Organic Woo?

[kellyb]

I think the main issue with rBGH is an increase in bovine insulin growth factor 1 in milk from treated cows.

 

[joobz]

In my opinion, the risks posed by BGH in milk are about nil... If there was BHG in milk, it is still a peptidic hormone... One that gets digested (destroyed) to its amino acids constituents when it goes through the digestive tract.

Growth hormone usually has to be injected to have any effect at all. Ask athletes !

the Kemist

Or any diabetic for that matter.

Although, it seems that it is true that antibodies (I'm guessing IgAs) in human breast milk can enter the serum of new borns. I'm guessing this is a function of the newborn's digestive system being more permeable to proteins than an adults, although i don't know. If so, it is probably good to avoid store milk for new borns, which you are supposed to do anyway.

 

[kellyb]

Or any diabetic for that matter.

Although, it seems that it is true that antibodies (I'm guessing IgAs) in human breast milk can enter the serum of new borns. I'm guessing this is a function of the newborn's digestive system being more permeable to proteins than an adults, although i don't know. If so, it is probably good to avoid store milk for new borns, which you are supposed to do anyway.

Actually, that's true with animals, but not with humans. In humans, immune globulins will hang out in the mouth, throat, gut, etc., for quite a while, but they don't (to my knowledge) actually cross into the serum. Newborns do have antibodies in the serum, but they're only the ones that crossed over through the placenta before birth.

 

[tabitha]

Zip, so far as I can see. And a threat to the health of the cows, if they are denied proper healthcare because of a prohibition on "chemicals" or "drugs".

Rofe.

Rolfe I am only asking you because i am interested. Do you think organic farms are worse for animals than normal ones? This is not a topic I know much about. I do buy organic if I can (and it's local) but my brother is a chef. He is totally, absoloutley passionate about organic food, especially meat. He is of the belief that the animals are treated much more humanley than in "conventional farms" The only meat he doesn't buy organic is beef. He also visits every farm he gets supplies from (I have visited a few with him andI was quite impressed!) The people he gets his pork from have a name for every animal..they really love these piggies..is that normal?! Their chickens were all outdoors. It just seemed SO different from what my ides of "farming" was. This is my idea of organic farming, and from what I have seen, it does seem better. Even now, I buy all my meat organic (except beef!) but my butcher tells me exactly which farm it is from, he has visited there, and it DOES tase better. (well imo!) Do you think some organic farms can be good? The ones I have seen, are sooo passionate about their animals and are not against using antibiotics at all if they are truely needed. They treat the animals like their children (which yeah is weird, but if i am going to eat them I am not complaining!!) You seem pretty anti-organic from a vet point of view, but the organic farmers I know, care more abouth their animals, than their profit,(and actually more about their animals than their wife in one case so it doesn't make sense!)

 

[HawkeyeMD]

Or any diabetic for that matter.

Although, it seems that it is true that antibodies (I'm guessing IgAs) in human breast milk can enter the serum of new borns. I'm guessing this is a function of the newborn's digestive system being more permeable to proteins than an adults, although i don't know. If so, it is probably good to avoid store milk for new borns, which you are supposed to do anyway.

IgA passed from breast milk does not, AFAIK, work in the serum. It acts by binding microorganisms in the gut, so they don't get into the bloodstream and are instead expelled along with feces.

Newborns should never take cow's milk, not because of a lack of IgA, but because it is not a sufficient source of nutrition.

So sayeth the future pediatric neurologist. Take the IgA stuff with a grain of salt, though--it's been a while since I reviewed that. But IgA never does work in the bloodstream, whether in newborns or in adults. It's secretory; it works in the GI tract and in mucosa.

 

[joobz]

I did some searching, and it looked like what I was thinking of was serum antibodies in the MOM and not the baby. That was my mistake.

Although, I wouldn't discount the antibody thing. It seems that there is good evidence that the milk IgA is protective as Kellyb has indicated.

Sadeharju K, Knip M, Virtanen SM, Savilahti E, Tauriainen S, Koskela P, Akerblom HK, Hyoty H; Finnish TRIGR Study Group. Maternal antibodies in breast milk protect the child from enterovirus infections. Pediatrics. 2007 May;119(5):941-6.

Ballabio C, Bertino E, Coscia A, Fabris C, Fuggetta D, Molfino S, Testa T, Sgarrella MC, Sabatino G, Restani P. Immunoglobulin-A profile in breast milk from mothers delivering full term and preterm infants. Int J Immunopathol Pharmacol. 2007 Jan-Mar;20(1):119-28

 

[HawkeyeMD]

I did some searching, and it looked like what I was thinking of was serum antibodies in the MOM and not the baby. That was my mistake.

Although, I wouldn't discount the antibody thing. It seems that there is good evidence that the milk IgA is protective as Kellyb has indicated.

