The states of Minnesota and Wisconsin banned the use or sale of bovine somatotropin (bST), a bioengineered pituitary hormone that stimulates lactation in cows, increasing milk production by as much as 25 percent. The ban was engineered by an odd coalition that included environmentalists such as Jeremy Rifkin's Foundation for Economic Trends, which opposes biotechnology, and groups representing small, relatively inefficient farms vulnerable to price decreases.

In 1985 the FDA determined that milk and meat from cows treated with bST was safe for human consumption, and indeed virtually indistinguishable from that of untreated cows, a conclusion echoed in studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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The Santa Barbara News-Press, December 10, 1992:

Joel Slater dismissed the United States and now he's paying the price.

He isn't a criminal or a draft dodger, just an outspoken footnote to the Reagan era.

Slater renounced his U.S. citizenship five years ago after American forces bombed Libya.

It was a passionate moment of free speech—almost an echo of the spirit that sent tea into Boston Harbor and fueled the American revolution, he said.

But dissent doesn't come cheap.

Since renouncing his citizenship in Australia in 1987, Slater has been deported by various countries four times.... He's now in Santa Barbara: Home to the man he blames for turning America mean and the vacation spot of his possible savior.

"This is Reagan's backyard, and I renounced my citizenship under Reagan," Slater said Wednesday. "Bill Clinton has a vacation home here, and maybe he can reinstate my citizenship with an executive order."

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In Vermont, the state Supreme Court has reinstated the handicap-discrimination case of a chambermaid fired by a ski resort for refusing to wear her dentures at work.

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