Interview: Organic Consumers Association's Ronnie Cummins tells the truth about

[Guest guest]

Interview: Organic Consumers Association's Ronnie Cummins tells the truth

about organic milk that isn't

http://www.newstarget.com/021763.html

Monday, April 02, 2007 by: Mike Adams

 

With consumer demand for organic products continuing to grow, more large

corporations are entering the organic market. To maximize profits, some of these

companies don't follow organic standards but still label products as organic.

For example, Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, sold by Wal-Mart and other

retailers, continue to produce " organic " milk under factory-farm conditions that

few reasonable people would consider truly organic.

 

According to the Organic Consumers Association, half of Horizon's " organic "

milk today comes from what can only be considered " factory " dairy feedlots --

and much of Aurora's organic milk does as well. Rather than buy organic calves

that have been raised from birth on organic farms, these companies seemed to

have discovered it's cheaper to buy conventional calves that have been raised

on conventional farms, install them in factory feedlots, then milk them and

call it organic.

 

The situation has become so alarming that the Organic Consumers Association

ultimately called for a boycott, and many knowledgeable consumers are now

avoiding the Horizon brand entirely.

 

The organic milk controversy extends to organic soy milk as well. Horizon

Organic's parent company, Dean Foods, also bought out Silk, the leading organic

soy milk brand in the United States. Dean Foods has pushed for lower organic

standards in the United States and to allow industrial-style production to be

called " organic. "

 

Meanwhile, major grocery chains import cheap, so-called " organic " soybeans

from China, where the workers are treated much like slaves and organic standards

are dubious. They are also imported from Brazil where the Amazon rainforest

is being bulldozed in order to create more acreage for growing soybeans.

 

To gain more insight on the details of this emerging battle over organic

standards, NewsTarget editor Mike Adams sat down with Ronnie Cummins of the

Organic Consumers Association for some straight talk on organic milk. What

follows

is the full interview.

 

Mike:

I am here today talking with Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic

Consumers Association. That is at www.OrganicConsumers.org. What's the

overview of the situation on organic milk, Ronnie?

 

Ronnie:

Well, the good news is, there is such a huge demand for organic products

across the United States and North America that there is a serious shortage of

supply. One of the types of products that are in serious short supply is organic

milk. This is already more than a $1-billion-a-year industry in the United

States, out of the $15 billion in organic food sales last year.

 

The problem is that our government - specifically the U. S. Department of

Agriculture - takes about $90 billion of our tax money every year, and they give

subsidies to all of these factory farms to go organic, but they give no

subsidies to help family-scale dairies make the transition to organic. We

literally

do not have enough family farmers with the wherewithal to achieve organic

certification and make the product.

 

At the same time, we have these giant retail giants like Wal-Mart who have

noticed that the public wants organic food and they are willing to pay a premium

price for it, so they and the other retail chain stores have moved with a

vengeance to dominate the organic market. Wal-Mart is now the number-one seller

of organic milk in the country. The problem is that the milk they are selling -

Horizon Organic - is not really organic. It is coming from the factory-style

dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been

imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and

the USDA lets them get away with it.

 

Mike:

Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how

they do an end-run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there

is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products

is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?

 

Ronnie:

It is a tremendous success. It is attributed to the fact that a lot of us

spent the last 30 years building up an alternative food and farming system in

the

United States. This alternative system has proved to be much better than

industrial agriculture, and so now the latest polls show 75 percent of Americans

say they are shopping for healthier food. If you look at the statistics, about

12 cents of every grocery store dollar are going for foods that are labeled as

either natural or organic.

 

Mike:

Well, that is a substantial sum. That is growing at, what, about 20 percent a

year or something?

 

Ronnie:

Growing at 20 percent a year, whereas conventional food sales tend to grow

about 2 percent a year. This 20 percent-a-year growth has been steady ever since

1991. It appears that it will continue through the end of this decade, so by

then most food sold in grocery stores will have a label that says 'natural' or

'organic'.

 

The question is: If we let these gigantic corporations like Horizon and

Wal-Mart take over the industry, will it really be organic?

 

 

How the USDA enables big business to corrupt organic standards for profit

 

Mike:

Let's talk about the definition of organic, then. What should organic really

mean in terms of, not only the treatment of the cows, but also what chemicals

are not in the milk, for example? What is the real definition?

 

Ronnie:

There are organic farmers all over the world - in about 100 countries - who

are certified organic nowadays. Traditionally, organic has always meant that

you raise crops without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that you

raise animals without drugging them up with hormones or antibiotics. You

cannot take sewage sludge and put it on farmlands. You cannot feed animals

things

like blood, slaughterhouse waste, manure and municipal garbage, and you cannot

use untested and hazardous technologies like genetic engineering or fruit

irradiation. The animals have to be raised on pasture - which is their natural

behavior - where every day of the growing season, weather permitting, they are

out on pasture eating grass and foraging as they have evolved to do.

