More Barnyard Animal News Today,

Will those wisecracking California cows be TRULY happy at this news?

California Dairies Inc., a huge Central Valley dairy co-op says it's going to stop using BGH, Bovine Growth Hormone, in its cows.



Suddenly conscious of animal welfare? Health concerns?

No. It all boils down to MONEY.

As San Jacinto dairy farmer Sid Sybrandy tells the Los Angeles Times, any increased production wasn't worth the expense of the drug and the extra wear he saw in the animals.

"If it is 40 cents a cow per day, times 1,000 cows, it's $400. After a month, it is an extra $12,000," Sybrandy said. "The dairy industry would have been better off if the product would have never been used. We all would have made more money."

Further, California Dairies Inc. said its biggest customers such as Vons and Safeway didn't want it in the cows. The co-op also supplies brands such as Foster Farms, Knudsen Farms and Producers Dairy.

Then, there's Starbucks -- we think of its coffee, but did you know it is one of the biggest sellers of milk in the country? That's a lotta latte. They've stopped using milk from cows injected with the hormone from more than a third of its establishments and plans to gradually increase that to at least half of its U.S. company-operated coffeehouses.

BGH is made by Monsanto.

Read the Los Angeles Times article.