You never know what you will find around here when you decide to take the back road on a beautiful day. I found grazing Holstein heifers from the Vander Eyk Dairy.
The Vander Eyk Dairy is the dairy we love to hate on this blog, but I have gotten a bit soft on it in my advancing age. My husband and I made a video eulogy to the dairy back in June when its organic certification status (or lack of) was made public. The dairy lacked pasture, just like two other rather notorious feedlot dairies in the country. I wrote about one on The Ethicurean and its diagnosis of Absencia Grassiosis.
Back when the Vander Eyk Dairy got chopped, it seemed like great progress. It was one big win for the integrity of the organic label. Nine months later, it would appear that not a whole lot has happened to the fellow feedlot operators at Aurora Organic Dairy and Dean Foods (Horizon). In a battle with lines drawn between the “big guys” and “little guys,” Vander Eyk is a little guy running a big dairy. The real “big guys” are still bottling organic milk as they transition to a system that gives their cows access to pasture.
Seeing the Vander Eyk cows today made that point come home: the Vander Eyks may well be in a transition phase back to organics themselves and yet they are not allowed to continue bottling.
As far as I’m concerned, if the USDA is not going to enforce the standard for Dean and Aurora, then the local dairymen should be able to get back in the game.
The situation reminds me a bit of a job I was on years ago. We were doing a study that included my old high school. We surveyed teachers as part of the study and those teachers from my school who were from my era got a little cute on their surveys:
“The only good thing I see in this reform is that it has provided a job for a researcher.”
I got a good belly laugh and, of course, I knew from the handwriting exactly who made the comment. He knew that I knew and I knew that he knew that I knew.
When I saw the heifers grazing on Vander Eyk land and with Vander Eyk ear tags, I thought “Good for you, Bessies.”
If we’re going to have organic mega-dairies they might as well be right here helping the Tulare County economy and giving me blog fodder.
