"rbgh" news and stories

A viral campaign produced by website Sustainable Table, The Meatrix is a cartoon that reveals "the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from." It started up a few years ago, and has since been translated into 30 languages and boasts new features.

Not familiar? Though cleverly animated and peppered with humorous anecdotes, The Meatrix films are definitely not a joke, and probably not suitable for kids. There are three installments, the first being an introduction to what Sustainable Table calls "the dark side of the meat industry," and the second and third, The Meatrix II: The Revolting, and The Meatrix II 1/2, which explores new avenues into the dairy and meat-packing industries.

Our pig protagonist, Leo, chooses the red pill, and follows Mootheus, a trench coat-wearing cow, who reveals the grim reality about most of America's meat and dairy products. As they walk around the farm and Mootheus explains how animals are packed into tight-knit quarters and injected with RBGH and fed the carcasses of their relatives, the juxtaposition of the simplistic, brightly-colored cartoons against the shocking statistics helps to drive the point home.

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Ask the barista how much milk they go through in one day then next time you go into Starbucks for a latte. At some stores, the baristas probably far to busy to take note of the number of gallons used, but it is safe to say that it is a lot. And with over 5,500 stores in the US, Starbucks must be one of the largest consumers in the country, so the dairy industry will feel the effects of Starbucks decision to drop all dairy containing the artificial growth hormone RBGH. So far, the coffeehouse has hormone free milk at stores on the west coast (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, New Mexico and Northern California) and in New England, or roughly 37% of all of their dairy products. The company is still developing their plan to phase out the milk from the rest of their stores and it is safe to say that it will be a gradual process when it begins.

Representatives from the dairy industry who support the use of the hormone say that it is only a matter of time before Starbucks passes increased costs onto consumers, but supporters of the switch say that more dairy farmers will stop using the hormone as consumers and businesses look for dairy produced without it, keeping prices under control. Starbucks has not said how this change has affected their operating costs, but will say that they are not planning to raise drink prices as a result of the switch.

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