Do you want fresh vegetables all summer, but don’t want to toil in the garden? A local organic farm has started a program in Henderson County where residents get a box of fresh vegetables every week.

Cane Creek Valley Farm, located in Fletcher, is a multi-generational farm. The land was purchased by the family in the early 20th century. Three years ago, Amanda and Jeremy Sizemore started a small organic farm on the family land. They have gone from two and a half acres of vegetables the first year to a planned 25 acres this summer.

“We came back to the farm to diversify it and transition to the next generation,” Amanda said.

To expand their market, the Sizemores have started a Community Supported Agriculture program. Residents in the community pay the farm money at the beginning of the growing season. From May 20 to Oct. 20, the farm delivers the buyer a box a fresh vegetables each week.

“You buy a subscription and get a weekly delivery,” Jeremy said.

The farm has done mostly wholesale business but is looking to diversify and expand their markets. The Sizemores say the CSA program gives the farm a chance to connect with the local community and people have the ability to learn about the farm.

“You get to know your farm,” she said. “You get to see where your food is grown.”

Appalachian Stainability Agriculture Project executive director Charlie Jackson said CSAs are becoming more popular in Western North Carolina. He said 34 other farms in the region offer a CSA program, but Cane Creek is one of only two in Henderson County.

“We are seeing a tremendous growth in Western North Carolina,” Jackson said.

He said a farm like Cane Creek can reach new markets through a CSA program. The farm has booths at the Asheville City Market and the Flat Rock Tailgate Market, but Jackson said many people enjoy getting a large box a fresh vegetables selected for them each week.

“For people, they get a lot of food,” Jackson said. “The people are buying in and taking a share of the risk.”

CSAs started in Europe and Japan in the 1960s. People were looking for new ways to get food, and farms were looking for different methods to sell produce. A model was developed where people bought a share of the harvest and got the benefits throughout the season.

“A lot of people are really excited that they can buy local,” Amanda said.

One share of a CSA at Cane Creek can feed between four to six people for a week. The boxes contain between 10 and 20 pounds of fresh vegetables

Amanda said the main distribution point in Henderson County for the CSA boxes is the Flat Rock Tailgate Market. She said people can come to the farm and pick up the boxes or a homeowners association can get together a group of buyers and the farm can come directly to a subdivision.

For years, the Sizemores’ farm has been operated as a dairy, called T & C Dairy. Amanda said her great grandfather grew fresh vegetables and delivered them to the public.

“It’s kinda come full circle,” Amanda said.

All of the vegetables are certified organic by the United States Department of Agriculture.

The farm is taking deposits for the program. The Sizemores recommend people check out their Web site to learn more about the program. The Web site is canecreekorganics.com. The phone number to the farm is 338-0188.

Shea can be reached at 694-7860 or james.shea@blueridgenow.com.

At least 15 lawsuits accusing Aurora Dairy Corp. and retailers of selling milk mislabeled as organic will be grouped together in a federal court in St. Louis, a panel of judges decided.

Target Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., and Whole Foods Market Inc. are alleged to have sold milk produced by closely held Aurora that didn’t meet organic standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Judicial Panel of Multi-District Litigation decided Feb. 20 to assign all the litigation to Judge E. Richard Webber in the Eastern District of Missouri after lawyers argued last month over the appropriate court for the lawsuits.

“Given the geographic dispersal of the constituent actions and the potential tag-along actions, the Eastern District of Missouri offers a relatively convenient forum for this litigation,” the judges said in their ruling. The panel oversees case consolidations when a company is sued in different U.S. federal courts over the same product.

Aurora is based in Boulder, Colorado.

“We argued for the cases to be consolidated in Denver because we are based here, but the location has no bearing on the outcome of the case,” Aurora’s spokeswoman, Sonja Tuitele, said in a telephone interview.

The suits ask for damages and an injunction not to sell milk mislabeled as organic.

Organic Certification

In order for dairy milk to get USDA organic certification, the cows must have access to pasture, their feed must be pesticide-free and they must not be given bovine-growth hormones or antibiotics, according to federal legislation enacted in 1990.

The plaintiffs say Aurora claimed its milk was organic after willfully violating federal certification requirements.