Um, point of information. Ig(G,M,A,E,D)s are antibodies. I'm not trying to be snarky; it just sounds like you think they are separate things.

Kellyb is talking about IgGs, which cross the placenta and are the chief source of antibodies in the newborn for the first three months or so of life. Babies' immune systems aren't fully-functional at birth; they don't produce their own until they're around 7-8 months old.

To recap: IgA from mom's breast milk acts in the gut; IgG from her blood crosses the placenta (they're the smallest Ig), and enters and acts in the baby's blood. (That is why your first citation is talking about 'enterovirus' infections. 'Entero' means in the gut. )

 

[joobz]

Um, point of information. Ig(G,M,A,E,D)s are antibodies. I'm not trying to be snarky; it just sounds like you think they are separate things.

I know they are antibodies. That's why I was saying that there was something to IgA. It was a critique of your "Take the IgA stuff with a grain of salt" comment. What I didn't know was if IgA were serum borne as well, or if they were purely secretory.

As for the relationship, IgG is (on average) the smallest soluable Ig, not the smallest of the Ig superfamily (I think ICAM-1 may take that position). Although, a single Ig can be larger than an IgA counterpart. It depends on the level of glycosolation (igG can get up to 180kDa) and if the dimer of IgA remains intact, which need not be the case for mucosal form, since it is stabilized noncovalently.

 

[HawkeyeMD]

I know they are antibodies. That's why I was saying that there was something to IgA. It was a critique of your "Take the IgA stuff with a grain of salt" comment. What I didn't know was if IgA were serum borne as well, or if they were purely secretory.

As for the relationship, IgG is (on average) the smallest soluable Ig, not the smallest of the Ig superfamily (I think ICAM-1 may take that position). Although, a single Ig can be larger than an IgA counterpart. It depends on the level of glycosolation (igG can get up to 180kDa) and if the dimer of IgA remains intact, which need not be the case for mucosal form, since it is stabilized noncovalently.

ICAM-1? I'm puzzled. The ICAM-1 I am aware of is a binding molecule, not an antibody. It is a "member of the Ig superfamily", but it has nothing to do with binding to pathogens. At any rate, I apologize if you felt I was talking down to you.

What I meant, mostly, was that there is the possibility that IgA could act either in the lymphoid tissue or within the epithelium before it is secreted across the cell and into the lumen. I don't know of any mechanism by which it could move in the other direction, because from all that I recall there are receptors on the basolateral face of epithlelial cells that are responsible for the secretory process (and not having them, or having mutated forms of them, may be one reason for certain kinds of IgA-related immunodeficiencies). I know of no evidence that IgA ever acts in the bloodstream. But there's no question that it's protective.

In any event, your first citation, from what I can see in the abstract, was measuring both IgA (in breastmilk) and IgG (in the maternal serum). The second was measuring purely IgA content in breast milk.

 

[joobz]

ICAM-1? I'm puzzled. The ICAM-1 I am aware of is a binding molecule, not an antibody. It is a "member of the Ig superfamily", but it has nothing to do with binding to pathogens. At any rate, I apologize if you felt I was talking down to you.

I apologize for not being clear in my posts. It is a common error of mine. Yes, ICAM-1 isn't an antibody. it's involved in leukocyte recruitment

What I meant, mostly, was that there is the possibility that IgA could act either in the lymphoid tissue or within the epithelium before it is secreted across the cell and into the lumen. I don't know of any mechanism by which it could move in the other direction, because from all that I recall there are receptors on the basolateral face of epithlelial cells that are responsible for the secretory process (and not having them, or having mutated forms of them, may be one reason for certain kinds of IgA-related immunodeficiencies). I know of no evidence that IgA ever acts in the bloodstream. But there's no question that it's protective.

In any event, your first citation, from what I can see in the abstract, was measuring both IgA (in breastmilk) and IgG (in the maternal serum). The second was measuring purely IgA content in breast milk.

Yeah, that was were I was confused. I wanted to address the concern of BGH oral uptake.

Previously, I had worked in a group that attempted to design an oral delivery system for insulin (6.6KDa), and hand only marginal success under very controlled and limited conditions.(this was all mouse/rat work). Based upon that work, I am quite certain that BGH uptake is not at all a concern.

But, I pulled a quick search, because I thought if there was any chance of oral protein uptake, it would be in newborns.(assuming epithelial barrier function wasn't fully intact). So I looked into the breast milk antibody issue, but I wasn't certain if these remained enteric or was absorbed.

 

[HawkeyeMD]

I apologize for not being clear in my posts. It is a common error of mine. Yes, ICAM-1 isn't an antibody. it's involved in leukocyte recruitment

Yeah, of mine too.

Yeah, that was were I was confused. I wanted to address the concern of BGH oral uptake.

