Pennsylvania agriculture officials have changed initial plans to ban milk labeling specifying that the cows producing it had not been injected with hormones and issued new standards Thursday.

The ban proposed by the Agriculture Department of Pennsylvania was to take effect Feb. 1. However, a public outcry fronted by consumer activists as well as dairies that do not inject their cows with synthetic growth hormones has changed the plan.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell’s office reacted to the public uproar, reviewed the situation and ordered the agency to review the policy. The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Rendell’s press secretary Chuck Ardo: “The governor's position was relatively simple: he wanted the labels to be accurate and informative.”

This means that, while producers will be able to place labels on the milk they sell specifying that the cows it came from were not injected, they will also have to print a disclaimer which specifies that is no difference in milk from cows injected with hormones and milk from cows that are not injected.

The agriculture department issued the ban in October, arguing that a label identifying the milk as not coming from hormone-treated cows could be misleading to consumers. It also said the labels could not be verified. Pennsylvania would have been the first state to implement such a ban, the paper notes.

Under the new guidelines issued Thursday, a label cannot read “No BST,” which is short for bovine somatotropin, as the hormone occurs naturally in cows.

A label can say that the milk comes “from cows not treated with rBST,” which is short for the synthetic hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin. Milk bearing such a label must also include a disclaimer that says, “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.”

The synthetic hormones help increase milk production by about 10 percent a day. Their use was approved by the FDA in 1994. There are however numerous consumers that prefer their dairy products to be more natural.