I'd link to the article, but you have to be a subscriber to view it. The offending paragraph reads:
There are compelling reasons to choose organic meat and dairy products. Conventionally raised cows are given recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to boost growth and milk production. The problem? These cows usually develop mastitis, an infection of the breast tissue. Traces of the antibiotics used to treat it can end up in the meat and milk of the animals. Ingesting antibiotics can cause allergic reactions in humans, Hoffman says. Even more alarming, antibiotic overuse enables bacteria to develop resistance.
There are several problems within that paragraph, but I'm able to spot them because I'm an Ag Sci major and have a family background in farming. When I mentioned it to my friends, they gave me blank looks and didn't see what the problem was. More than anything, that showed me that, while oversimplification is often necessary in risk communication, it can very often lead to misrepresentation and misunderstandings that aren't easy for the general population to pick up on. There are plenty of topics about which I am not knowledgeable enough to realize when a risk has been miscommunicated.
The problems I'm alluding to in the article are...
- Not all conventionally raised cows are given growth hormone.
- rBGH (actually, the term used in the industry is rBST - recombinant bovine somatotropin) is not given to growing animals. It is only given to full-grown, lactating animals; it does not impact growth in terms of size. It does increase the number (but not the size) of cells in the udder, which in turn increases production.
- rBGH does not cause mastitis! I'm really not sure where they got that idea from at all. Mastitis is the "inflammation of the mammary gland caused by microorganisms, usually bacteria, that invade the udder, multiply, and produce toxins that are harmful to the mammary gland." Incidence of mastitis is greatly affected by management practices like proper milking technique and sanitation; there is no connection between mastitis and growth hormone.
- Antibiotics are often used to treat mastitis, but the milk from cows undergoing treatment is not allowed to be shipped or sold. Farmers milk treated cows last and do not allow that milk into the bulk tank (where it is stored until it is picked up). The milk from each farm is tested; if antibiotics are discovered, the milk cannot be used. No farmer wants to risk losing payment for a whole shipment over antibiotic contamination! It is possible for mistakes and oversights to occur, but the chances are negligible.
Some other important info about hormone use in the dairy industry:
- rBGH is indistinguishable from the growth hormone the cow produces herself. There is no test that can determine if the cow was injected or not.
- No milk is hormone-free. All milk contains, at minimum, growth hormone produced by cows themselves. Most milk is fortified with Vitamin D, which is also a hormone.
- Bovine growth hormone is a protein-based hormone. These are digested in the stomach and small intestine and do not pose any threat to humans. The same is true for human growth hormone; a family member of mine who needed supplemental HGH needed daily injections, because ingestion would render it completely ineffective. I am not certain on this point, but I strongly suspect that we humans don't have the right receptors to respond to BGH even if we did somehow wind up with it in our bodies outside of the digestive system.
If I didn't have the knowledge to deconstruct the author's claims, I would probably still question how injections of growth hormone could cause infection. However, I can see how the rest of it makes sense if you're not familiar with the dairy industry. No sources were given for the article, so there's no way for me to determine where the author got her information from.
Does anybody else have examples of risk miscommunication that's only obvious if you have prior knowledge of the issue? Thoughts on how to address such incidents? In this case, I'm thinking about writing to the editor of the magazine. What can individuals and organizations do to address risk miscommunication on a broader scale instead of on a case-by-case basis?
8 comments:
I feel like most issues of risk communication require prior knowledge of an issue. You have to have some understanding of an issue to even care about the risks associated with it. Most of the time risk communication is only targeted to people who have a basic understanding, otherwise it would be more an education campaign.
I can't say that I agree. For Positive Thinking to include that article, they had to recognize some interest in organic food among their readership. That doesn't mean that the PT subscribers have prior knowledge of food production issues. The readers may have prior knowledge about fruit production but not dairy or vice versa; they may not have any knowledge at all beyond hearsay. The paragraph had an explanatory tone; the author assumed no prior knowledge. Problem was, the author didn't communicate the correct knowledge, so the perception of risk associated with conventional milk and meat production is based on incorrect information.
