I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the organic dairy industry. I buy my milk from an area source. It is organic (and actually raw). It's good milk and I am happy to have it. I've read research on organic versus non-organic milk, pasteurized versus raw, but it is yet another thing to familiarize yourself with the functioning of the industry.
Since I live in the west coast headquarters of the dairy industry and we have shenanigans around here like the tagging of the Milk is Milk billboard, the workings of the industry has become more interesting to me.
I mentioned in the Raw Milk is Milk story about the billboard tagging that Pixley, California (home of the billboard) is a pretty small town:
Pixley's claim to fame is that it is the headquarters of the Cal-Bean co-op, provides a gas station or two for those traveling Central California's Highway 99, had an honors-system gas station until about thirty years ago, and just narrowly escaped educating my father who lived in Teviston, a community just south of Pixley.
What I failed to mention is that Pixley is also the headquarters of the largest organic dairy in the state. Its milk is distributed through Horizon Organic. If you drink Horizon Organic milk in California, you are likely drinking the milk from the Vander Eyk Dairy in Pixley, California.
Perhaps that's why the "Milk is Milk" billboard found its way to Pixley - making the challenge that the Horizon milk produced there is no different than regular milk. Perhaps the location of the billboard was a coincidence. Last time I tried to email Alex Avery of the Milk is Milk Campaign, my email bounced back.
In fact, Avery isn't the only one who claims that organic milk is no different from regular milk. The Cornucopia Institute ranks Horizon Organic Milk a paltry one cow out of five primarily because of the large size of the Vander Eyk Dairy. They question the feasibility of giving multiple thousands of cows access to pasture while milking two to three times a day. And actually, the Cornucopia Institute relied on public records to rank them because Horizon did not fill out the survey.
When I realized that for organic certification the dairy is required to have about five cows per acre, I thought "that cost is prohibitive in California." With 10,000 cow dairies and the cost of land her in California, the milk produced from those 2,000 acres would have to be very expensive, even in Pixley.
I did an internet search wondering how the Vander Eyk Dairy managed the land requirement and found an article on the dairy in the Valley Voice. It reports:
The Vander Eyks have 10,000 acres of pastureland near Ducor that they truck their herds to.
I thought "Whoa, I live near Ducor too."
And that's when I realized I live near some controversial cows. Who knew how much entertainment one could get in the middle of nowhere.
I started to inquire about local cows. We live in cattle country here in the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The terrain is too rugged to farm, the land is generally undeveloped, and land cost is still reasonable. Lots of cattle roam these hills. We even have a patch of black-and-white Holsteins about ten minutes from our house. I took a picture of them.
I called Sheriff Deputy Scott to ask about their ownership.
"Scott, who owns the heifers near McFarland Grade?"
"That's Baxley land. They have a dairy in the valley. Those cows near Fountain Springs are also theirs."
Fountain Springs is a stone's throw from Ducor.
"The Vander Eyk Dairy has cows near Ducor too. Isn't Ducor your beat? Where are the Vander Eyk cows?"
"Amanda, do you have any idea how many cows live down there?"
"I know, Scott, but you know everything."
I asked he and Postmaster Dean to investigate for me. I don't think they have worn holes in their shoes doing so.
With the Baxley Dairy owning so much grazing land it occurred to me that they are "almost organic." With some organic feed and a system to cull cows once they need antibiotics, they could join the organic market too. Much of their herd has access to pasture. I've seen young heifers and pregnant heifers grazing in those hills. The only other cows in their herd would be those actually milking and perhaps those about to have a baby.
And if this report of the Vander Eyk Dairy is correct, the Baxley Dairy could just keep their milking herd as they do now, minus any growth hormones (if they actually use them now). A cow requiring antibiotics would also need to be moved to a conventional herd.
With the Baxley heifers living an "almost organic" lifestyle, it does beg the question how different are these two milks. Alex Avery at the Milk is Milk Campaign says they are no different. The Cornucopia Institute even questions their difference. This is where consumer choice becomes complicated. A friend has a Jersey cow just about ready to leave her heifer days. That makes my choice fairly simple.
Comments (2)
I thought you would be interested to read this then...
