Focus on Research
Penn State Intercom......February 8 , 2001

Consumers will buy 'green' milk

Kim Dionis
College of Agricultural Sciences

People are concerned about protecting water quality and some even are willing to pay for it, said a scientist in the College of Agricultural Sciences.

The Environmental Quality Initiative Inc. -- a collaboration between Penn State, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, the Rodale Institute and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- tested people's willingness to purchase milk in an eco-labeled milk carton, "with successful results," said Les Lanyon, professor of soil fertility.

With support from a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection grant, Chesapeake Milk hit the shelves in 1998. Produced by dairy farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania, the milk in specially marked cartons was test-marketed for more than a year at Fresh Fields grocery stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, northern Virginia and Washington, D.C.

"When consumers purchase Chesapeake Milk, dairy farmers who are doing a good job of protecting water quality receive a premium," Lanyon explained. "A nickel per half-gallon goes directly to these farmers."

To participate, farmers undergo a yearly evaluation that examines how well farmstead structures and management practices protect water quality on the farm. The evaluation, performed by Leon Weber, Rodale Institute's on-farm coordinator, looks at six areas around the dairy farmstead, such as whether cows are kept out of streams, how barnyard runoff is managed and how pesticides are stored and handled. So far, 20 Pennsylvania dairy farmers have participated.

"Agriculture is still considered by many to be the No. 1 cause of non-point source pollution," Lanyon explained. "Historically, government cost-share programs paid for some of the cost of water quality protection on farms to reduce the 'burden' on farmers. But many people have become disillusioned with the level of environmental quality resulting from this approach. Other methods, such as direct regulation, are likely to be implemented.

"Typically, regulations specify conditions that must be met or practices that must be installed," he said. "To deal with additional costs, farmers often have to increase milk production or increase the number of cows they milk. This could accelerate the evolution of farms in the 'get bigger or get out' direction and does little to preserve small, family farms."

This issue is particularly serious in Pennsylvania, which ranks fourth in the nation in milk production and where average herd size is only two-thirds of the national average. Lancaster County, where the dairy herds are smaller than the state norm, has the highest dairy cow population per square mile in the United States. At the same time, more than half of the state -- including Lancaster County -- contributes freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay.

"Manure and sediment that are allowed to run off from Pennsylvania farms can cause serious problems in the bay," said Turner Odell, staff attorney for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "It is important that we encourage farmers to use environmentally sensitive practices that protect water quality, but we also understand that these practices must be economically sustainable."

The group learned that introducing an eco-labeled product is not without its challenges. "It's not easy to achieve buy-in from players in the food system whose agendas may not include environmental protection," Lanyon said. "It's also not easy to communicate new ideas to milk consumers.

"However, we learned that dairy farmers are very interested in this effort. Top government officials also supported the concept. And consumers purchased enough of the Chesapeake Milk for premiums to go back to farmers."

Women reactly
differently than
men to stress

A research team that includes a University assistant professor of biobehavioral health, Laura Cousino Klein, has identified a broad biological and behavioral pattern that explains a key meth-od women use to cope with stress.

"It seems that rather than responding in a fight-or-flight fashion when threatened, fearful or stressed, women may more often tend-and-befriend," she said. "Women are more likely to protect and nurture their young and turn to family and friends for solace when they are stressed."

That's a key finding from a UCLA study, which Klein participated in as a postdoctoral scholar. Its findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of biological and behavioral studies of response to stress by thousands of humans and animal subjects.

"This 'tend-and-befriend' pattern is a sharp contrast to the 'fight-or-flight' behavior pattern that has long been considered the principal method for coping with stress by both men and women," Klein noted. "The hormone oxytocin might be the key. It is well known that oxytocin is released during childbirth and lactation. But, in terms of biobehavioral stress research, it has been overlooked. Oxytocin, in fact, is a mood regulator. Studies show that oxytocin decreases anxiety and depression, and promotes an affiliation or friend-seeking response in females."

If a woman is stressed, she may get a quick burst of the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol. Then comes oxytocin. The female hormone, estrogen, enhances oxytocin's role, and the tend-or-befriend response in women, while the male hormone testosterone appears to enhance fight-or-flight in men.

This is the first new model to describe people's stress response patterns in more than 60 years. Almost all the stress response studies in the past have been conducted on males and so, therefore, upheld fight-or-flight as the main response to stress.

Researchers: Majority
of angioplasty complications
occur within 18 hours of surgery

About 500,000 angioplasty procedures are performed each year in the United States to help people with heart disease. Researchers at the College of Medicine in collaboration with several other universities have found that more than 80 percent of complications from the procedures occur within 18 hours of treatment.

"This is important information for hospitals that keep patients several days," said Ian Gilchrist, associate professor of medicine in the College of Medicine and a cardiologist at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "They may not need to keep patients this long."

Gilchrist and his team participated in and used data from the ESPRIT trial for this study about complications. The ESPRIT trial was a North American clinical trial testing the dose needed for an intravenous platelet inhibitor medicine, sometimes known as a super aspirin, called eptifibatide.

The medication is designed to reduce blood clots that commonly cause complications during heart procedures. The study enrolled 2,064 patients.

"For years physicians would say there is about a 10 percent complication rate for angioplasty or stenting. We wanted to find out exactly when in those 30 days the problems occurred," Gilchrist said.

Complications occurred in 178 patients and included heart attack, additional surgery or death. Gilchrist found that 82 percent of those complication occurred within 18 hours withz most of these complications occurring right at the time of the procedure.

"We found that despite the use of stents or antiplatelet therapy, complications are still common with the procedure," he said. "Also, all of the patients enrolled in the trial had to be relatively stable, so the extremely ill patients did not even participate."

Gilchrist said he thinks future research needs to be focused on high- and low-risk subsets of patients to target early complications and focus the intensity and length of therapy based on the needs of the individual patient.

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