The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the bovine growth hormone affair, part one 103On October 4, 1989, Millstone met Neil Craven, Monsanto’s Brussels representative,who agreed to send him the raw data from the tests conductedin eight centers located in the United States, Holland, Great Britain, Germany,and France (where the test was conducted by the Institut Techniquede l’Élevage Bovin). A week later, a letter—which would soon become theheart of the matter—specified the framework of the agreement: “We wouldbe interested to hear your views on the data when you have had chance toassess it,” Craven wrote. “As you know, we request that the raw data be keptconfidential. We hope that you will discuss any interpretation of the datawith us before disclosing it to third parties.”Millstone dissected the data sent by the eight international centers,which concerned 620 cows, 309 of which had been injected with the hormone.He discovered that a certain number of animals had been “prematurelywithdrawn from the statistics,” which of course distorted the results.For example, in Dardenne, Missouri, this was the case for cow number 321,found dead on March 28, 1986, and removed from the trial. Number 391was withdrawn because of mastitis. In Arizona, number 4320 died of peritonitis;in Utah, number 5886 succumbed to lymphosarcoma; in Holland,number 701 was eliminated because of acute anemia caused by the ruptureof blood vessels in the mammary glands; and so on. By doing a meta-analysisof the data, Millstone found that the SCC was on average 19 percent higherin treated cows than in the control groups. Knowing that the VeterinaryProducts Committee of the British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, andFood was in the process of studying the request to authorize marketing ofrBGH, he sent them a summary of his findings, emphasizing that “some ofMonsanto’s published figures did not coincide with those provided directlyto us” and that “in commercial use, rBST might be responsible for a decreasein milk quality.”Then on December 5, 1991, he contacted Doug Hard, Monsanto’s newBrussels representative, to ask him for authorization to publish an article ina scientific journal, and he attached a draft, in accordance with the prioragreement. “As the raw data are confidential, all subsequent analyses are aswell.” Hard answered a month later, although he was conciliatory: he conditionedeventual publication on the prior appearance of a paper by Monsantoconsultants in the Journal of Dairy Science, whose publication was imminent,he said. Two years passed with no further news. Millstone then wrote