Perhaps no one represented the American work ethic more than the dairy farmer. Early morning hours and hard physical labor, often conducted in solitude while ankle deep in muck. Families working together to get the job done. They have long proudly supplied a demand for their community, and like most farmers, are clearly not in it for the money.

Today however, the American dairy farmer also represents the frustration and economic hardship evident across our nation. Increasing volatility in the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain, organic milk farms scaling up, and questionable government policies all have farmers shedding a few tears. The life is so unappealing that the number of American families remaining in milk farming has plummeted from roughly 165,000 20 years ago, to less than 50,000 today.

Behind the innocent glass of milk lies an intriguing story that’s not so black and white: Many farmers are losing money, organic milk is in short supply,  anti-trust lawsuits have been filed, and legislative reform is on the agenda. Farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers are engaged in conversations like never before. And cows. Don’t forget about the cows.

Please join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at 18 Reasons, as we discuss the current state of the organic dairy industry.

When: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: Food and drink at 6:30. Discussion from 7 – 8:30 pm
Where: 18 Reasons (3674 18th St., San Francisco, 94110)
Tickets: $10 Brown Paper Tickets. NOTE: A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7 pm on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Leslie Butler, Department of Agricultural Economics at U.C. Davis. Leslie holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University. He regularly testifies at state and national hearings regarding dairy policy, and has published numerous articles on dairy production and economics marketing and policy.

Mike Griffin, West Region Pool Manager, Organic Valley. Mike was born and raised in Petaluma, CA. After his first year of college, he began his journey into farming, and never looked back. His vast  experience over 30 years at Clover Stornetta as a truck driver, distribution foreman, plant manager and in public relations, ultimately led him to Organic Valley in 2011, the nation’s largest cooperative of organic farmers.

Richard Hughes, owner Westfield Jersey’s in Bodega, CA. Richard was a self-proclaimed “city boy,” until he turned 15 and a 4-H project began his life long journey and commitment to dairy farming.  In 1976, Richard and his wife purchased a 182-acre ranch just outside of Bodega. They currently have around 100 Jersey cows, have completed the transition to organic farming, and provide milk to Straus Family Creamery.

Bob McGee, CFO/COO Straus Family Creamery, Marshall, CA.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

Government regulation of corporate practices has apparently been much on President Obama’s mind lately. He recent penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed vowing to review federal regulations to make sure they weren’t too onerous on business. In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he illustrated his concern about the complexity of federal regulation by pointing out that two different agencies regulate wild salmon. “And when it’s smoked, I understand it gets really complicated,” he added. Ha, ha.

In other words, Obama is trying to establish himself as an eminently reasonable, pro-business sort of president — you know, not the sort of fellow who would let things like the Wall Street banking meltdown, the Upper Big Branch coal-mine disaster, the BP oil spill, or any other notorious lapse in government oversight stand in the way of the business of doing business.

Obama’s instantly famous “salmon joke” has me looking into how the government regulates salmon farms — those vast factory-style pens concentrated mostly off the coast of Washington state. I’m not done with research and won’t be until next week, as I’m preparing for a trip tomorrow to California to speak at the Edible Communities conference in Santa Barbara. The initial results of my research: government oversight of salmon farms consists mainly of encouraging them to produce as much salmon as possible.

This afternoon, my farmed-salmon research and trip prep were rudely interrupted by an unexpected regulation-related announcement: the USDA has decided to approve the use genetically modified alfalfa without any restriction.

The decision marks a sharp reversal: USDA chief Tom Vilsack had hinted strongly that he would place geographic restrictions on the growing of GMO alfalfa, to protect organic alfalfa growers from the threat of GMO contamination. He even floated a fancy name for the policy: “coexistence,” as in GMO crops and organic crops all just getting along. Even such a relatively mild restrictive policy would have broken with the longstanding USDA practice of giving GMOs a free pass.

