Monsanto strikes again

While I’m on my free-market rant today....

When it comes to the free market… it’s freer for some than for others.

As of January 1, consumers in Pennsylvania will no longer see labels on milk containers that say “Contains no artificial growth hormones” or “No bBGH” or “No bBST”—because the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has made it illegal for producers to put those labels on their milk cartons.

Why? Well, it looks as if people much prefer milk produced by cows that have never been given artificial growth hormones. (As I do.) And, given the choice, growing numbers purchase the hormone-free milk. That makes Monsanto, the manufacturer of the the growth hormones, very unhappy. They’re getting hammered in the good old market place and so are the farmers who use the hormone to squeeze another gallon of milk out their cows each day.

The head of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture claims that the labels are very confusing to customers, suggesting to them that hormone-free milk is good milk and the other stuff is bad milk.

Well, yeah. That’s my feeling. Why drink Monsanto’s hormones when I don’t have to?

It’s called giving consumers a choice of what to put in their bodies. If people prefer not to buy milk produced by cows raised on artificial growth hormones, then that is surely their right to select a product that doesn’t have any in it. Well, not if you live in Pennsylvania. (I don’t think Massachusetts would ever be that dumb, but you never know.)

New Jersey and Ohio are next.

So...Monsanto can’t deal with being squeezed by consumers who hate their pharmaceutical product (a drug that is banned in half the rest of the world) and don’t want it in their food. People have been voting with their wallets and milk selections. More and more groceries have turned to hormone-free milk for their store brands in response. That’s the way things are supposed to work.

If Monsanto can’t beat the competition, fair and square, using their public relations campaigns to convince consumers of how safe their yummy growth hormones are, they can beat us into submission by finally finding a kindred spirit in one of the states who will make ‘no growth hormone’ labels illegal for them. And for us, because we’re so confused, dontcha know. Monsanto rules and the producers who give customers what they want get screwed...along with the customers. There’s a fair and free market for ya.

See also the article in the St. Louis Dispatch
(via Small Failures)