The USDA notified Aurora last April that the company was found to have violated the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, according to a letter from USDA National Organic Program Associate Deputy Administrator Mark A. Bradley.

The agency entered into a consent agreement with Aurora in August addressing inconsistencies in regulations between state and federal agencies.

Aurora agreed to make eight specific changes to its organic system plans and address all the issues raised by the agency, according to the consent agreement.

At the end of the one-year review period, Aurora must verify that it has made all the changes. The USDA may withdraw from the consent agreement if the terms of the agreement are not reasonably met.

Properly Labeled’

“The cornerstone of our defense is the fact that the USDA has confirmed that our milk has been produced under continuous valid organic certifications,” Tuitele said. “That means our milk has been properly labeled with the USDA organic seal.”

Aurora’s violations were inconsistencies in interpretations of USDA regulations and not done willfully, she said.

Representatives for Target and Wal-Mart did not immediately return calls for comment.

SEATTLE – Some of the nation’s biggest retailers and grocery chains – Costco Wholesale Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Safeway Inc. and Wild Oats Markets Inc. – sold “organic” milk that wasn’t organic, according to recently filed lawsuits.

The federal complaints focus on the stores’ sale of milk from Colorado-based Aurora Organic Dairy, which recently agreed to change its practices after the U.S. Department of Agriculture found more than a dozen violations of organic standards.

The stores sell Aurora’s milk under their own in-house brand names, such as Costco’s Kirkland and Target’s Archer Farms, in cartons marked “USDA organic,” typically with pictures of pastures or other bucolic scenes.

“That’s not even close to the reality of where this milk was coming from,” said Steve Berman, a Seattle lawyer whose firm is among those suing. “These cows are all penned in factory-confinement conditions.”

The lawsuits seek class-action status on behalf of people who bought the milk, and ask for their money back as well as punitive damages and attorneys’ fees. Consumers typically pay more for organic food because they believe it is free of hormones or pesticides and produced with greater respect for the environment.

The legal disputes are the latest front in the battle over the organic food movement, with large corporate players insisting that they can do organic farming on a large scale, and sustainable family farms complaining that such operations aren’t really organic and contribute to surpluses that drive down prices, making it harder for them to compete.

At the center is Aurora, of Boulder, Colo., one of the nation’s largest dairies certified organic by the USDA. After a progressive farm-policy organization complained about Aurora’s operations, the USDA last spring proposed revoking its organic certification for more than a dozen “willful violations” of the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act from 2003-06. Among them: that cows had little access to pasture, that Aurora moved its cows back and forth between conventional and organic farms, and that it sold milk as organic that did not meet federal standards.

The lawsuits cite those findings as evidence that the milk Aurora produced was falsely labeled as organic.

Aurora agreed to change some of its practices in a settlement with the USDA this summer, and it has reduced the number of cows at its Platteville, Colo., facility from 4,000 to about 975, said Aurora spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele. But it was allowed to keep its organic certification and was put on probation for a year.

Over the past 18 months, the company has also renovated its Platteville operation to increase its pastureland from 325 to 400 acres and make other improvements, Tuitele said.

“Any lawsuits claiming the milk we were selling was not organic have no merit,” she said.

Aurora itself has been sued by some consumers, but lawsuits filed in federal court in Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis and San Francisco in the last two weeks are the first to accuse the retailers of misleading their customers into paying higher prices for milk they believed was organic.

Several of the companies declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, but Target, of Minneapolis, said it stands behind Aurora’s organic milk, which it sells as Archer Farms.

“This lawsuit is inconsistent with the fact that the USDA has reviewed and confirmed the organic certification of Aurora dairy farms and its products,” the company said. “It is disappointing that these types of lawsuits are attempting to override the USDA and regulate the organic industry and retailers with their own beliefs of what constitutes an organic product.”

But Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute in Wisconsin, said overriding the USDA is exactly what’s needed. The USDA should have revoked Aurora’s certification, he said. The Cornucopia Institute is not involved in the lawsuits, but investigated Aurora and brought it to the USDA’s attention, and Kastel said his group plans to sue the USDA for acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner in granting Aurora a “sweetheart deal.”

He also said Cornucopia repeatedly told the sued companies about Aurora’s practices.

