Land of milk and money

[Guest guest]

Folks-

This is a very interesting article from Salon, even though it doesn't touch

on pasteurization.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/13/milk/index.html

Here's the opening and some excerpts (it's a subscription site):

> The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk flies across the

> carton like some grocery-store superhero. The ubiquitous red milk carton

> in your local supermarket is like a stop sign for consumers: go no

> further, your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton

> assures us that Horizon milk is produced on certified organic farms,

> where " clean-living " cows " make milk the natural way, with access to

> plenty of fresh air, clean water and exercise. " Horizon cows are not

> hopped up on antibiotics, continues the cheery copy. " Happy, healthy cows

> produce better milk for you and your family. "

>

>Just now, though, at one of Horizon's dairy farms in central Idaho, the

>cows don't look too happy. Perched amid a stark landscape of sagebrush and

>expansive brown fields, long silver barns that hold 4,000 cows are linked

>like barracks in some covert operation. I drive down a narrow, cracked

>road toward the dairy's main office and pass open-air sheds about 20 feet

>away, where cows laze in crowded pens atop the brown hardpan of the Idaho

>desert. Just outside the milking barn, more cows are jammed into an

>outdoor corral. Amid clumps of dirt and snow, they are lined up, their

>bodies touching.

>

>In recent weeks, as revelations of Horizon's farming practices have come

>to light, a collection of consumer groups and organic dairy farmers have

>erupted in protest. Horizon and similar dairies are capitalizing on the

>boom in organic foods, they say, but diluting the true meaning of the

>term. Contrary to genuine organic practices, which entail raising cows on

>open pastures, where the animals feed on grass, experts say that a

>substantial percentage of cows at farms like Horizon's are confined to

>pens, fed a diet of proteins and grains, and produce milk that, while free

>of hormones, is not as healthy as it could be.

>What most consumers don't know is that at Horizon's big dairies, such as

>the one in Idaho, the cows are raised in a manner that most experts don't

>consider organic. According to former Horizon Idaho dairy workers, who

>asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing their current jobs,

>Horizon cows graze for only four or five hours a day and during only three

>months in the summer. While Horizon claims the cows get plenty of fresh

>air, that's because the barns are open structures. Their cows can see the

>fields but mostly aren't walking around in them. " Most of the time, the

>cows are inside the barn, " says one former employee, who worked on the

>Idaho farm for eight years.

>

>Like the steady stream of Mexican immigrants who milk them every eight

>hours, Horizon cows work hard. In Idaho, they are fed a steady diet of

>alfalfa hay, oats, soybeans, and grains such as barley and corn (all

>organic!), according to a Horizon spokesperson. This starch diet pushes

>the bovines to produce extra milk. While dairy cows on many pasture-based

>farms are milked twice a day, Horizon's cows produce enough to be milked

>three times daily.

>

>In general, says Dr. Hubert Karreman, a dairy cow veterinarian,

> " grain-heavy diets aren't good for cows. " Karreman is an animal husbandry

>expert who also serves on the National Organic Standards Board, a federal

>advisory board. Cows have evolved to eat grass, which is why their four

>stomachs, filled with an array of anaerobic bacteria, function like

>fermentation vats at a brewery. When the majority of a cow's diet comes

>from grain and other readily fermentable carbohydrates, their rumen, the

>first of those four stomachs, becomes acidic and the cows can become sick

>and die prematurely.

>Still, while the milk from Horizon and Aurora's confinement dairies may

>not be the cream of the crop, it's far from the milk produced by

>conventional factory dairies such as Borden, Alta Dena and Meadow Gold,

>all bottled by Dean, Horizon's parent company. These days, regular dairies

>can have up to 30,000 cows that are raised in huge contained barns with

>big lagoon ponds of manure out back. To keep all those cows healthy in

>such a confined space, they're pumped full of antibiotics. They're fed

>hormones to increase their milk production, and these conventional cows

>eat a tasty array of pesticide-laden feed. As calves, they're fed chicken

>manure because it's high in protein. Such milk is laced with a cocktail of

>pharmaceuticals and hormones such as rGBH, a controversial drug produced

>by Monsanto.

>The USDA doesn't actually go out to every farm and give it a stamp of

>organic approval. Rather, such grunt work is done by a hodgepodge of state

>agricultural agencies, nonprofit groups and for-profit companies; there

>are 97 different organic certifiers in total. These entities verify all

>aspects of a dairy's organic plan by inspecting records to ensure, for

>example, that the fields have been chemical free for at least three years

>and by visiting the farm to examine the conditions of the cattle, the

>milking parlor and the surrounding pasture.

>

>While there are hefty federal penalties for illegally stamping a dairy

>organic, the system is fraught with potential conflict of interest.

>Elfering, a director of dairy food and meat inspection for the Minnesota

>Department of Agriculture, states that the pell-mell certification process

>lacks rigorous and transparent oversight. He says 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. " There are always a small

>percentage of people looking to amass higher profits without following the

>rules, " Elfering says. " You have any number of certifying organizations

>and they want business. The certifier would be biting the hand that feeds

>them if they enforce the regulations. "

>According to Cleary and a host of consumer groups, the USDA has been about

>as vigilant as cops at a doughnut shop. Since the 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 has yet to

>create a peer review panel to oversee the accreditation process, as is

>required by law, or to create a program manual for certifiers that

>specifies all of the rules and regulations.

>

> " The staff at the USDA that is running the organic program continues to be

>cagey. The lack of transparency makes us wonder what they have to hide, "

>says Urvashi Rangan, of the Consumers Union. Rangan wonders whether

>certifiers all follow the same standards for ensuring that milk is

>organic. " The quality of some milk may be less than others and the USDA

>needs to rectify the situation. I think the envelope is being pushed as

>wide as it actually can. "

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