USDA Cracking Down on “Organic” Factory Farms

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.