The Cornucopia Institute

Clout-Heavy Dean Foods Kills USDA Investigation of Their Horizon Label

The Cornucopia Institute

CORNUCOPIA, WI: After a three-and-a-half year battle with Dean Foods regarding the legality of milk it labels as Horizon Organic, the country’s most aggressive organic industry watchdog filed additional legal actions today. Dean, the nation’s largest dairy processor, with nearly $12 billion in sales and controlling 50 different milk brands, has obtained a large percentage of its organic milk supply from giant factory farms milking thousands of cows each.

The Cornucopia Institute has filed a formal legal complaint with the USDA claiming that one of Dean’s Horizon suppliers, a dairy in Snelling, California, was skirting the law by confining the majority of their cows to a filthy feedlot rather than allowing them fresh grass and access to pasture as the federal organic regulations require.

Cornucopia has also asked the Inspector General at the USDA to investigate appearances of favoritism at the agency that has benefitted Dean Foods. Cornucopia charges that past enforcement of the Organic Foods Production Act, the law governing organic food labeling and production, has been unequally applied toward major corporate agribusiness by the USDA.

“We are asking the USDA, once again, to investigate serious alleged improprieties at dairies that produce Horizon organic milk,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst with the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.
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New York Times
By Tracie McMillan

IN the shadows of the elevated tracks toward the end of the No. 3 line in East New York, Brooklyn, with an April chill still in the air, Denniston and Marlene Wilks gently pulled clusters of slender green shoots from the earth, revealing a blush of tiny red shallots at the base.

“Dennis used to keep them big, and people didn’t buy them,” Mrs. Wilks said. “They love to buy scallions.”

Growing up in rural Jamaica, the Wilkses helped their families raise crops like sugar cane, coffee and yams, and take them to market. Now, in Brooklyn, they are farmers once again, catering to their neighbors’ tastes: for scallions, for bitter melons like those from the West Indies and East Asia and for cilantro for Latin-American dinner tables. Read the rest of this entry »

Critics Claim China’s Fledgling Organic Industry Is Plagued By Lax Standards

CBS4, Miami
Liv Davalos

MIAMI (CBS4) ― It used to be that you could only find organc food in specialty health food stores. But that has changed as the organic industry is proving to be big business. Now, China is getting in on the action exporting millions of dollars of organic food to the United States. But in the wake of lead in toys and tainted toothpaste, many consumers are wondering just how organic anything from China can be.

Pinecrest Mom Ivy Milian decided to eat only organic foods about 18 years ago and has seen its popularity go mainstream. She usually shops at Wild Oats or Whole Foods and unlike some consumers, she always looks at the labels.

“I find it disturbing when I look at the package assuming it’s from the USA and it’s made in China,” said Milian. Read the rest of this entry »

COMPETITION: Sen. Leahy, D-Vt., recently took funds from organization he has harshly criticized

Watertown Daily Times
By Marc Heller, Washingonton Correspondent

WASHINGTON — When Dairy Farmers of America, the nation’s largest marketing cooperative for dairy farmers, was poised to gain 90 percent of the market in New England a few years ago, the loudest objections came from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who called the prospect “devastating.”

“Independent dairy farmers and other cooperatives could be cut out of the marketing system unless they give in to the will of the giant DFA conglomerate,” warned Mr. Leahy, top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles antitrust matters.

Since then, DFA has expanded a little closer to home — taking the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery in Vermont on as a partner — and Mr. Leahy has a new relationship with the giant conglomerate: campaign cash. For the first time, Mr. Leahy accepted a campaign contribution last year from the political action committee for DFA. Read the rest of this entry »