Horizon Organic Dairy Feedlots Watering Down Organic Standards
From: High Country News Organic milk label getting watered down Loopholes in the new federal organic law readily apparent on an Idaho dairy farm by
REBECCA CLARREN | posted 06.08.05
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The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk is like a stop sign for consumers: Your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that Horizon milk is from certified organic farms, where clean-living cows "make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh air, clean water and exercise."
At a Horizon dairy farm in central Idaho, the cows don't look that happy. Four thousand cows live in a stark landscape of sagebrush fields, long silver barns and open-air sheds. Jammed in crowded pens atop the hardpan of the Idaho desert, the cows are fed a diet of alfalfa, hay, grains and soy, all certified organic. Only occasionally do they eat fresh grass.
This isn't the pastoral image of cows grazing on a hillside that most consumers link with an organic label, but it's not against the law. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's vague organic standards state only that dairy cows called organic must have "access to pasture." These cows in Idaho eat grass for a few hours a day during the summer, and that makes them, legally organic cows.
To the innovative farmers who first pushed organic farming over 20 years ago, the label was supposed to mean more than just pesticide and hormone-free milk. "Organic" was meant to promise the healthiest possible milk for the consumer and the environment.
"People are paying more for organic products because they think the farmers are doing it right, that they're treating animals humanely and that the quality of the product is different," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association, a network of 600,000 buyers of organic food. "Intensive confinement of animals is a no-no," she adds. "This is Grade B organics."
There is nothing in Horizon milk that would hurt anyone. Even so, recent studies suggest that grass-fed cows produce milk that is higher in Vitamin A and vitamin E, and has five times more cancer-fighting properties. Furthermore, these large "confinement" dairies (another is Aurora Organic Dairy just outside Denver) are a far cry from sustainable agriculture. On smaller farms, the grass filters cow manure. On large-scale operations, the thousands of pounds of manure are placed in concrete lagoons, where the methane gas emitted diminishes air quality.
And what happens when cows get fed grain? Critics say when the majority of a cow's diet comes from grain and other readily fermentable carbohydrates, the rumen, (first of a cow's four stomachs,) becomes acidic, and the animals can become sick and die prematurely. There is no evidence of this happening at dairies like Horizon. Even so, though many dairy cows can live to be 13, Horizon sells its cows to the butcher after six years, according to company spokespeople.
Yet responsibility for defining what makes a cow organic rests with the USDA, an agency not eager to exert control. The USDA doesn't go out to every farm and give it a stamp of approval. Rather, such grunt work is done by a hodgepodge of 97 state agricultural agencies, nonprofit groups and for-profit companies.
While there are hefty federal penalties for illegally stamping a dairy organic, the system is fraught with potential conflict of interest. The pell-mell certification process lacks rigorous and transparent oversight, and it's too easy for certifiers to bend the rules, allowing dairies to stay in business and keep the certifiers in the black as well.
The National Organic Standards Board, a federally created advisory board, has been working to strengthen both the regulations and oversight of the certification process. But since a final organic rule was released in December 2000, the USDA hasn't implemented any of the organic standards board's more than 50 policy recommendations. It's required by law, yet the agency has yet to create a peer-review panel to oversee the accreditation process. USDA has also failed to create a program manual for certifiers that specifies its rules and regulations.
If the USDA isn't going to guard the gate, then consumers who care about the meaning of the organic label need to start paying attention; they need to learn the story behind the fancy packaging.
Here's some tips: Buy local when you can, talk to your farmer, or join Cummins and other groups like the Cornucopia Institute that are fighting to keep the meaning of organic intact. There's nothing really wrong with big business getting into the business of organic food, but it's important for us to know that when a food like milk is stamped "organic," the word means what it says.
Rebecca Clarren is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She writes about agricultural issues in Portland, Oregon.
Writers on the Range is an op-ed service of High Country News. Writers on the Range produces and sells three op-ed articles weekly to newspapers throughout the American West. Please contact Betsy Marston
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Posted by Christine Huntress | May 9, 2007 4:51 PM
Posted on May 9, 2007 16:51
Thanks for the info Christine!
Posted by Amanda Rose | May 15, 2007 11:39 AM
Posted on May 15, 2007 11:39