Depending on the issue, part of (accurate) risk communication is education. You wouldn't limit communication about potential nuclear meltdown to scientists... everybody has to know, even those who haven't taken physics and chemistry.
Here's the thing with risk communication. When just describing a general risk (nuclear meltdowns or pesticides), no, you don't need much background, and if the risk being communicated is bogus, it's easy to tell, partly because there are so few details to screw up. There are some compelling reasons to eat organic meat/dairy, relating to biomagnification, and the environmental impact of raising meat and milk producing animals. However, the authors of that article ran into trouble when they went into the specifics.
Another great example of poor risk communication is using Chernobyl as an example for how risky nuclear energy can be. In any part of the world not using Soviet-era reactors of that particular build, this is a bogus risk, as that specific chain of events cannot happen in other designs of reactors. However, you have to know a bit about the history of reactor design to catch this one.
For general audiences, it seems to be an inevitable quandary where authors need to not only generalize information, but to do so with accurate and precise content that does not mislead the reader. In a variety of topics, here exemplified by organics (a popular buzzword) in the dairy/meat industry, writers need to be aware that their presentation of information (be it too general or sensationalized or too technical) affects not only the audience’s understanding of the topic, but shapes their opinion and knowledge on the subject. While writers need to balance the technical information they present, as to not mimic a textbook or professional article, they still need to present facts in a coherent and balanced manner which makes evident the proper chronology of facts and the often hesitant claims which exist in science.
I find this issue interesting for a few reasons. The first is that it is mandatory to have nutrition facts on food; however it is rare that people are concerned with things such as the hormones given to an animal. I wonder if this issue gets more attention if this will be mandatory, or maybe for the reasons listed above (pertaining to the misinformation of the article) if listing these things might confuse the public more and cause unnecessary fear. Also, this is an example of risk communication, and it is meant to alert the public about a potential risk, if it is far from the truth, what might motivate the author to say these things, assuming it is not ignorance? It is possible that they are speaking about fear of risks of hormone use that have not been discovered? I have heard people who will not eat anything inorganic say they do this because “we do not know the effect of hormones yet” this might not be true but they still feel this way or lack the knowledge to prove it false.
Speaking as a supporter of organic produce, including meats and milk, I am pretty upset by this information. I still believe in the benefits of organic produce, but this makes me question to what extent they are beneficial, especially for the significantly increased costs. I have read plenty of articles about organic foods, very similar to the one sited in this post. However, I do not know much background. I trust what others write in popular articles, mainly in magazines that I flip through at my leisure. I am not so intense that I will research what is said and make sure that it is true, as I believe is true of most people. Therefore, what am I to believe now that the source of most of my knowledge has just now been invalidated to such an extreme extent? I guess my only solution from now on is not to trust those articles that do not reference their sources, since this information cannot simply appear from thin air. But how much risk communication is out there in popular magazines that is fully sited? You would think a magazine like Positive Thinking would be somewhat supported by science and sited, as compared to the magazines I read like Cosmo, People, and Seventeen. I guess that isn't the case.
I agree with Hutsons post. There must be required prior knowledge of an issue before one can adequately asses risk in communication. Risk communication will not be effective if it is not directed towards an educated audience. In this case, the author was very unclear about certain facts and evidence, as the information was not presented in a clear fashion.
Adrienne, I think you should go ahead with your plan and write a letter to the editor of the magazine. Even if they don't retract any of the information, you should request to see the sources that the author cited-- where did his or her "prior knowledge" come from? It would also be interesting to see if other experts on organic food (not just dairy science) would agree with you that this was false information. My guess is that the author didn't intentionally lie; he/she probably found a statistic or an example in which situation like this occurred, then carelessly extended the stereotype to include all places of dairy production. Again, the meaning implied all depends on its manner of communication-- but it will still be interesting to see where this information was obtained.
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