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IN THE KNOW ABOUT THE “O”
AVOID RESIDUES
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A recent study published in Public Health Nutrition shows that organic milk does not contain any residues of currently used pesticides or antibiotics, and has lower levels of growth hormones than conventional milk. This means that by choosing organic, you can get the advantage of the nutritional benefits of milk without exposing your family to chemical contaminants.
Dairy is a favorite in people’s diets, but one question in people’s minds as they’re choosing food for their family is the difference between organic and conventional milk. A new study out of Emory University tackled this question, and came to a clear answer: organic is an easy way to avoid contaminants in milk, providing consumers with an option free of commonly used antibiotics, pesticides and synthetic growth hormones.
Researchers looked at samples of milk being sold at grocery stores around the country, comparing residues in conventional milk (35 samples across 18 brands) to organic milk (34 samples across 10 brands).
Pesticide results
The researchers tested a wide variety of pesticides currently used in conventional production, and found no residues of these commonly used pesticides in organic milk samples. Conventional samples, on the other hand, showed residues
of several pesticides, including atrazine, chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin, diazinon, hexachlorobenzene, and permethrin (26%-60% of the samples). Pesticide levels in the conventional samples were below the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limit for all of the pesticides.
Meanwhile, legacy pesticides are those that have been banned because of their known harmful consequences, yet remain environmentally persistent. The legacy pesticides tested in this study were hexachlorobenzene, ppDDT, and a breakdown component of DDT, the metabolite ppDDE. All were
detected in nearly all of the milk samples, both conventional and organic. However, levels were significantly greater in conventional samples with approximately four times more hexachlorobenzene and 1.5 times more of ppDDE, the DDT metabolite.
Antibiotics results
Because the use of antibiotics increases resistance, FDA has set limits on detectable levels of antibiotics in food. Testing is
IN MILK BY BUYING ORGANIC
conducted at the production and processing stage for a limited number of antibiotics, and foods that exceed the acceptable limits are not to be sold to consumers. In this study, antibiotics were not found in organic samples, but were detected in
60% of conventional milk samples. Specifically, amoxicillin, oxytetracycline, sulfamethazine, sulfadimethoxine, and sulfathiazole were all detected in conventional milk.
While most instances of these antibiotic residues were below the safety limit set by FDA, one of the 35 conventional samples contained residue levels of amoxicillin that exceeded the FDA limit. Also, 37% of the conventional milk samples showed residue levels of an antibiotic called sulfamethazine, and 26% of conventional samples showed residues of sulfathiazole, which are both banned for use in lactating cows.
Growth hormone results
While there is no federal limit set for cow-derived hormones in milk, this study found levels of the bovine growth hormone (bGH), the precursor to IGF-1, to be 20 times higher in conventional milk than organic.
Conclusions
Organic dairy is an important choice for consumers who
want to avoid exposure to chemical contaminants in milk. By testing milk straight off store shelves, researchers were able
to uncover exactly what consumers are ingesting when they choose conventional or organic milk. There needs to be more research conducted to expand the study and test more samples across the U.S. We also need to better understand why and how some of the conventional samples exceeded allowable limits, especially for banned antibiotics. In the meantime, in order to get the important nutrients from dairy, the safe choice is organic dairy.
The Organic Center has published these findings in The Benefits of Organic Dairy, by Amber Sciligo and Jessica Shade, downloadable online on The Organic Center’s website (www.organic-center.org).
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