 

What has happened recently is that Wal-Mart was buying their organic milk

from genuine organic dairy farmers that pastured their animals, and then they

turned around to that company - Organic Valley - and they said, " Hey, we want a

lower price, " just as Wal-Mart always does. Organic Valley said no, so Wal-Mart

then turned to Dean Foods, the largest dairy conglomerate in the world -

which had bought out Horizon Organic - and said, " Would you sell to us? " To

which

Horizon said, " We will sell you the cheapest organic milk you have ever seen. "

 

 

Horizon conveniently took advantage of the fact that Federal Organic

Standards say the cows must have access to pasture, and they said, " Oh well, I

guess

theoretical access to pasture is good enough. We are going to chain up our cows

and milk them three times a day, and they will never get out pasturing unless

there is a news organization coming to the farm that day. We will still call

it organic. " They have been doing this for four years, and there have been

complaints from the Organic Consumers Association and organic farmers all over

the country.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has completely ignored these complaints

for four years. However, now this controversy has reached such a state, with the

mass media covering it and retail stores across the country starting to drop

Horizon and Aurora Organic, that the USDA is finally making noises that they

will clear up this situation and promulgate federal regulations that actually

require the animals to be pastured.

 

They will make sure that the animals were not imported from some conventional

dairy farm where they were weaned on blood, fed antibiotics, slaughterhouse

waste and chicken manure and then called " organic. " The animals must be raised

from birth as organic, and they must be pastured every day during the growing

season - a minimum of 120 days a year. This is what organic has always meant

in terms of raising cows, and it is what it should mean now.

 

Mike:

Now, these are pretty serious accusations of Horizon Milk or Dean Foods'

behavior. How are you able to support this? Do you have an insider taking

pictures, or how did you become aware of this behavior on their part?

 

Ronnie:

It was called to our attention by a watchdog organization called The

Cornucopia Institute, which actually visited some of these factory-style dairy

farms

that Horizon and Aurora call organic. They witnessed first-hand things like a

farm where there are 4,000 animals, but only a few hundred acres of pasture.

You cannot possibly pasture animals on that little pasture, especially when they

are in semi-arid parts of Idaho, Colorado and West Texas.

 

Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as

whistleblowers. There was a story in the Chicago Tribune about one of these

whistleblowers

who pointed out that these cows are not put out to pasture. The only time

they are put out to pasture is when there is a media organization or an

important

person coming out.

 

Yes, it is first-hand information. It is a look at the terrain that these

factory-style dairy feedlots are set on. Look at the size of their pasture, and

then the fact that there was a national survey of organic dairy farms that came

out March 22 - which the unethical dairies did not respond to or they got

really low ranks - whereas, the ethical producers were happy to be transparent

about their practices.

 

The good news is, almost all the organic farmers in the country are actually

practicing real organic standards. The bad news is that the market leader,

Horizon Organic, and their junior partner, Aurora Organic, are flagrantly

violating organic standards to the point where we, the Organic Consumers

Association,

had to call for a boycott. We have never called for a boycott against an

organic product before. This was going too far, so starting in early April, we

called on consumers across the country to start boycotting the products of

Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, and to boycott the brand names that the

leading

retailers are selling from Horizon and Aurora at Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway,

Giant, Publix and Wild Oats.

 

Mike:

Well, this seems like a clear case in which big business is now seeing dollar

signs whenever the word " organic " appears, so they are doing the minimum

necessary or even just blatantly violating the rules in order to put that word

on

their products, regardless of the spirit of the law or the original intent of

organics. Is this just corporate greed?

 

Ronnie:

This is, and the sad thing is, how easy it would be to help 5,000 or 10,000

conventional family farmers make the transition in their dairies to organic. It

would not be that hard. It would not cost that much money, and this way we

could still have organic standards that were real, animals treated humanely and

not damage the environment.

 

Of course, we have not even mentioned that one of the reasons you want

organic animals to be outdoors and pastured is because the quality of the meat

and

milk is much higher if the animals are raised naturally on grass. The other

organic requirements mean that the end product is going to be healthier as well.

They are not going to have antibiotic residues or genetically engineered

hormones. They are not going to be spreading mad cow disease and so on. We,

right

now in the United States, have an excess of milk being produced by family-scale

dairy farmers who are not yet organic. It would be very simple to help those

who want to make the transition do so if we were to force the government to

give us a fair share of our subsidies to help these farmers do that.

 

Lax standards of corporate manufacturers and retailers affect both organic

milk and soymilk products

 

Mike:

Now, you mentioned that pasture-fed cows are healthier cows. This gets back

to something you mentioned earlier that needs to be emphasized, because most

people simply do not believe this is happening. Conventional cows, in fact, are

being fed chicken litter and other animals.