“The USDA is ultimately responsible … but it does not absolve the retailers from doing due diligence to make sure what they’re representing is accurate, especially when they’re putting their own name on the label,” he said. “People who buy organic think built into that organic price is a different kind of environmental ethic, a more humane animal husbandry standard, and economic justice for family farmers. So when they find out otherwise … they feel ripped off and betrayed, and rightfully so.”

A USDA representative could not be reached after hours Wednesday, but the agency said in announcing the settlement it would ensure “that milk labeled as organic in the supermarket is indeed organic.”

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On the Net:

http://www.auroraorganic.com/aodweb/site/

http://www.cornucopia.org/

http://www.usda.gov

Cornucopia, WI – The Cornucopia Institute sharply criticized the conclusion by USDA that an 8000-head factory dairy in Idaho was operating within the federal organic standards. Cornucopia had requested an investigation based on its site visit to the giant industrial-scale dairy, owned by Dean Foods, and the gathering of evidence from other industry professionals with first-hand knowledge of the operation.

The USDA informed Cornucopia today that it had closed its investigation into Dean Foods, Horizon dairy in Paul, Idaho and another corporate-owned facility in Kennedyville, Maryland. The USDA investigation was in response to a formal legal complaint filed by Cornucopia in 2006.

“We know from our visit to the Idaho facility that they had no functional pasture meeting legal requirements and were unable to graze their huge dairy herd,” said Mark Kastel, codirector of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute. Cornucopia’s legal complaint included interviews with the veterinarian and with livestock professionals associated with Horizon’s Maryland dairy indicating that they were not pasturing the animals there, either.

The USDA’s findings regarding the dairies Dean Foods runs producing Horizon brand organic milk comes on the heels of a broiling controversy in the organic industry regarding other large corporate dairy marketers that have allegedly been scamming the public.

“This is the second time in two months that the USDA has sided with the operators of factory-farms, ignoring their impact on the reputation of the organic label, the economic damage they are doing to ethical, family-scale organic dairy farmers and the sham they are perpetrating on consumers who want to believe in the organic label,” said Jim Goodman, an organic dairy farmer milking 45 cows near Wonewoc, WI.

On August 31, the USDA made public its investigative findings, also pursuant to a Cornucopia legal complaint, regarding Aurora Organic Dairy, operator of five massive factory dairies and the leading supplier of private-label milk in the nation (Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, etc.). In the Aurora case, the USDA’s investigators found 14 “willful” violations of the federal law governing organics. However, the $100 million enterprise was allowed to continue in business and was not fined for the organic improprieties found by investigators.

Cornucopia emphasizes that based on their in-depth research 90% of all name-brand organic dairy products are produced with respect for both the letter and spirit of the organic law.

“It must pay to have powerful friends in Washington, DC!,” said Dave Minar, a long-time organic dairyman milking 150 cows near New Prague, Minnesota. “The USDA has ignored well-documented concerns about the propriety of these factory-farms for years, allowing large corporate agribusiness to take over a majority of the organic dairy business. This places ethical families like mine at a distinct competitive disadvantage.”

The Cornucopia Institute filed their legal complaint against the Dean/Horizon dairy, operating in desert-like conditions in Idaho after being invited to inspect the farm. Cornucopia found that from 2002-2006, like the Aurora operations, Horizon’s milk cows lacked access to any meaningful amount of pasture, as the law requires.

“Prior to our visit in 2006, Dean Foods quickly planted a crop of oats, not generally recognized as having value for grazing animals, so they could have something green on the ground surrounding their massive barns and feedlots,” said Kastel. “By the time we were there the mature, 2 foot tall oats were unpalatable by the animals and did not meet the legal definition of pasture.”

Within two weeks of their visit, Cornucopia supplied additional photographic evidence to the USDA illustrating that the oats had been mechanically harvested and all that was left surrounding the Dean/Horizon milking facility was the 3/4″ stubble and residue of the old crop.

“Based on the evidence collected, Dean Foods was clearly not operating a grass-based dairy,” stated Dick Parrott, a Twin Falls, ID organic livestock producer. “It costs more money, and is more labor intensive, to produce truly organic milk where the cows are not in confinement. The USDA’s ruling appears to be a grave injustice to the 1600 or so hard-working farm families who are rightly respected by organic consumers.”