Food-industry critics applauded. “I see real progress here,” NYU professor Marion Nestle wrote at The Atlantic. “At least — and at last — USDA recognizes the threat of GM agriculture to organic production.” She declared Vilsack’s even considering restrictions a “breakthrough.” The biotech industry, meanwhile, reacted to the specter of regulation of a GMO crop with fury, backed up by farm-state senators.

Thursday’s announcement marks a full USDA cave-in to the biotech industry’s demands — and evidence that Obama wants to be seen as a friend to business, even at the expense of the public interest.

In the interests of time, I’ve dropped in my take on GMO alfalfa from a few weeks ago, in which I argue that the stuff should be banned outright:

The industry is demanding that the USDA allow unrestricted planting of the alfalfa, which mainly serves as feed for cows. Alfalfa represents a lucrative opportunity for Monsanto, because it’s a massive crop, covering about 20 million acres, about 7 percent of U.S. cropland.

Yet there are a couple of glaring problems. Alfalfa is a prolific pollinator, meaning that GM alfalfa can easily cross-breed with non-GM alfalfa. If organic producers find their crop contaminated with GM material, they risk losing their organic certification and, likely, their livelihoods. The organic dairy industry, which relies on a steady supply of organic alfalfa, would also be imperiled.

The second problem is so-called “superweeds” — weeds that develop resistance to Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Such weeds are already rampant in the South, where Monsanto’s Roundup Ready cotton holds sway, and are moving into the Corn Belt, which is blanketed by the tens of millions of acres with the agrichemical giant’s corn and soy seeds. The rise of superweeds is unleashing a virtual monsoon of dodgy poison cocktails onto affected farmland.

Do we really want to subject organic growers and dairies to possible contamination and loss of their livelihoods, plus risk unleashing superweeds on another 20 million acres?

Evidently, for Vilsack, the answer is yes.

It’s worth checking out this recent Food & Water Watch report on the gusher of cash the biotech industry spends on D.C. lobbying. The industry spent more than a half billion dollars on lobbying between 1999 and 2009, FWW reports. In 2009 alone, the GMO giants dropped a cool $71 million pushing its agenda. It’s also worth noting the number of Monsanto-related people now working in key policy positions in the USDA.

Originally published on Grist

When Yeo Valley Organic in the UK set to make an ad about their dairy products, they wanted to inspire people to pronounce the name correctly (it’s pronounced “yo”) and to get people talking about the brand. Of course, this led them to rapping about “cows, tractors and wax jackets” in a much talked about two minute music video.

“We really want to put ourselves on the map,” said Ben Cull from Yeo Valley Organic. “People know us as ‘Yeo’ and we want people to know what that stands for–it’s a real place, and we want people to know what we look like.”

Here’s a taste of the video’s raps: “I’m rolling in my Massey on a summer’s day/ drinking cold milk while I’m bailing hay/ Yeo Valley’s approach is common sense/ harmony in nature takes precedence.” The video is catchy, and well produced by director Julian Lutz–for whom this was the first time working on an ad with farmers. Perhaps this goes to show that sustainable food is going mainstream?

The ad debuted on October 9th, and has since garnered over 570,000 views on YouTube. Watch it below and gives us your thoughts in the comment section: Do you think these kinds of branding strategies are effective? How do you think utilizing branding and advertising in this way impacts the food movement? Do you think similar campaigns would work in the U.S.?

Here is the making-of video. Watch:

Appropriately, the evening began with a picnic featuring local cheese and ended with an ice cream social under a yellow moon. In between, dairy farmers, consumer advocates, professors, labor union representatives, faith communities, antihunger advocates, an aspiring cheesemaker, and even a Certified Public Accountant spoke out forcefully about the widespread injustices in the dairy industry.

The main event was a Dairy Town Hall Forum in Madison, Wisconsin, sponsored by Family Farm Defenders, National Family Farm Coalition, and Food and Water Watch, and timed to coincide with Friday’s Department of Justice and USDA workshop examining corporate concentration in the dairy industry. The workshop today is part of the ongoing investigation (which I reported on here) by the two departments to determine whether food and agriculture companies have become too concentrated.

