GOT MILK?

A few weeks ago, my friend Jim C. took me to see "The Corporation."

And the really icky thing in the movie is the part about how we're giving cows Monsanto's genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone.

I was going to go into a long explanation of mastitis and throw in a few memories from my nursing days, but let's keep it simple. (Plus, I'm already the subject of one infamous lactating story, and that's enough.)

Pus. In. Your. Milk

Oh, yum.

This just grosses me out, and I don't gross easily. Why, oh why should I have to put up with this shit? What I learned is, they give cows the rBGH to make them produce even more milk - not because we don't already have enough milk (we do) but to make them produce too much milk, thus qualifying dairy farms for tax subsidies that keep milk prices low.

Plus, rBGH apparently causes cancer. But since almost everything seems to cause cancer, and I'm not solvent enough to eat health food, I don't have quite as visceral a reaction to that as I do to the pus.

I read earlier this year about Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two award-winning investigative reporters who were hired at Fox's Tampa affiliate. They're featured in the movie, and they lost their jobs because they refused to suppress the results of the piece they did on BGH:

We reminded him of the importance of the facts about a basic food most of our viewers consume and feed to their children daily. This was news, we told him. His reply: "We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!"

There wasn't much to say after that.

"Is this a hill you're both willing to die on?" Dave asked.

I could see the disappointment and anger on Steve's face. Before we got up from Dave's plush couch and left his office, Steve was firm but respectful when he made it clear we would neither lie nor distort any part of the story. And if insisting upon an honest report ended up costing us our jobs, Steve told him we'd be obligated to report that kind of misconduct to the Federal Communications Commission.

Forty-eight hours came and went. Dave never called, not until about a week later when he invited us back to lay out the deal. We'd be paid full salaries and benefits through the rest of the year in exchange for an agreement that we would drop our ethical objections and broadcast the rBGH story in a way that would not upset Monsanto.

"Will you do the story exactly the way Carolyn wants?" Dave asked. Carolyn Forrest, the Fox attorney based in Atlanta, would have the final say on the exact wording of our report. And after the carefully sanitized version aired, we would be free to do whatever we pleased—as long as we forever kept our mouths shut about the entire episode, Monsanto's influence, the Fox response, and we could never ever utter a public word about what we'd learned about the growth hormone.

Fox made it clear we would never be free to report the story for any other news organizations, not for any broadcast or print media, even if they weren't Fox competitors. Never, anywhere, not even at our daughter's PTA could we utter a word about how our milk has changed in what many believe is a dangerous way.

As journalists, Steve and I badly wanted to get the story on the air so the public could make its own judgment. But a buyout, no matter how lucrative for us personally, was out of the question. Neither of us could fathom taking hush money to shut up about a public health issue that absolutely and by any standard deserved to see the light of day.

After asking for and receiving the deal in writing, we politely declined the offer — and told Dave we'd decided to just hold onto the written document that laid out his deal.

The somewhat happy ending for me is, my local supermarket sells rBGH-free organic milk that is presumably pus-free.

The unhappy part is, yours might not.

If I were you, I'd ask.

UPDATE: Julia picked up the ball and ran with it so far, I get winded watching.
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