The Kroger Co. and chemical giant Monsanto Co. are in a state-by-state spat over how milk should be labeled in stores.
Cincinnati-based Kroger wants to use a product label to tell consumers in more than 3,200 groceries and convenience stores that the milk produced and sold by Kroger dairy plants is free of a hormone produced by Monsanto called Posilac or rBST.
The substance, an artificial bovine growth hormone that is injected into cows, can boost milk production by 10 pounds per day.
St. Louis-based Monsanto opposes those labels and claims they are disparaging to a legal and appropriate additive. It has fought labeling plans in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Utah -- with more states likely to become battlegrounds -- and insists that if Kroger is permitted to put the information on a label, Monsanto will have no way to rebut implications that the bovine supplement is unsafe.
The Food and Drug Administration approved used of the supplement in 1993.
"There is absolutely no difference in the milk," Monsanto spokeswoman Lori Hoag said.
The retail battle pits the rights of consumers to know what's in a product against Monsanto, a powerful player in the agriculture industry.
Why does Kroger need a label?
"No.1, rBST isn't there -- isn't in the milk," Kroger spokeswoman Meghan Glynn said. "And there's increasing customer interest in this issue. We are getting a lot of calls on this."
The fight already has forced Kroger to change plans for millions of proposed milk labels. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland issued an emergency order on Feb. 7 to prevent the retailer from using the label.
Kroger notified dairies last summer that by February 2008, it would not sell milk from cows that had been given rBST.
The retailer had proposed a two-part label: One line said that the milk came from cows that were not treated with artificial bovine growth hormone and in smaller print was an explanation that the FDA had found that the hormone -- also known as rBGH -- was safe.
The smaller print became an issue of contention as Ohio regulators told Kroger it could not proceed with the label and had to make changes.
Ohio is not the first state where this issue has played out.
Pennsylvania banned the labels, known in the food industry as "absence labels" on Jan.1, but that prohibition was later altered to allow milk to be labeled as from cows that were not treated with rBST.
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