Fwd: [SoFlaVegans] Ronnie Cummins tells the truth about organic milk

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Interview: Organic Consumers Association's Ronnie

Cummins tells the truth about organic milk that isn't

by Mike Adams

April 2 2007

 

http://www.newstarget.com/z021763.html

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

 

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 t he 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

http://www.organicconsumers.org

 

• The Cornucopia Institute

http://www.cornucopia.org

 

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

 

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