Organic Dairy Agrees to Alter Some Practices
Colorado's Aurora Organic Dairy agreed Wednesday to stop applying the organic label to some of its milk and to make major changes in its operations after its organic certification was threatened.
A huge Colorado organic dairy agreed yesterday to stop applying the organic label to some of its milk and make major changes in its operation after the Department of Agriculture threatened to revoke its organic certification for, among other problems, failing to provide enough pasture to its cows.
The dairy, Aurora Organic Dairy, which supplies private-label organic milk for many supermarket chains, must also remove some animals from the organic herd at its Platteville, Colo., farm, according to a Department of Agriculture statement released late yesterday that outlined the terms of a consent agreement with the dairy.
While the U.S.D.A. has taken action against other organic producers, the consent decree with Aurora represents a rare show of force against a leading supplier of products to the rapidly expanding market for organic foods.
"The organic industry is booming, and the National Organic Program is a high priority for the U.S.D.A.," said Bruce I. Knight, under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs. "And through this consent agreement consumers can be assured that milk labeled as organic in the supermarket is indeed organic."
In the last two years, Aurora's large organic dairy farm has become a flashpoint in a vitriolic debate over what constitutes organic. Some critics charge that some entrepreneurs and major food companies have tried to cash in on an industry that has grown to $14 billion a year in sales, and have tried to weaken the organic standards in the process.
Organic milk costs as much as $6 a gallon; regular milk sells for about $3.80 a gallon.
Several large dairies like Aurora have sought to market organic milk while replicating the efficiencies of large conventional dairy farms. At one time, the Platteville farm had 4,200 milking cows; most organic dairy farms have fewer than 100 cows.
The Cornucopia Institute, a farm advocacy group in Wisconsin, initially filed a complaint against Aurora in 2005 contending that the company was not abiding by organic certification rules that required dairy cows to have regular access to pasture. The U.S.D.A. dismissed the complaint several months later, but the Cornucopia Institute filed a second complaint in 2006.
Mark A. Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, called the U.S.D.A.'s decision a vindication yesterday, but he complained that the company got off with light punishment. Mr. Kastel noted that Aurora had been able to build a commanding market share at the expense of smaller family farmers while flouting the organic rules.
"I'm not exactly clicking my heels," he said.
Aurora officials have long maintained that they are following the federal organic rules, but they have also made several changes in the last year and a half to create more pasture on the Colorado farm. In a release, the company said it was already in the midst of a transformation of its Colorado farm and characterized the federal action as a dismissal of Cornucopia's complaint.
"We are very pleased with both the dismissal and the valuable input from U.S.D.A.," said Mark Retzloff, president of Aurora Organic Dairy. "This result allows us to accelerate the transformation of our Platteville organic dairy farm."
The farm is adding 75 acres of organic pasture, for a total of 400 acres, and reducing the size of the organic herd to about 1,250 milking cows. About three-quarters of the farm's existing buildings and paddocks are being razed and converted to pasture.
In June, the certification of a large California organic dairy, Case Vander Eyk Jr. Dairy, a 10,000-cow farm in the San Joaquin Valley, was suspended for not abiding by the organic rules. The federal organic regulations are enforced by third-party certifiers.
Under the terms of the agreement with Aurora, the company must file new plans with the U.S.D.A., for both its Platteville farm and another large organic dairy in Dublin, Tex., showing how it intends to meet the standards for organic certification.
Besides finding that Aurora did not provide adequate pasture for its cows, federal agriculture officials found that Aurora did not maintain adequate records and was milking cows that it could not prove were raised according to organic standards..
The Cornucopia Institute maintained that Aurora was buying cows from a farm that claimed it was raising them according to organic standards, but was not officially certified.
Cows that produce milk to be sold as organic must be free of antibiotics and growth hormones and given only feed, hay and pasture that is grown without farm chemicals.
As part of the consent decree, Aurora must remove those cows from its organic milking herd and not sell their milk as organic. In addition, the company must comply with more stringent standards for adding cows to its organic herd.
In its release, Aurora vowed that all incoming and replacement cows will be "organically born."
Aurora Organic's Colorado farm was certified by the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Because of the Aurora investigation, the state agency has agreed to increase organic certification training and hire additional personnel.