The lack of enforcement action by the USDA in the Aurora matter has led to at least six class-action lawsuits around the country, representing consumers in over 30 states, filed against Aurora. The legal actions claim that organic milk drinkers were defrauded by the corporation’s labeling milk as organic that did not meet organic standards.

“There is a higher authority in this country than the USDA in these matters — the organic consumer. And they are now making their voices heard,” said Kastel.

Cornucopia has waged a long-term marketplace battle with both Dean Foods and Aurora. Their comprehensive report on the controversy, and scorecard rating all organic milk brands has cost the companies significant market share.

“Organic consumers feel betrayed by large corporate players trying to pass off milk from factory-farms as being ecologically sustainable or meeting their widely-held views concerning humane animal husbandry,” said Ronnie Cummins director of the Organic Consumers Association. “Besides for the question of their legality, these factory-farms do not meet the “spirit” of the organic law and no matter how much money Dean and Aurora spend on their greenwashing campaigns, they are unlikely to succeed in the long run.”

The Cornucopia Institute has announced its intention to seek a judicial review, by filing a federal lawsuit, challenging the USDA’s lack of enforcement and its abrogating the mandate received from Congress to protect the integrity of organic commerce.

“The USDA and the corporate players they are protecting have opened up a can of worms, and let me tell you these worms were not raised organically,” Kastel stated. Cornucopia stated they have already received inquiries from Congressional leadership in both parties that are interested in staging both hearings and requesting a thorough GAO study of this controversy.

“The USDA’s lack of enforcement illustrates that the concerns of many in the organic community, that the corporate-friendly USDA would betray organic ideals, might have been well-taken,” lamented Kastel. “However, too many good people have spent too many years building the organic label into something that has true economic value. I’ll be damned if we just hand this over to corporate exploiters without a fight.”

Cornucopia emphasizes that based on their in-depth research 90% of all name-brand organic dairy products are produced with respect for both the letter and spirit of the organic law.

by Sustainable Food News

A judicial panel will consider a motion to consolidate six class action lawsuits filed this month against the nation’s largest producer of private label organic milk.

A class action suit filed by a single plaintiff, Ilsa Lee Kaye, in New York City Tuesday was the latest in a rash of legal action against embattled Aurora Dairy Corporation, doing business as Aurora Organic Dairy (AOD).

Class action suits have been filed in Missouri, Florida, California and two in Colorado alleging AOD sold milk labeled as organic, at prices much higher than nonorganic milk, when it knew it didn’t meet standards for organic certification. The suits seek class action status and unspecified monetary damages, along with the injunction.

AOD maintains that its organic certifications are valid.

Gary Cox, attorney for the organic watchdog Cornucopia Institute and a lead attorney in one of the Colorado class action suits, told Sustainable Food News Friday that attorneys representing plaintiffs in the other Colorado lawsuit have filed a “Multi District Litigation” (MDL) motion with the court to consolidate the six cases under one judge and have it heard in the state.

The MDL panel is made up of a number of judges that meet monthly to consider which lawsuit should be the lead case, where should the consolidated cases be heard and which attorneys should handle the lead case.

Cox’s class action lawsuit against the dairy has 31 plaintiffs, a far greater number than the plaintiffs from the other suits combined.

Meanwhile, AOD has 28 days to file a response to each class action suit.

The company could also file a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(4) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted is appropriate when the facts asserted by the plaintiff do not entitle him to a legal remedy.

AOD said in a statement that if the case goes to trial, it will prevail.

“There is absolutely no basis for claims we defrauded consumers by selling milk that isn’t organic none whatsoever. … Our milk is and always has been organic,” Marc Peperzak, AOD chairman and chief executive officer said in a statement. “Our USDA consent agreement makes clear that all of our organic certifications are valid.”

Request for additional comment from AOD was not immediately returned.

ST. LOUIS, MO / DENVER, CO Acting on behalf of organic food consumers in 27 states, class action lawsuits are being filed in U.S. federal courts, in St. Louis and Denver, against the nation’s largest organic dairy. The suits charge Aurora Dairy Corporation, based in Boulder, Colorado, with allegations of consumer fraud, negligence, and unjust enrichment concerning the sale of organic milk by the company. This past April, Aurora officials received a notice from the USDA detailing multiple and “willful” violations of federal organic law that were found by federal investigators.

