Staff at The Cornucopia Institute had previously learned, through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, that Dean Foods, owner of the Horizon Organic dairy label, was leasing an organic dairy in New Mexico. Then, in 2008, as the industry began to suffer from a surplus of milk, driving down prices for family farmers, we learned that Dean Foods/Horizon was helping finance the building of a second massive industrial dairy in New Mexico.
In 2009 they moved thousands of cows (mostly bred heifers) from their corporate-owned 8000-head dairy in Idaho to New Mexico. We received intelligence reports of many cows giving birth and dying in the trailers during the long and arduous trip.
The photos, like this one, have been posted in a new photo gallery on our web page.These new photos are from the first of their two facilities.
It is reported that Dean Foods partnered with a Texas/New Mexico dairyman, Stanley Jones, in launching these “organic” facilities. Dean, the nation’s largest conventional and organic dairy processor, supplied financial resources and cattle.
We have no photographs of the second, newer dairy at this time.
It should be noted that millions of dollars in investments were made in New Mexico at the same time Dean Foods, through their WhiteWave/Horizon division, is using repugnant strong-arm tactics trying to get rid of some of their family farmers.
The photos in our photo gallery depict, like many of the desert-like industrial dairies in the West, a heavy dependence on pumping water for irrigation, helping deplete aquifers in many regions. Many of these industrial dairies provide scrubby stands of pasture, commonly annuals rather than perennial crops.
The photographs lead us to question whether or not the quality of this pasture even meets the legal definition under the federal organic standards.
Others photos show the massive feedlot operation and heifers grazing on unirrigated land that also looks like it might fail to meet minimum legal standards for pasture quality and environmental protection.
