I drink this kind of milk and have preferred it since highschool. However, overall, if most of the milk comes from organic cows, won't we need more of them to maintain the supply? Then we will need to use more land for milk production, not just the warehouses for the milking but also grazing land. And won't more cows mean significantly more methane and all the other bad stuff associated with cows?
I guess all the questions above are rhetorical but I am really curious about the true green benefit of this move. Is it just a health/taste benefit on the human side, or is there some sort of wider benefit for the world?

We shouldn't blow this up too much. It was natural that Wal-Mart would go this way eventually. Seeing that the majority of dairy farmers have moved away from using growth hormones. you know who we should thank? Starbucks. They are the largest private buyer of milk in the US and have been pressing the milk producers to go "hormone free". And they eventually "won" that one last year. So it is natural that it would trickle down. They didn't make a huge story out of it either. Mainly because the system is still weak to assess whether the cows used for milkiing was free of growth hormones. They have to accept a declaration and "spot" checking by the farmers. So maybe Wal-Mart didn't push Monsanto's farmers that hard. They just benefited from the work Starbucks did behind the scenes. And once it reached critical point in Wal-Mart's own purchasing - an easy swap. It is easy to swap if 80-90% of your milk is already "hormone free". Thanks to Starbucks.

A massive step in the right direction. Perhaps this will be a catalyst for the ouster of these hormones altogether.

This is a great move. I never really liked the idea of chemicals in any of my foods. If Wal-mart could continue the trend with the rest of the cow, i.e., meats that no chemicals (to preserve the meat longer) AND 12% water added (to make the meat plump and weigh more).

This is fantastic! I'm really pleased with the direction Walmart is going lately. They still have quite a long way to go, but it's certainly an amazing improvement from what they could still be today.

I'm a country girl but totally ignorant of dairy cows. Do they really give GROWTH hormone to something they don't need to GROW? They give lots of growth hormone to meat calves so they can send them to slaughter sooner, but they don't need to get dairy cows to weight to sell. That makes sense to me that they wouldn't give dairy cows that. I do believe they give them lots of antibiotics for infections in thier teats. Does anyone out there work in this field that could enlighten me?

Hey at least they are moving in the right direction .... this growth hormones is bad stuff not just the cows but I say for people too. It kills the cows shortens life of the cow makes the cow become sick more often which enturn you have to pump more drugs into the cows.... NOT GOOD...
At least they are moving now even though I drink the stuff .... only organic soy milk. This growth hormone was only pushed becuase of factory farms greed..... hope it comes back to bit them. I grew up on a farm a small one but still didn't like what went on with all the drugs for sick cows and farmers aren't doctors but they were able to give drugs like they knew what they were doing ... yeah right.... now people have woke up to find out things..... MOVE FORWARD TO A BETTER LIFE.....

growth hormone for dairy cows was administered to increase the yield in milk production from a single cow. What you end up with is a cow with painfully enlarged utters as well as other negative things outlined above.

I hope this is a serious blow to agribusiness in general and if anything does good come out of this it will be in the destabilization of agribusiness as a whole.

MILK IS FOR BABIES.

Studies link dairy consumption to ovarian and breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. Milk, both human and cow, has naturally-occurring growth hormones that can become cancerous in adults, whose bodies are supposed to have finished their growth spurts.

http://www.consumerhealthjournal.com/articles/milk-and-cancer.html

SO MANY WONDERFUL REASONS TO GO VEGAN!!!!!!

Dairy products are wholesome, nutritious, and good tasting and are produced by farmers that take excellent care of their animals everyday. Farmers depend on these animals to provide for their familes so why wouldn't they take good care of them! :)

Monstanto's Posilac, rbST, is a recombinant version of the natural protein hormone that is, in different versions, in animals as well as humans. Dairy cattle are some times supplemented with this to enable them to produce more milk. This product was released to the market in 1994 after extensive testing. Both the US FDA, Health Canada (Canada's equivalent to the US FDA), and the EU have concluded that this supplement has no negative effects on humans. According to the FDA, it has been shown that the product is safe, effective, and profitable when used correctly on well-managed dairy farms.

Yes, this product is under the critical eye--and I believe that is a GOOD thing. Keeping our technology in check is the only way to ensure the safety of our animals, our products, and ourselves! So if YOU choose to consume organic or rbST-free products, I hope you will consider the real facts and realize that all dairy products, no matter if they are organic or not, are safe and wholesome!

For more information check out some of these websites:
rbstfacts.org
fda.gov/cvm
midwestdairy.com

In response to James and Valerie...

James, the concerns you raise are correct. One of the reasons rbST (a synthetic copy of the cow's natural bst or growth hormone) was developed, tested, then approved by FDA nearly 15 years ago, is for the very purpose of increasing the efficiency of milk production in cows. Typically, a supplemented cow will give 10 pounds per day more milk (equivalent to about one gallon), on just a little more feed, still far less feed than replacing this efficiency with more cows. Cows eat an awful lot just for body maintenance. The little extra they eat for 10 extra pounds of milk pales in comparison, and that goes for water consumption too. The synthetic copy of the bovine (cow) growth hormone (rbst) is a tool that helps large and small family farms make a modest living on the very slim to sometimes negative margins they encounter in the dairy business. In fact, small dairies in my area will be hit hardest being forced to give up this technology with little or no additional compensation for their milk. Valerie, cows are sometimes given antibiotic treatments for mastitis, but the milk is withheld from the milk tank until the treatment time AND the drug withdrawal time are past. All milk (regular and organic) goes through the same government tests to make sure it is clear of any antibiotic or chemical residue. If any are found, the dairy plant has samples from all the farms and can identify which farm messed up the tank, and that farm is responsible for paying for the dumped tank of milk. You can see, this would be very expensive, so dairy farmers are very careful with antibiotics and they avoid them whenever they can, often trying natural remedies first to help the cow along and if that doesn't work, giving antibiotics. When you, your child, or your pet are sick, you wouldn't want them to be deprived of an antibiotic that would make them better, right? Same thing with the cows. However, organic cows are not allowed to be treated with antibiotics when they are sick. The organic farmer's only choice if he treats a cow is to then sell that cow to a non-organic farmer because she can't be milked organic anymore... even after the drug withdrawal time is over. Now, does that make healthy sense? Don't know if you've ever breast fed a baby, but mastitis occurs in humans and animals for a variety of reasons. I can assure you, the scores of farms I have visited over the past 15+ years have no more than the average incidence of mastitis, whether they supplement their cows with rbST (growth hormone) or not. Furthermore, cows that are supplemented with rbST, can actually live longer because the farmer does not have to sell her if she doesn't get bred again right away to have another calf. If a cow is not ready to breed as soon as she should be, rbST helps her keep her milk production up so the farmer can afford to feed her, keep her, and give her more time. One thing people don't realize about rbST, is that it reduces the carbon footprint of milk production (produce more with less), which is even more critical today. It also has a positive effect on how much cropland will be pulled out of conservation reserve to grow corn and soybeans as ethanol and biodiesel production compete with dairy, beef and other food producers for feed grain at today's outrageously record high prices. We are heading into a scary time and yet the hormone issue in milk is one foundless fear that has been created, all the while we are missing the true concern here: that of conserving and advancing safe proven technologies that help farmers feed a burgeoning population on a shrinking land base. By the way.... natural or synthetic, the bovine growth hormone is not recognized as a hormone by the human body. It is exclusively bovine (cow). Our bodies recognize it as a protein. Also, there are species-specific hormones in all plant and animal food products, even the lowly cabbage.

Sherry