“This is the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry,” said Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group. Cornucopia’s 2005 formal legal complaint first alerted USDA investigators to the improprieties occurring at Aurora. “Aurora was taking advantage of the consumer’s good will in the marketplace toward organics, and the USDA has allowed this scofflaw-corporation to continue to operate,” Kastel added.

Law firms based in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri have so far have filed one of the lawsuits in Missouri, with another suit, covering dozens of additional states where plaintiffs live, due to be filed in Denver tomorrow. The attorneys are seeking damages from Aurora to reimburse consumers harmed by the company’s actions and are requesting that the U.S. District Courts put an injunction in place to halt the ongoing sale of Aurora’s organic milk in the nation’s grocery stores until it can be demonstrated that the company is complying with federal organic regulations.

Aurora, with $100 million in annual sales, provides milk that is sold as organic and packaged as private label, store-brand products for some of the nation’s biggest chains, including Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, Safeway, Wild Oats, and about 20 others.

Independent investigators at the USDA concluded earlier this year that Aurora, with five dairy facilities in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands of cows, had 14 “willful” violations of federal organic regulations. One of the most egregious of the findings was that from December 5, 2003, to April 16, 2007, the Aurora Dairy “labeled and represented milk as organically produced, when such milk was not produced and handled in accordance with the National Organic Program regulations.”

Cornucopia’s research, since confirmed by a two-year investigation by federal law enforcement agents, found that Aurora was confining their cows to pens and sheds in feedlots rather than grazing the animals as the federal law requires. Furthermore, Aurora brought conventional animals into their organic milking operation in a manner prohibited by the Organic Food Production Act, a law passed by Congress in 1990 and implemented in 2002 by the USDA.

“We believe that there are tens of thousands of consumers across the United States who have been directly impacted by Aurora’s practices,” said Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association. “We are pleased to see this legal action. We will do what we can to ensure that organic continues to mean organic and that consumers get exactly that when they are paying premium prices for organic food,” Cummins added.

“I feel cheated by Aurora’s organic misrepresentations,” said Sandie Regan, an organic consumer from Crown Point, Indiana, and one of the parties to the lawsuit. “I am willing to pay more at the grocery store for organic milk because I believe the milk is healthier for me. But it doesn’t look like I was getting what I paid for,” Regan added.

In addition to Missouri plaintiffs being represented by the St. Louis, Missouri-based law firm Simon Passanante, the larger multistate Denver suit is being handled by, attorneys from Lane, Alton, Horst in Columbus, Ohio, Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman, and Herz in Chicago, Illinois, and Gray, Ritter, and Graham, also based in St. Louis.

“We encourage anyone who has purchased some of Aurora’s private-label products to contact OCA or Cornucopia, and we will help them obtain justice,” the Cornucopia’s Kastel added. Although not plaintiffs themselves, the two public-interest groups have supported the lawsuit through research and organizing. A list of the grocery chains supplied by Aurora, the nation’s largest private-label bottler, can be secured by contacting OCA or Cornucopia.

Cornucopia and OCA point out that Aurora is a “horrible aberration” and that the vast majority of all organic dairy products are produced with high integrity. In a scorecard published last year, and available on their web site, Cornucopia rates over 90% of organic name-brand dairy products as truly subscribing to the letter and spirit of the law.

“Aurora’s actions have injured the reputation of the more than 1500 legitimate organic dairy farmers who are faithfully following federal organic rules and regulations,” noted Kastel. “We cannot allow these families to be placed at a competitive disadvantage.”

Many industry observers feel that the USDA’s enforcement mechanism broke down in the Aurora case. After career USDA staff drafted a Letter of Proposed Revocation, seeking to prevent Aurora from engaging in organic commerce, political appointees at the agency intervened, crafting an agreement allowing Aurora to remain in business.

“It is unconscionable that the USDA allowed Aurora to continue, after making millions of dollars, in this “ethics-based” industry, when they had concluded that Aurora willfully violated the law,” Kastel added. “However, there is a higher authority in terms of organic integrity than the USDA – that’s the organic consumer. And they are about to make their voices heard through the courts.”

Copies of the lawsuits are available upon request.

