Got Chemicals in Your Milk?

If you're willing to give all organic labels the benefit of the doubt, stores like Safeway(SWY Quote), Whole Foods (WFMI Quote)and Costco(COST Quote) stock private label dairy products that carry much narrower premiums. But several of them rate only one or two cows for not responding to Cornucopia's questions.

And if you're more concerned with your own health than with the happiness and comfort of a cow herd, you can skip the organic option altogether and just look for milk, cheese or yogurt that are labeled hormone-free. Trader Joe's sells a full line of them.

Dean Foods(DF Quote) aims to have all of its many regional milk brands rBGH-free by the end of this quarter, according to a spokesperson, but it doesn't always label them as such. Kroger(KR Quote) promised last August to transition to hormone free milk supplies for its several supermarket chains by early this year.

Starbucks(SBUX Quote) sources its milk, whipped cream and half and half from dairies that are rBGH free and Chipotle Grill (CMG Quote)does the same with its cheese and sour cream.

Meanwhile, Crain's Chicago Business reported in January that Kraft Foods is launching a new line of American cheese singles that will be free of synthetic hormones.

One incentive Kraft has for the move is that foods with a hormone-free label often carry higher prices than other brands, though they aren't nearly as expensive as organic foods. In my local grocery, Farmland Dairy , which delivers hormone-free milk to the New York City area, costs $2.19 for a half gallon, about 30 cents more than other milk.

These moves by big companies are gradually pushing Monsanto's hormone out of the food supply -- less than 20% of milk now comes from hormone-treated cows.

I'm confident Uncle Sam will sooner or later catch up with consumer sentiment and curtail the use of hormones in dairy cows, as it has with poultry and pigs. In the mean time, I'm glad that clear labeling and more options allow me to make an informed choice about just what goes into my moo juice and what gets left out.

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