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Organic Dairy: Or is it?

I've been worried lately about how the Organics industry was going to stay honest and pure especially since I heard that Wal-Mart is now the number one seller of organic milk in the nation. Actually, my little but powerful B.S. antennae went up a few months back when Costco started carrying their Kirkland brand of "organic" milk. Then I started nattering to myself: "Is there really THAT much grazing pasture land in the states of Colorado, Idaho, West Texas, Montana, Wyoming, the prime cattle land of the US to sustain grass fed and non-feedlot, pasture grazed organic milk cows?" I started investigating and found my answer. No, there isn't and something is indeed rotten in the state of Organics.

So far, only the small farmers can really do this. The large conglomerates - because of their lobbying power, huge voice and yes, money - are rewriting the definition of organics because they can't make their bottom line plus pay their CEO's unconscionable amounts of money and raise the milk cows organically. And, most of the time, the large companies are successfully buying out all the small farmers who are going broke because they are not getting the subsidies from our government that the large conglomerates are. Not surprisingly, the huge demand for organics across the US has created the usual corporate greed situation. The rich get richer, etc.

Anyway, Horizon Organic - pure and righteous in the beginning when it was single-ownership - sold out to the largest dairy conglomerate in the world called Dean Foods. I don't buy Horizon anymore, because their milk is from cows standing around in feedlots, being milked three times a day under great stress and duress. Yet, their milk cartons still proudly display the word Organic.

Here's how the Horizon label gets around this: The Federal Organic Standards say that cows must have access to pasture. Horizon (Dean Foods) said that they guessed that "theoretical" access to pasture is good enough. So they have thousands of tightly packed cows standing around in muddy, poopy feedlots all day long - just looking (longingly, I can only imagine) out at the pasture land that is on the other side of the fence. Yes, the grass is greener over there.

If you want to read more about this kind of stuff, log onto a website of The Cornucopia Institute. They are a watchdog organization who actually visited some unethical factory-style dairy farms that call themselves organic, and have witnessed first hand things like a farm where there were 4,000 cows, but only a few hundred acres of pasture.

But, as in the tobacco industry, the cattle industry also has a whistle-blower or two who have pointed out (in a story to the Chicago Tribune for one) that the Horizon milk cows are actually feed-lot, but are trotted out to pasture for photo-ops and visits from VIPs. Their website for The Cornucopia Institute is www.cornucopia.org.

So, if I am not going to buy Horizon or Kirkland anymore, what do I buy? First try to find a small farmer around here who will sell you organic raw milk. There are several milk co-ops alive and well in Boulder and I am sure you could find one by asking around. You buy directly from the farm every week. Then if you don't want to bother with this, I have switched over to buying all my organic dairy products either from Organic Valley which you can buy almost anywhere including Whole foods and/or Farmers All Natural which you can buy at Vitamin Cottage. My yogurt is of the goat variety or Stoneyfield brand.

The Cornucopia Institute has a fun rating system on their website. They rate all the dairy companies from an outstanding "five cow" rating to an ethically challenged "one cow" rating. Log on and check this out.

For your instant information here's the scoop: We have no five cow rating products available to us here in Colorado. However, in the four cow rating which is "excellent", (and O.K. by me) we have Organic Valley, Nancy's, Julie's Ice Cream and Farmers All Natural. In the one cow rating or "ethically challenged" (and not O.K. by me) we have Alta Dena, Aurora and Horizon. Whole foods, Kirkland and Wild Oats have 2 cow ratings which are also not O.K. by me since there is so much available to us in the four cow rating.

But check it all out for yourself. It'll open your eyes.

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