Previously, I had worked in a group that attempted to design an oral delivery system for insulin (6.6KDa), and hand only marginal success under very controlled and limited conditions.(this was all mouse/rat work). Based upon that work, I am quite certain that BGH uptake is not at all a concern.

But, I pulled a quick search, because I thought if there was any chance of oral protein uptake, it would be in newborns.(assuming epithelial barrier function wasn't fully intact). So I looked into the breast milk antibody issue, but I wasn't certain if these remained enteric or was absorbed.

Okay, that's kind of insanely interesting. I was seriously considering endocrinology for a while (and these kinds of molecules, I swear, are what drove me away from it). I've read very promising things about the aerosol version, though--usual caveats about short-term studies, lung function and all that, but still. My brother has type 1, so I'm particularly interested. Tell me more? By PM, if necessary?

I'm also very into genetics, which is why I remember the thing about the IgA receptors on the cell membranes. I don't *think* there's any way for IgA to be absorbed, and I also don't know of any evidence that it ever works in the bloodstream, but hey...they discover new stuff every day.

(Thank you... )

 

[Pipirr]

As a dairy farmer and a skeptic,I've got to wade in on this one.Bottom line is that ther is no lab test that can differetiate milk from my farm and milk from an organic dairy farm.What adds insult to injury if we're talking "carbon footprint" is that organic milk is being picked up in the same tanker truck as my milk,but in another compartment to avoid cross contamination.The whole load is then transported many extra miles to a dairy that handles organic milk.Because of the premium price it fetches on the store shelves the added costs of maintaining this parallel system can be recouped.I use antibiotics when I have to and withdrawl times have to be strictly followed.Evey load is tested for minute residues that can be traced back to the farmer.The farmer is then responsible for the tankerload of milk that has to be disposed of ~25000$.In Canada we don't use bst,but it is a protein that is already naturally occuring in milk and the level is no higher in treated cows.

Glad that you waded in.

I'm not going to stop flying a flag for conventional farming. The idea that evidence based farming is somehow second-best to organic farming, that's one that really raises my hackles.

Back to the milk: if there was a demand for omega-3 rich milk, then why not test for that, ship it in separate compartments in the milk trucks and charge a premium for omega 3 content. It's already a selling point for eggs.

Based only on the vaguest possibility that organic milk may contain more omega 3, some people will seek it out. There's no guarantee that they will get what they want. Organic is a production standard, not a product standard, after all, and until the organic industry starts testing, and proving, that it's produce meets these nutritional standards, its all just hot air.

 

[joobz]

Yeah, of mine too.




Okay, that's kind of insanely interesting. I was seriously considering endocrinology for a while (and these kinds of molecules, I swear, are what drove me away from it). I've read very promising things about the aerosol version, though--usual caveats about short-term studies, lung function and all that, but still. My brother has type 1, so I'm particularly interested. Tell me more? By PM, if necessary?

I'm also very into genetics, which is why I remember the thing about the IgA receptors on the cell membranes. I don't *think* there's any way for IgA to be absorbed, and I also don't know of any evidence that it ever works in the bloodstream, but hey...they discover new stuff every day.

(Small favor...could you, pretty please, edit the attribution portion of the second quotation of your previous post? Please? )

First off, I'm COMPLETELY sorry about the misquote. I was dirting myself in that thread.

Yup, I'm guessing that the high molecular weight is part of the game. You just can't get it across the membranes as easily.

The insulin work was using a polymer carrier that was pH sensitive. It would protect the insulin from the high acid environment in the stomach, but release protein upon entering the neutral conditions of the small intestine. This insulin would be then degraded by the proteases. Their best effort than was in moving to micron particles that would become entrapped in the villi. This enhanced the likelyhood of active uptake (presumably trancytosis), but I graduated by that point. I think they may have made more advances, but they have a lot of biology working against it. The pulmonary and/or nasal route is a better bet. When I talked with the guy who did that pulmonary insulin work, he told me to get out of protein delivery...it's too hard. (although, I enjoy the challenge)

My work in that group was in a coating for the catheter port of the implantable insulin pump. I developed a porous coating that encouraged vascularization but blocked fibrous encapsulation. This worked in mice, but we only tested up to 6 months. Controls catheters always occluded by 7-8weeks.

Being a neurologist, I'm guessing (hoping ) you may also be interested in my current work. I'm now work on oxidative stress, particularly pulmonary vascular oxidative stress (ALI, ischemia reperfusion injury...). I'm developing targeted nanocarriers of antioxidant enzymes.

 

[HawkeyeMD]

'Salright. I figured there was some quick cut-n-paste action going on there.

That's fascinating. I assume your present work would be used in conjuction with, say, tPA therapy? Would it also have applications for mitochondrial disorders or G6PD deficiency?