BOULDER – Despite threats of legal action, the vitriol continues between Boulder-based Aurora Organic Dairy and the company’s critics in the organic community – chief among them the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based advocacy group.

The current conflagration concerns a consent agreement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Aurora released Aug. 29 following a “Notice of Proposed Revocation” in April, in which the USDA cited its intention to pull Aurora’s organic certification unless the dairy filed a written appeal within 30 days.

The notice cited a yearlong investigation by the Agricultural Marketing Service, a division of the USDA that found 14 “willful violations” of organic regulations primarily at Aurora’s operation in Platteville.

The violations focused on lactating cows not having sufficient access to pasture and improprieties in care and transitioning of “organic” cows. The USDA also rebuked the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the state’s organic certifier, for inadequacies in its operating procedures.

Instead of pursuing an appeal, which could have ended in court, Aurora started negotiating with the USDA. The result was the consent agreement, which preserved Aurora’s organic certification, but put the company on one-year probation.

To some that outcome seemed suspect.

“Aurora was essentially let off the hook,” said Jim Riddle, organic outreach coordinator for the University of Minnesota and former chairman of the National Organic Standards Board.

“When 14 counts are labeled ‘willful’ violations, that implies intent to break the law.” After a letter of this kind, the standard procedure is to file a written appeal, he said, which would be denied, or if settled, followed by a published report detailing why each of the counts were repudiated.

“When you compare the 14 items in the revocation to the consent agreement, they don’t match up,” he said. “That tells me there’s been political influence at the highest level.”

That sentiment is shared by the organizations to which Aurora made a written request in September to remove “defamatory statements” from their Web sites. The groups – Cornucopia Institute, Organic Consumers Association and the Center for Food Safety – have never vacillated in impassioned critique of Aurora’s allegiance to organic principles.

Aurora’s communication said legal action could result if they failed to comply.

A letter, also countering the organizations’ complaints, written by Aurora Chief Executive Marc Peperzak and President Mark Retzloff, ran as a full-page ad in the Sept. 24 issue of Supermarket News.

Mark Kastel, senior policy analyst at Cornucopia, one of the most vociferous critics of Aurora’s farming practices, was unfazed by the dairy’s rejoinder.

“It’s an indication of the magnitude of the damage control undertaken by the company. They are not getting good ink, so they are buying their own,” Kastel said.

His organization is considering counter actions – supporting a class-action suit on the behalf of consumers who bought Aurora milk “fraudulently” labeled organic, as well as researching a lawsuit challenging the USDA’s handling of the matter.

Cornucopia stands by its Web site content in which it calls Aurora’s milk not organic since it was produced in a facility that, according to the USDA’s investigation, violated organic regulations.

Clark Driftmier, senior vice president of marketing for Aurora, calls this inaccurate and defamatory. He categorizes the violations enumerated in the USDA’s Letter of Revocation as allegations, and that the consent agreement superseded the original document. “Our certification is valid and always was. If we have valid certification, our milk is organic. What they say is 100 percent false.”

Joan Shaffer, a USDA spokeswoman, referenced the agency Web site for further explanation of the consent agreement. (Go to www.usda.gov and search for Aurora Dairy.)

This skirmish is the latest in an ongoing war of words between the dairy and Cornucopia that began in January 2005 when the group filed its first formal complaint with the USDA, the governing body of the National Organics Program, alleging that Aurora was operating in violation of organic regulations.

The allegations concerned “access to pasture,” which is mandated in organic regulations, but is written in a language that many in the industry – Aurora included – consider vague and in need of clarity. Since 2005, the USDA has said more stringent guidelines are in the works. However, the release of revised regulations has been repeatedly postponed from 2005 to this year’s end.

The real point of conflict is scale – whether an industrial-style operation like Aurora is truly in keeping with, not the law, but the spirit of the organic food movement. Also at issue is whether Aurora’s domination of the market drives down prices and puts small organic dairy farms at a competitive disadvantage.

Aurora, which supplies private label organic milk to such retailers as Wal-Mart and Costco, is a big-business dairy. It has so-called industrial-size factory farms housing thousands of cows on what critics call feedlot-esque facilities. The average small-, family-scale farm has 100 cows.

