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USDA Cracking Down on “Organic” Factory-Farms
August 14th, 2007
http://www.cornucopia.org/
Country’s Largest Dairy Likely to Lose Certification

CORNUCOPIA, WI: The Cornucopia Institute has learned that the USDA appears
about to revoke the organic certification of the nation’s largest
industrial dairy operator, Aurora Organic Dairy, with corporate
headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.

Aurora operates several giant factory dairies milking thousands of cows
each in semi-arid areas of Colorado and Texas. The company has been the
subject of a series of formal legal complaints filed with the USDA by The
Cornucopia Institute. The complaints from the Wisconsin-based farm policy
group filed in 2005 and 2006, called for a USDA investigation into
allegations of numerous organic livestock management improprieties on
Aurora’s facilities.

“After personally inspecting some of Aurora’s dairies in Texas and
Colorado, we found 98% of their cattle in feedlots instead of grazing on
pasture as the law requires,” stated Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s senior
farm policy analyst. Cornucopia also found that Aurora was procuring cattle
from a non-certified organic source in apparent violation of the law.
“Our sources tell us that the USDA’s investigators found many other
violations when conducting their probe of Aurora.”

But Kastel warned that the USDA is under intense pressure to scuttle the
Aurora decertification order. “We understand that powerful political
influence is being brought to bear on the USDA in an effort to delay or
water down the penalties against Aurora,” noted Kastel.

As part of their investigation of Aurora, compliance officers at the USDA
took sworn testimony from Cornucopia staff, visited Aurora’s facilities
and interviewed their organic certifier, the State of Colorado. The
Institute found out about the impending enforcement action, and the
potential for its delay, from officials in Colorado, a political appointee
at the USDA and a highly placed industry executive.

The organic industry is carefully watching what the USDA does with the
Aurora matter because of its size and impact on the marketplace. Aurora
doesn’t directly market milk under its own name, but it is the
country’s largest private-label producer of organic milk. Aurora packages
store-brand organic dairy products for Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Safeway,
Trader Joe’s, Wild Oats, and other grocery chains. “The organic
regulations are scale neutral,” added Kastel. “In terms of enforcement
it shouldn’t matter if we are talking about a powerful corporate player,
with thousands of cows, or a smaller family operation, bad actors in this
industry need to be removed from the marketplace.”

Because of the delay in USDA enforcement against Aurora Dairy, The
Cornucopia Institute today filed a Freedom of Information request (FOIA)
with the USDA to secure documents that could uncover possible influence
peddling and favoritism at the Department. “We hope that the USDA will
issue tough sanctions, if warranted,” Kastel said. “And we want the
agency to know that the organic community is very closely monitoring this
case.”

Earlier this spring the 10,000-cow Vander Eyk factory dairy in Pixley,
California lost its organic certification after an investigation revealed
numerous violations of federal organic rules. The industrial-scale
operation had been publicly spotlighted by The Cornucopia Institute for
organic management irregularities. The Vander Eyk dairy had been selling
its milk to Stremicks (Heritage-Foods) and Dean Foods (Horizon).

Based on documents recently received by Cornucopia through an earlier FOIA
request, the Vander Eck dairy lost their ability to market organic milk not
only because they lacked pasture for their cattle but also because they
violated requirements for careful record-keeping to assure that all cows
milked were eligible for organic certification and all the feed they
consumed was actually organically grown.

“It now appears that our concerns about the giant industrial dairy
cutting corners by confining cattle in a ‘factory-farm’ setting was
just the tip of the iceberg,” said Will Fantle, Cornucopia’s research
director. “The foundation of the organic certification process is the
maintenance of a comprehensive farm audit trail which can be reviewed by
independent certification inspectors and the USDA. The fact that Vander Eyk
could not produce the documents requested by his certifier, and that he did
not appeal the enforcement action, is just damning.”

The controversy about the growing number of factory-farms producing organic
milk has come to a head this year as the number of farmers transitioning to
organic dairy production has dramatically increased causing a surplus of
organic milk for the first time. That surplus, largely attributed to the
mega-farms, is now driving down prices to family farmers around the country
endangering their livelihoods. It’s also become a tragedy for some family
farmers around the country who have gone through the arduous and expensive
three-year transition to organic management but now have nowhere to ship
their milk.

“With at least 15 of these giant dairies operating, mostly in the arid
west, they have succeeded in jeopardizing the livelihood of the 1500 or so
ethical dairy farm families who are doing this right,” said Merrill
Clark, an organic livestock producer from Cassopolis, Michigan and former
member of the USDA’s expert advisory panel, the National Organic
Standards Board.

“The good news for consumers is that in our survey of organic dairy
brands, a full 90% of namebrand products received very high ratings in our
scorecard that critiqued the environmental and animal husbandry practices
used in sourcing the organic milk for the dairy products,” the
Cornucopia’s Kastel said. “With a small amount of research, consumers
who care about maintaining the integrity of organics can easily find
organic dairy products they can believe in.”

Aurora is owned by some of the same conventional factory-farm operators
that founded the Horizon Organic brand and then later sold it to Dean
Foods. Aurora’s largest equity stake is controlled by CharlesBank of
Boston, which invests capital for the Harvard endowment fund.

Rumors have also been swirling in the investment community that Aurora’s
owners are seeking to sell the company or to take it public.

Posted in Cornucopia News