I wrote earlier today about the dairy industry as a whole being in crisis. Which they are. Milk prices are at about 50% the cost of production - and unlike a factory, you can't turn off a cow. Well, you can kill it - and that's what's going to happen to a lot of dairy cows very soon.
But in addition to the problems with milk in general, the situation is even sadder for organic dairies right now. Because on top of the normal crunch they'd be feeling, they've got an enormous corporation (Dean, the maker of Horizon) rubbing salt in their wounds by CUTTING retail prices and offering discounts... all while threatening to cancel the contracts of dairy farmers and building a new factory farm!
When I first heard about Horizon's factory dairy farms, I thought all of their milk came from places like this:
Or maybe this:
Or this:
Then, last fall, I visited a sustainable dairy farm in Pennsylvania. A small dairy farm that practiced rotational grazing with its heritage breed Dutch belted cows. Here's a pic of those happy cows!
Grass is always greener?
And where did their milk go? Horizon! No way! i made a comment like "Gee, I'm glad they actually buy SOME of their milk from family farms" and the farmer replied "Well, we half suspect they only buy from farms like ours as a cover, so they can produce mostly factory farmed milk and say they buy from family farmers."
Well, I guess with the rough economy and the worst situation for dairy since the Great Depression, Horizon's taking the gloves off. They are threatening and attempting to cancel contracts with family farmers in four states while building a giant factory farm in New Mexico.
And about all of those price cuts, discounts, and promotions they've offered in the past year? They admitted publicly that they are losing money on organic milk. This is predatory pricing, which is illegal. And it's working - while other organic brands report stagnant sales, Horizon's sales are up 15%.
With bad behavior like this, what's happening to the competition? A giant Boston processor called HP Hood just cut off eight dairy farmers in Maine. Hood sells milk under the Stonyfield name (east of the Mississippi) but with low demand, they can't buy as much as they used to. Some of the farmers who Hood cut off just started new dairies specifically to supply Hood. Others had expanded their dairies or built new barns. Now they have no organic handler willing to buy their milk, and some don't even have a conventional dairy that is willing to pick up milk from remote north Maine.
Meanwhile, Organic Valley (a very GOOD brand of milk to buy) is suffering too. They announced last week they have to cut pay prices to their member-farmers. Horizon's boost in sales has come at the expense of Organic Valley, Hood, and other brands that produce milk more responsibly than Horizon.
What You Can Do: Give the good brands your business, and boycott the bad ones (Horizon and Aurora... Aurora sells under store brand names at Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and Safeway). Find out which brands are good at Cornucopia.org's Dairy Scorecard
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Other news in my world:
Wildlife in Peril due to Climate Crisis: The whole world is affected by the climate crisis but Australia is currently the place where you simultaneously have really cute animals and really bad disasters. The result is heartbreaking photos of adorable critters with bandaged up paws.
Food Safety: Is more regulation really the answer? I mean, I want the government to have the authority to call for mandatory recalls of tainted food as much as the next blogger, but what about the laws we've already got? Why did NOBODY enforce them until people were already dead from peanut butter? So sure - pass some new laws. But can you pretty please find out why nobody enforced the current laws and then remedy that too?
From The Maven - New York wins court fight over calorie labels on menus. NYC was the first (I think) to pass a law calling for all chain restaurants to label the amount of calories in food on the menu. Restaurants sued. NY won. Restaurants appealed. NY won. The story isn't over yet because SF passed a similar law and restaurants are suing THEM too. If the SF court case gets a different result from the NYC one, things could get hairy.
New Drug Czar: Pot is the lowest priority. Hooray to that! Is Obama's drug czar appointment a sign of smarter drug laws that leave the potheads alone at long last? I hope so. I turned to some Seattle blogs and papers to find out what they thought (since the new czar was their chief of police).
From AAF: Companies pledge to avoid sugar from GM beets. That's good news. We already eat tons of GMOs daily and we have no idea. Any time you eat corn, soy, or canola, chances are that at least some of it is GM (unless it's organic). And now sugar? Oy vey. So this boycott is good news.
American Cancer Society revises position on rbGH. They now say the have no position. Which is an improvement over what they said before (which was something along the lines of "there's no problem with rbGH"). Their new statement admits that it's bad for cows, but we don't know conclusively if it's bad for humans.
Tom Vilsack calls for stricter voluntary labeling measures. Exsqueeze me? Stricter AND voluntary? In my world, you don't have both of those things at the same time. Anyway, turns out Vilsack canceled the press conference where he was going to announce this so maybe he lacks the cajones to even issue voluntary strict rules.
The lead-up to the child nutrition re-authorization continues with lots of news about hunger in the U.S. A bi-partisan group of 40 Senators (which means the Democrats plus 4 Republicans, Bernie Sanders, and Lieberman) sent a letter to Obama calling for better child nutrition.
Beef = REALLY BAD for Climate Change. It's not just the hippies saying it anymore. Now it's the scientists too. Oh boy.