There are approximately 120,000 organic milk cows in the U.S., according to Will Fantle, co-director of Cornucopia. Aurora owns approximately 12,000 to 14,000 of them.

Organic milk is currently in surplus due in part to large-scale production facilities, which further challenges the livelihood of smaller dairies.

By 2010 organic dairy is expected to be a $3.5 billion business, according to J.P. Morgan. Organic milk sales will account for up to $1.8 billion. Aurora, a privately held company, has annual revenues of more than $100 million, according to CNNMoney.com.

The changes promised by Aurora in the consent agreement, according to Driftmier, had been in the works for two years: adding 75 acres for a total of 400 at its Platteville facility, decreasing the herd size from more than 4,000 to1,050 cows, allowing a grazing density of no more than four cows per acre and daily access to pasture for cows during the growing season – May to September.

The one-year probation entitles inspectors to drop by unannounced at the Platteville dairy. If the dairy is ever found to be noncompliant, the USDA would proceed with the proposed revocation.

“It’s not really a probation. People just like to call it that. Because both of us (USDA and Aurora) are under a microscope, they decided they need to come out to our facility for a year … to work together to make sure to cross the T’s and dot the I’s,” Retzloff said.

Retzloff, who co-founded Alfalfa’s Market and Horizon Organic Dairy, takes umbrage that in the midst of all this brouhaha, his dedication to organic is impugned. “I’ve worked in this arena for more than 30 years. I helped get the regulations passed. Organic resonates with me, what my whole life is about, what I eat, how I garden, what I advocate to friends, family and business associates.”

Because of the scale of his corporation it’s able to spread the reach of organic – converting conventional farms to organic, promoting animal welfare, integrating sustainable and renewable energy, and furthering stewardship of the land. That’s possible, he said, “because of our size and scale.”

To refute how his operation has been characterized by detractors, Retzloff is “always inviting visitors to Aurora.” The second week of October he planned to host Barbara Robinson, deputy administrator at the USDA, at a tour of the Platteville facility. Robinson signed the consent agreement, along with Peperzak. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” he said.

According to Retzloff, the activists’ beef is scale, and, “We epitomize the size and scale they are against.” But the issue he said is not now how large you are, but how you made it large, and that’s a conversation yet to happen. (A segment of the Food Chain, a radio talk show, planned a dialog between Cornucopia and Aurora Oct. 6, but Aurora declined to participate.)

“We all fall under the same regulations for what organic is, and it should not matter if it’s a small, medium or large farm,” Retzloff said.

But whether that includes equal application of the law is still up for debate. “We’ve always been told that the organic regulations are scale neutral,” said Jim Riddle, also a veteran of the organics industry. “Clearly enforcement is not.”

CORNUCOPIA, WI: In a letter sent today, the Cornucopia Institute informed the USDA of their intention to file a complaint in federal district court accusing the agency of ignoring the organic regulations, and the intent of Congress, by their failure to enforce the law.

The impending lawsuit is just the latest salvo in a seven-year-long dispute between organic family farmers and the USDA. “A wide cross section of the organic industry has repeatedly petitioned the USDA to crack down on an increasing number of industrial-scale factory-farms that are producing “organic” milk,” said Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

At the center of the controversy are two major agribusiness corporations, Dean Foods and Aurora Dairy. Dean’s Horizon brand and private-label milk produced by Aurora (marketed by Safeway, Wild Oats, Trader Joe’s, and Wal-Mart, among others) have gained a dominant market share, estimated to be as high as 70%, by ramping up production on feedlot dairies milking as many as 2000 to 10,000 cows.

“Organic consumers, when they pay premium prices, believe that they are supporting a different kind of environmental stewardship, are promoting humane animal husbandry, and are creating economic justice for family farmers,” said Columbus, Ohio attorney David G. Cox, who is representing Cornucopia on other matters involving the USDA and organic certifiers. “When consumers find out that their milk has come from factory-farms in desert states whose scale of operations endanger the livelihood of hard-working families, and the milk is then shipped all around the country, they feel betrayed.” The giant farms have been accused of confining their animals instead of pasturing them as the regulations require, which Cox said constitutes a violation of law.

