The Corporation2003

Samuel Epstein M.D.:
Towards the end of 1989, a great box of documents arrived at my office, without any indication where they came from. And I opened them, and found in it a complete set of Monsanto files, particularly dealing with toxicological testing of cows that'd been given RBGH. And at that time Monsanto was saying, 'There's no evidence whatsoever of any adverse effects. We don't use antibiotics'. And this clearly showed that they had lied through their teeth. The files described areas of chronic inflammation in the heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, also reproductive effects, also a whole series of other problems.

Jeremy Rifkin:
It is a silly product. The industrial world is awash in milk. We're overproducing milk. We actually have governments around the world who pay farmers not to produce milk. So the first product Monsanto comes up with is a product that produces more of what we don't need.

Steve Wilson:
But the problem was that use of the artificial hormone caused all kinds of problems for the cows. It caused something called mastitis, which is a very painful infection of the udders. When you milk the cow, if the cow has bad mastitis, some of the, and I don't know how to say this in a, you know, I hope people aren't watching at dinnertime but the pus from the infection of the udders ends up in the milk... And the somatic cell count, they call it, the bacteria count, inside your milk goes up.

Jane Akre:
There's a cost to the cows. The cows get sicker when they're infected with RBGH. They're injected with antibiotics. We know that people are consuming antibiotics through their food and we that that's contributing to antibiotic resistant bacteria and diseases. And we know we're at a crisis when somebody can go into a hospital and get a staff infection and it can't be cured and they die. That's a crisis.

Jeremy Rifkin:
Bad for the cow. Bad for the farmer. Bad potentially for the consumer. The jury is out; we see a lot of conflicting evidence about potential health risk. And, of course, as a consumer, my belief is why should I take any risk?