More Organic Food Labeling Debates

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[More Organic Food Labeling Debates. The big factory

farms are moving in it looks like. Rick. ]

 

 

 

'Organic' milk needs a pasture

 

Wed Mar 9, 6:45 AM ET

 

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By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

 

A decision in an obscure Department of Agriculture

committee has drawn a line in the mulch in the debate

over organic agriculture.

 

 

 

On one side of the divide are those who believe that

" organic " means small farms, often run by families. On

the other side are those who say the only way to

satisfy the nation's growing hunger for organic fruit,

vegetables and dairy products is by applying

industrial farming practices to organic production.

 

This time, the field of battle was milk and the cows

that make it. The question: To produce organic milk,

must the cows be allowed to graze in pastures much of

the year, or can they be confined to large feed lots?

 

The first round has gone to the grazers. Last week,

the National Organic Standards Board recommended to

the USDA that organic rules be revised to make it

clear that organic milk can come only from cows that

graze in pastures during the growing season.

 

" There are certain dairies where 10 months out of the

year the cows are confined and fed out of a trough,

and then two months of the year when they're just

about to give birth they're in the pasture, " says Jim

Riddle, who chairs the standards board.

 

At the core, it's a question of whether organic is a

way of life or a means to an end. In the

back-to-the-land movement that began in the 1960s,

people who wanted organic food embraced an ethical

system. They shopped at tiny cooperative groceries,

and if the kale was wilted and the corn wormy, that

was OK.

 

Fast-forward: As baby boomers age and their children

start having children, they all want the healthiest

food they can get. But they also want to find organic

food at their local supermarkets and believe it should

be plentiful, available year-round and as pretty as

conventionally grown produce.

 

But " it's very difficult and expensive for small-scale

producers to produce the volume and consistency and

have the distribution that large-scale enterprises

need, " says Michael Straus, who does marketing for

organic products. " These issues are philosophical with

massive economic repercussions. "

 

Clark Driftmier, marketing director for Aurora Organic

Dairy of Boulder, Colo., agrees that the real question

is the scale of organic-farming operations rather than

cows' access to grass. " The argument is really about

scale, but it's being fought using pasture because

it's generally acknowledged that scale is not a way to

kick someone out of organic. "

 

It was a formal complaint accusing Aurora Organic

Dairy of providing its cows insufficient pasture

access that helped bring the debate before the

livestock committee. The complaint was filed by the

Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

 

The institute's Organic Integrity Project " acts as a

corporate watchdog assuring that no compromises to the

credibility of organic farming methods and the food it

produces are made in the pursuit of profit, " its Web

site says.

 

The advisory committee's decision represents a

" gelling of this vision of what organic livestock

production should be, " the institute's Mark Kastel

says.

 

But it won't " really change the way anyone would

operate, " Driftmier maintains.

 

He calls the complaint against Aurora a smokescreen by

" extremist groups " who believe that organic by

definition can't mean big farms.