 

Ronnie:

Yes, they take it from birth. Cows were traditionally weaned on their

mother's milk, but industrial agriculture figured out that it's pretty expensive

to

wean the calves on milk, so they decided to wean them on blood. That is common

practice nowadays on a conventional dairy farm. Then, you feed them primarily

grains that are genetically engineered, but mixed in with those grains are

things that make the animals grow faster and put on weight, like slaughterhouse

waste - basically ground up pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and everything else are

fed to them.

 

They found out all these factory poultry farms around the country were

producing billions of pounds of manure that pollute the environment. What can we

do

with all this manure? Presto, they feed it back to cows. They sweep up the

manure, the feathers and the dropped bits of cattle that are fed to chickens in

their feed. They sweep that all up, turn around and feed it back to cows.

 

Most people in the United States are shocked when they hear that 80 percent

of the drugs and antibiotics made in this country are not fed to humans to cure

them of some illness, but fed to animals in their feed every day to make them

grow faster. Scientists do not totally understand why, but they do know that

if you cram thousands of animals together in unsanitary or unhygienic - not to

mention inhumane - conditions, they all get sick and die.

 

The only way to keep them alive is to constantly feed them antibiotics. Of

course, what that means is you turn around and drink a glass of dairy milk from

a conventional farm, and you are getting residues of antibiotics in every

drink. They also figured out, " We could use our genetically engineered hormone

to

shoot up these cows with this hormone produced by Monsanto, even though it is

banned in just about every industrialized country in the world except for the

United States. " If you shoot up dairy cows with this hormone, you can force

them to give more milk, and you can keep milking them even past their lactation

period. You can actually milk a cow not for a year, but for up to a thousand

days. Of course, the cow will drop dead after that, but they do not care.

 

For all these reasons, there is a huge movement on the part of American

consumers and especially concerned parents and concerned grandparents - if they

drink milk and if their kids and grandparents drink - to switch to organic.

 

Mike:

Is it fair to say, Ronnie, that the organic-labeled Horizon Milk on the

shelves in Wal-Mart right now comes, at least in part, from cows that were at

one

point in their lives fed blood, manure, chicken litter and some other things

you mentioned? Is that accurate?

 

Ronnie:

Yes, half of Horizon Organic's milk today comes from these factory dairy

feedlots. One hundred percent of Aurora Organic's milk comes from these factory

dairy feedlots. It is cheaper to not buy organic calves that have been raised

from birth on an organic farm, but to buy conventional calves that have been

raised as cheaply as possible on a conventional farm. The routine practice today

on a conventional farm is feeding the animals blood plasma as a milk replacer.

You feed them genetically engineered grains, slaughterhouse waste and chicken

manure. That is industry standard. Why? You can make more money doing it that

way.

 

Mike:

Okay, so for those reading this, take a closer look at that bowl of cereal

next time. If you are pouring cow's milk in there, you might want to buy genuine

organic and not the cheap stuff.

 

Ronnie:

Here is another point that you might think about: for those people who do not

drink dairy milk, but who buy organic soy milk, the leading organic soy milk

brand in the United States is Silk. Many consumers have no idea that Silk -

just like Horizon Organic Milk - was bought out by this giant conglomerate, Dean

Foods.

 

Silk used to buy their organic soybeans from U.S. and Canadian organic

soybean farmers, and they paid them a decent price - $16 to $21 a bushel - for

these

organic soybeans. Well, now that Dean Foods has bought out Silk, they are

starting to import cheap, so-called organic soybeans from China, where the

workers are treated like slaves and organic standards are dubious. Or, they are

importing soybeans from Brazil where there is a huge uproar over the fact that

people are whacking down the Amazon - the lungs of the planet - in order to

plant

export crops, specifically soybeans, to export.

 

Even if we think this does not affect us, because we do not eat meat or we do

not eat dairy, we have to see the effect of these big corporations like Dean

Foods coming into organic. Wal-Mart wants to sell you stuff that is cheaper

than their competitors, and the only way they can do that is to outsource it

from overseas - places like China and Brazil - where worker rights and

environmental standards are routinely violated, or else lower standards in the

United

States and allow industrial-style production to call itself organic.

 

Mike:

Now, this is obviously a very important story for consumers to follow. How

can they continue to get updates from you on this story?

 

Ronnie:

Every day on our news site, www.OrganicConsumers.org you will find updates.

We have a whole section of our website called " Safeguard Organic Standards, "

where you can take action … send a message to what we are calling the

" Shameless Seven. " These are the large corporations trying to defraud consumers

and put

ethical organic farmers out of business by labeling factory farm production -

and slave labor production, in the case of China - as organic.

 

Mike:

I want to thank you, Ronnie, for taking the time to give us all of this

shocking information today.

 

Ronnie:

Thank you.

 

 

Related Resources

 

• Organic Consumers Association – ( www.organicconsumers.org )

 

• The Cornucopia Institute – ( www.cornucopia.org )

 

• USDA's National Organic Program ( http://www.ams.usda.gov/NOP )