Kinsman, a dairy farmer in Sauk County, has been opposed to rBST from the beginning. He said the technology was misguided and its effects would have negative impacts on the dairy community.
""It was a bad technology at the wrong time,"" he said. ""It was an unknown and it couldn't be explained about what it would do in the future.""
Now the concerns of critics are being realized and Monsanto is being forced to face up to early skepticism. This cutback may not be temporary and could force a wider debate about the necessity of rBST and milk derived from it.
blschultz@wisc.edu.
