"What kind of farmers are we? Do we want to distinguish ourselves from other farmers?" Ben Sadeghi asks as he walks his small, family-run Kamuela dairy farm on the Big Island.

Those "other farmers" he is referring to are some 30 percent of the nation's dairymen who inject their cows with rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone (sometimes called bovine somatotropin, or BST). The hormone reportedly increases a cow's milk production between 5 and 20 percent. It has also been known to increase the incidence of several types of illnesses in cows and has been accused of everything from endangering the livelihood of small farms to promoting colon and breast cancer in consumers.