News Nuggets
New Rules Put Organic Dairy Cows Out to Pasture
By Courtney Lowery, 2-15-10
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The USDA this last week, after years of controversy, tightened up organic regulations for organic dairy and meat producers, mandating that their animals have at least 120 days out on pasture.
Previous rules were vague only mandating that the animals have “access” to pasture. Critics said that loophole meant huge dairies could go organic while maintaining factory-farm like conditions for their animals and thus, going against the whole spirit of organic and fooling consumers by doing so.
Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, which has advocated for the change for at least a decade, said this in a press release:
“The organic community has been calling for strong regulations and its enforcement for much of the past decade. Cheap organic milk flowing from the illegitimate factory farms has created a surplus that is crushing ethical family farm producers.”
Colorado’s Aurora Organic Dairy, one of those large operations with limited pasture, became the poster child for the push to change the rule and the New York Times described Aurora this way on Friday: “For many it has come to represent the contradictions embodied in large-scale organic farming. The dairy has about 15,000 cows on five farms in Colorado and Texas, with a total of about 4,400 acres of pasture, said Sally Keefe, Aurora’s vice president for government affairs.”
Aurora produces organic milk for store brands for large grocery chains and Wal-Mart.
As noted above, it’s not just dairies that will have to change their ways. Organic meat producers will have to do the same—120 days of pasture and at least 30 percent of the animals’ diets coming from pasture during the grazing season. The new rules go into effect in June and producers have a year to comply.
The USDA’s Deputy Secretary, Kathleen Merrigan, said to reporters on Friday, “This is an industry that’s come to Capitol Hill and wants tough, strict regulations, because they know that’s what consumers want. They want clear, consistent, tough enforceable rules.”
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Comments
The pasture period is 25 days longer than the dry time. And probably for a reason: to punish people for actually having a confined animal operation to milk cows. That is how we now do things in the US: punishment for success. Take from the successful and redistribute the gains to those who are not successful.
It would make more sense if the cows were put on pasture when dry for the entirety of their non-lactation period.
The rest of the dairy process the real world has to understand that a successful organic dairy has in the background another dairy that is not organic. An "organic" cow costs upwards of $3000 per head springer cost (a heifer about to have her first calf is a "springer"). A non-organic cow is half that price, or less in times like now when there is a milk surplus. To protect that $3000 investment, the non-organic dairy is there to take in the organic cows that get sick. You send them to the regular dairy to be medicated and to get well, and since they are not now "organic", to finish out their milking lives. The other alternative is the butcher. Milk cows are usually called "canner and cutter" and bring the least at a livestock auction.
Every dairy cow is predicated on having a calf. Bull calves don't milk. You need none if you AI, or maybe one per 200 cows if you run "clean up" bulls with your milking strings in the barn. So half the births are destined for meat, no matter what. Every dairy is in the meat business whether it wants to be or not. At least the "organic" cows birth an organic bull calf which has more value than ordinary milking breed males. All of those are destined for pasture and organic feed. The females calves, of course, are headed for the organic dairy business, and raised many times on organic pasture far away until ready to spring.
If the issue is to rid the market of hot country dairy (at the lobbying effort of cold country dairies) operations, this will probably work. In hot country, getting cows bred is trying. Heat is not conducive to the breeding effort "sticking." Cows easily abort with heat stress. So keeping organic milk production close to desert and semi tropical urban centers is a tough proposition anyway, and this pasturage proposition will only make it harder for urban WIC and ordinary buyers to have affordable organic milk.
The issue with organic milk is and has been, the use of hormones in gaining more milk production from cows. Many mothers believe their children are at risk due to increased hormones in food. Kids mature fast enough as it is, and to see you daughter start producing mature adult physical features at age 7 or 8 is not what they want. They want hormone free milk, and antibiotic free milk. I don't think the issue is about cows having access to pasture and getting for form social groups on the range. It is about milk chemistry and quality, all at affordable prices. If the issue is more about cows than kids, we are a lesser country because of it. And that seems to be the case more and more, as the DINKS (double incomes no kids) of the US flex their considerable financial resources and abilities into areas where they don't have a dog in the fight. That is an opinion. Mine. I have three grand daughters under 12. Two on organic milk since birth, and one not. We will see if there is any difference.
As for the cows, it is ironic that the very same societal element that is wanting organic dairy cows on organic pasture for a minimum annual time, is also hard at getting cows off the public range where the feed is all organic. Sort of like you can buy organic farm raised salmon but ocean caught wild salmon cannot get an organic label. A lot of well meaning urban mind set stuff is indistinguishable from what falls out of the south end of bulls and cows.
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