A leading organic watchdog in the United States has filed formal legal complaints against two industrial dairies, claiming they are masquerading as organic.
The Cornucopia Institute wants the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to take action against operators who it says contravene federal organic regulations before it’s too late.
“This could be the end of the organic industry as we know it,” co-director Mark A. Kastel says. A report on the institute’s website maintains that “the proliferation of industrial-scale dairies has bloated the organic milk supply, inflated the price of feed for dairy cows, and resulted in a financial crisis for family farmers”.
He is scathing about the conditions for livestock at the Phoenix-based Shamrock Farms, which operates an industrial dairy milking about 11,000 cows, and the Rockview Farms Dairy of California, which runs a huge dairy in Nevada.
The institute, which has also been a vocal critic of the industry’s biggest dairy Dean Foods, which operates the Horizon label, argues if the organic industry is to survive it needs consumers to wise up and only spend their milk money on those outlets that truly live up to organic principles.
“Consumers who pay premium prices for organic products do so believing that they are produced with a different kind of environmental ethic, a different kind of animal husbandry ethic, and social justice for family farmers,” says Mark. “Our report, Maintaining the Integrity of Organic Milk, and the accompanying dairy brands scorecard will empower consumers and wholesale buyers who want to invest their food dollars to protect hard-working family farmers who are in danger of being washed off the land by a tidal wave of organic milk from these factory mega-farms.”
The organic scorecard awards dairy brands a certain number of “cows”, from five down to none, according to their organic credentials. More than 100 brands, covering everything from butter to yogurt, are ranked.
The influential Organic Consumers Association (OCA) says it urges its members to refer to Cornucopia’s scorecard before buying dairy. “We are carefully examining Cornucopia’s new findings and are likely to ramp up our pressure campaign to force these bad actors to change their business models or to exit the industry,” OCA director Ronnie Cummins says.
The dairy industry in the United States accounts for $4 billion, or about 20 percent, of revenue in the organic sector.
