Subscribe to WIRED Magazine

Indiana May Ban Hormone Labeling to Protect Monsanto

A bill introduced in the Indiana House of Representatives by Bill Friend, a rep from tiny Macy, Indiana, would make his state the first to prevent consumers from knowing how their milk was produced.

HB. 1300, which could be voted on any day, is couched as legislation to protect consumers from mislabeling. But it would prevent dairy labels that contain a "compositional or production-related claim that is supported solely by sworn statements, affidavits, or testimonials." In other words, anything related to the moral or ethical dimensions of the product would be off-limits.

In particular, Friend’s bill would keep dairies from stating that their products were free from the Monsanto product Posilac, a recombinant bovine somatrophin or growth hormone. rBGH, as it sometimes known, is a controversial substance that is grown in E. coli cells, purified, and then injected into cows to increase milk production.

Regardless of your position on bovine growth hormone, the argument for labeling them seems very strong. Allowing transparency in the way we make things (laws, news stories, food) is a good thing. We have an economy based on choice, and knowing how something was produced has become increasingly important. Consumers aren’t just choosing products based on science. There are moral and ethical dimensions to the products we buy, and particularly, eat. Companies that try to obscure how they are making products are out of step with a networked world that values open systems over closed ones.

The most common argument against labeling is that consumers want everything labeled, including very standard agricultural practices like the hybridization of crops, which would make for a very confusing consumer situation. But to me, that’s not an argument for leaving out information, but simply for managing its presentation: how do you present the information that consumers want in a format that they can understand?

There are people who work on issues like that every day. They are called designers and they get paid a lot of money by corporations who realize the importance of their work. There’s no reason that our food labeling systems couldn’t incorporate principles of design that normally are used to incite purchase to help educate consumers.

A ban on labeling in Pennsylvania initiated by the state’s agriculture department was turned back by consumer opposition this month. The Indiana ban, however, would issue from the state’s elected legislature and would become law, not just policy.

Labeling debates are raging over genetically modified crops like corn as well as cloned animals, neither of which will be labeled under the current regulatory framework. 

Image: flickr/MarilynJane