Oh, yeah, cow hormones. Um.../end derail...someone, earlier, brought up the idea that hormones in milk are responsible for earlier puberty in girls. This has been floating around for a while, but the current thinking is that the increase in weight is far more likely to be the culprit, because fat cells aromatize estrogens.

How was that for a back-on-track save?

 

[Jorghnassen]

Rolfe I am only asking you because i am interested. Do you think organic farms are worse for animals than normal ones?

You should consider that Rolfe, being a veterinarian, gets called to see sick animals, and as such may not see a representative sample of organic farm animals (only seeing the worst cases, and possibly not getting to see farms where animals are healthy and well treated). That is not to say that organic farms are actually better than conventional ones (though "better" is hard to define, as there are many factors to take into account, and not everyone may weight them in the same fashion) in general, or that the specific places your brother gets his supply from are anything like the places Rolfe has seen.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm sure there are organic farms that look after their animals very well. However there are also non-organic farms that look after their animals extremely well. And there are both sorts that don't, too.

The problem with organic as applied to animals is the idealism that paints "drugs" and "chemicals" as bad, and so denies the animals the basic healthcare we'd demand for ourselves or for our pets.

Now it's perfectly true that one has to be careful when using medicinal products on animals that are to enter the food chain. That's why there are very strict regulations about what can and can't be used, and how long must elapse between using certain products and the animal entering the food chain. There are also rigorous tests of the actual product to detect undesirable resudues, and a farmer whose product fails any of these tests will be heavily penalised. This is for conventional farming.

But then organic comes along and says, these safeguards are not good enough. It paints a picture of food produced in that way as riddled with drugs and antibiotics, and by inference encourages the idea that such food is less than safe. This is complete nonsense.

Then, in pursuit of this ideology, routine anti-parasite medication is either banned or discouraged. Vaccination is either banned or discouraged. Treatment of sick animals, while not exactly banned, will have knock-on effects on the farm's "organic" status, sufficient to cause farmers to think twice.

If you keep only a few animals and care for each one individually, then of course these animals will have a good quality of life. However, that quality of life has the potential to be even better if the carer isn't hamstrung by toeing the "organic" line when looking at healthcare for the animals. Nevertheless, the people who want to run such a farm are often the people who buy into the organic myth, so that when you come across such a setup, you usually find that it is organic. If they're prepared to go the extra mile and weave their way through all the extra rules and restrictions that come into force when an organic farmer wants to use one of these awful "chemicals" to treat a sick animal, then the animals may well be fine. However, this isn't always the case.

In order to farm commercially and produce the sort of volume needed by today's populations, if a substantial proportion of that population wants to buy organic, it's not easy to treat the animals like that. For most, it's a commercial decision that "organic" commands a premium price, and so they'll go there.

What really angers me is seeing animals with a particular disease, with the note "farmer going for organic status so has ceased vaccination" - against the disease the animals now have! Or diagnosing parasite infestation and having a farmer refuse to treat because treating will affect his status. Ideology that says if you farm a particular way your stock should not become infected with parasites is all very well (and conventional farmers mostly take advantage of those methods too), but it's not much help when the infection has actually happened, and the calves are sick.

Small farms where the farmers love the animals and name them and care for them individually are of course wonderful. They're even more wonderful if the farmer has the sense to realise that he can care so much better if he uses veterinary medicines within the regulations as and when needed. But frankly they don't represent the majority of farms out there, of any sort, and the fact that such farms are often "organic" is a sociological phenomenon, and doesn't mean that organic is in any way better.

Personally, I will not consume any "organic" animal product if I can possibly avoid it, because of the potential adverse consequences of the organic ideology for animal welfare, and also because of an intellectual revulsion regarding the anti-science, anti-vaccination and anti-progress nature of the whole organic movement.

That and the fact that they promote the use of homoeopathy.

Rolfe.

 

[tabitha]

I see where you are coming from. I always just thought that "organic" meant a better quality of life for the animal, but maybe not in all cases. You are right, the farms I have visited have all been quite small.

 

[Cuddles]

What about organic milk?

I've heard claims that kids are reaching puberty earlier and earlier these days because of all the hormones in milk.

But children are reaching puberty earlier all over the world, not just in the US. In Britain, and I think the EU, it is illegal to give hormones to cows, so this can't possibly be the cause.

 

[joobz]

But children are reaching puberty earlier all over the world, not just in the US. In Britain, and I think the EU, it is illegal to give hormones to cows, so this can't possibly be the cause.

I blame reality TV

 

[Jorghnassen]

But children are reaching puberty earlier all over the world, not just in the US. In Britain, and I think the EU, it is illegal to give hormones to cows, so this can't possibly be the cause.

Is it really children reaching puberty earlier, or particularly girls reaching it earlier?

/I blame soy products!