Since then, seeing how bad the buzz around rBST makes conventional milk look, Monsanto-backed advocacy groups, milk marketing boards and other dairy groups have lobbied for similar labeling restrictions. (In Maine a few years ago, Monsanto even sued a small milk producer over the “misleading and deceptive marketing practices” of his labeling milk with an rBST-free label.)  Controversy about whether rBST, one of the first applications of genetic engineering in food production, affects human health adversely still rages (there’s no question about the way inducing cows to produce an additional gallon of milk a day, as Posilac does, burns them cows), but public pressure has led retailers like Kroger, Publix, Safeway and even Wal-Mart to buy store-brand milk exclusively from cows that not treated with rBST, while countries like Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and most European countries remain, at the request of their citizens, resolutely rBST-free.  Could this be one of the motivators behind Monsanto’s recent liquidation of Posilac, the brand name for rBST? 

Well, there’s enough profit left in Posilac for Eli Lilly to judge it worth $300 million last week. Lilly, whom you might have thought simply catered to human health and productivity, actually counts the seventh largest animal health company, Elanco (which has been licensed to sell Posilac outside the US for the past ten years), among its subsidiaries. “With the purchase of Posilac, Elanco can enhance its overall portfolio and work together with the industry to provide dairy farmers more options and give consumers affordable choices,” says Lilly’s press release.

Ah, just another day in global agribusiness.  Plus ca change…