Milk Labeling - Complicated. Ohio, This Time
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed an emergency order in February requiring milk labeled with the phrase "hormone free" to include a statement to the effect that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found no significant difference between milk produced with or without the hormone known as rbST (recombinant bovine somatotropin).
I have talked about this before when Indiana faced this issue (here). The AP is reporting that (see Pal Item coverage) retailers, like Kroger, are complaining about the requirement - Note that the retailers are responding to strong consumer demand for drug free milk while the Ag industry keeps pressuring lawmakers to keep hormone labeling off of milk. Ohio is backing off, but only permitting the disclaimer to be 1/2 the size of the hormone free claim.
Wal-Mart announced last Friday that its store label milk (Great Value) would be hormone free (Sam’s Club, too) (BusinessWeek), but the labels might be silent on this fact:
Wal-Mart is making the decision at the same time the states of Utah, Ohio and Missouri are considering outlawing labels that say dairy products are free of artificial growth hormones. (Pennsylvania enacted such a rule, only to recently have it overturned by the governor.) Wal-Mart spokeswoman Deisha Galberth would not discuss the labeling issue other than to say the chain is "considering our options on labels." For now, consumers will have to find out on their own that Wal-Mart suppliers will be using cows free of artificial hormones.