At the root of the pending lawsuit is the agency’s refusal to adjudicate a series of legal complaints filed by The Cornucopia Institute over the past two years. “Through a successful freedom of information lawsuit, the USDA was forced to release documents that indicate some investigations into alleged violations of organic regulations on feedlot dairies were not pursued for political reasons,” stated Will Fantle, Cornucopia’s Research Director. Other complaints filed by Cornucopia that are being investigated have been languishing for up 15 months without resolution.

Cornucopia’s letter to USDA Secretary Michael Johanns stated that they would challenge in court the assertion by the Department’s National Organic Program that the current law is vague and unenforceable. Cornucopia representatives noted they are willing to meet with Department officials to explore any possible alternatives prior to the filing of the lawsuit.

“There are five sections in the federal organic standards that relate to pasture and grazing. Taken together they leave little doubt as to what is expected of organic livestock producers,” said Jim Riddle, of the University of Minnesota and former chair of the National Organic Standards Board. “It is no coincidence that except for the handful of mega-farms, all of the nation’s organic dairy farmers, and most of the certifiers that inspect them, understand that grazing is required and operate their farms in accordance with the law.”

The USDA has also been accused of intentionally circumventing the authority of their expert advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). The body, charged by Congress with advising the USDA Secretary on organic policy, has made recommendations to the agency on five separate occasions, in an attempt to crack down on scofflaws operating the industrial dairies. Each one of these recommendations, made after numerous public hearings and deliberations with representatives of farm, consumer, and public interest groups, has either been rejected or ignored by the Agriculture Department.

“Since we passed the first policy recommendation in 2001, which would have put a stop to these corporate farms abusing the trust of organic consumers, 10 to 20 more of these mammoth industrial dairies, which are placing family farmers at a competitive disadvantage, have started up (or are in the process of transitioning to organic),” said Riddle. “It appears that the USDA is looking the other way by allowing these confinement dairies to not provide pasture for their lactating cows, and by allowing a few certification agencies to approve these factory-farm operations.”

Through a letter recently secured and made public by Cornucopia, it was revealed that an alliance of dairy processors and marketers, along with their powerful Washington lobbyists, secretly approached the USDA, long after the formal public comment period closed, recommending their own “fix” for this controversy.

“The processors’ recommendations are a sellout, and any new rule based on them would actually weaken the current law, not strengthen it,” said David Griffiths of 7-Stars Farm, an organic dairy producer from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. “If the USDA arrogantly passes new regulations that institutionalize the industrial dairies currently exploiting the reputation of the organic label, they won’t have just one lawsuit to contend with here. Dairy farmers will file an additional action charging that the USDA is facilitating a coup that will drive us out of business.”

Meanwhile, The Cornucopia Institute is not waiting for the USDA to take action, or the pending lawsuit to work its way through the court system. They say that they have “appealed to a higher authority” the organic consumer. Last year they published a comprehensive research study and ranking of every organic dairy brand in the country in terms of their ethical approach to abiding by the letter and spirit of the organic law.

“Our dairy scorecard, rating almost 70 brands of organic milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt, empowers consumers and wholesale buyers in the marketplace,” Kastel said. “And the fallout is growing from our publishing of the dairy scorecard and “outing” the corporate brands abusing consumer trust — and highlighting the heroes. The Cornucopia report found that over 90% of the name-brands are upholding high organic ideals.”

After the Organic Consumers Association called for a boycott of Horizon brand milk, scores of major natural food retailers around the country dropped Horizon products, including many of the country’s largest grocery cooperatives and some Whole Foods Market stores. In addition, the investor community has reacted, expressing concern about dairy giant Dean Foods’ (the Horizon brand’s owner) approach to organics. A shareholders’ resolution has been filed that will be presented for consideration at Dean’s annual meeting this spring.

Stock in Dean Foods recently tumbled when it was reported that its organic foods subsidiary reported sales growth of just 5 percent, well below most analysts’ projections — in an industry that has been enjoying strong double-digit growth.

“The economic success of the organic industry, a sector now in excess of $16 billion in annual sales volume, is based on consumer trust. Our lawsuit is intended to hold the USDA accountable for enforcing the law, which it heretofore has refused to do,” Kastel emphatically stated. “We will not stand idly by as agribusinesses cash in their investment in lobbying and campaign contributions at a USDA that seemingly has become their lapdog.”