The dairy industry is one of the most consolidated in the country, with just one company controlling 40% of the US milk supply. Prices for farmers have fallen so low in the past three years that many dairy farmers were losing as much as $200 per cow every month in 2009. Meanwhile, even though the price farmers were paid for milk fell by almost 50% from 2007 to 2009, the retail price dropped by less than 25%. Someone’s profiting, but it’s not farmers or consumers.

In these conditions, last night’s attendees do not need a year-long governmental investigation to learn if agribusiness is too powerful; that discrepancy between farmer price and consumer price affects their lives everyday. Dairy farmers shared stories of family and neighbors forced to sell their farms. One man wondered what his middle-aged sister and her kids will do now that she’s had to sell her farm, still has debt to pay, and has no off-farm skills. Her 12-year-old daughter hopes to go to college one day, but the woman isn’t sure how they will get through the next year. These stories have ripple effects, the man concluded, pointing out that his sister and her family “now have socioeconomic cost to everyone else.”

Charlotte Williams, of the Center for New Community, made critical connections between the struggles faced by rural farmers and low income urban residents, particularly those that live in so-called “food deserts” and would like to have access to high-quality dairy products. Corporate decisions (like where to open or close a supermarket) often help to create food desert conditions. “Anyway you look at it,” Williams said, “it’s a social justice issue when so little of the consumer’s dollar goes to the producer.”

Social justice and fairness were recurring themes of the evening — and are issues that the Justice Department has a real opportunity to address as a result of this investigation. At today’s official workshop, they will also be hearing many perspectives that don’t take justice into consideration; they need to continue to hear from all of us who do. You can still send a comment, sign the petition, and call your Congressional representatives to say that you support the DOJ/USDA agribusiness antitrust investigation and you hope that it will result in strong action.

Here are some voices from the Town Hall in Madison:

While organic dairy farmers have faced a decrease in overall sales due to the recent world financial meltdown and tight budgets on the home front as a result, the current drop in milk prices is impacting mainly conventional and small to mid-size family dairy farmers — the worst crisis most dairy farmers have faced in their entire careers.

Without immediate action from President Obama, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and members of Congress, this current crisis could be the launching point for the final liquidation of the independent family farmer.

Plunge in Milk Prices + High Costs of Production = Final Liquidation

According to the USDA, the average cost of production for milk is $24.08 per hundredweight (cwt or 100 pounds), while the price dairy farmers were paid for their milk in April sunk to $10.78 cwt.

This means that dairy farmers are earning less than half of what it costs to produce their milk. Imagine having your salary cut in half and still trying to cover the same monthly bills. Even worse, feed and fuel prices are starting to go up in the past few months.

For farmers, most of whom work too long of hours and are paid too little money, this is the perfect formula for a final liquidation of one of the last remaining independent segments of ag production. For years, small and medium-sized farms have relied on their dairy cows to stay relatively free from domination by factory farms and corporate agribusiness. But no longer.

The Past Revisits the Future – 1998 Eight-Cent Hogs

What we are witnessing today with dairy farmers has happened before and is part of a historic trend that must not be allowed to continue. As Chris Petersen, President of Iowa Farmers Union and an Iowa family hog farmer, said recently, “First they consolidated the turkeys and chickens, then the hogs and now they’re coming after dairy.”

Petersen spoke at a rally for dairy farmers held on May 30th in Manchester, Iowa, where some 150 family dairy farmers from across the country gathered at a small town livestock exchange, some traveling from as far away as New York and Pennsylvania, in an effort to draw attention to the ongoing crisis.

As a hog farmer who survived the 1980’s farm crisis, Peterson is painfully familiar with the impacts that industrialized agriculture and consolidation have had on family farmers and rural America.

For many Iowans, the current crisis in dairy is eerily reminiscent of 1998, when prices hog farmers were paid for hogs dropped to 8 cents a pound, virtually wiping out an entire generation of hog farmers during a single market downturn.

In 1997, the year before the crash, there were over 122,000 hog farmers across the U.S. Today less than 65,000 remain. In Iowa, the nation’s leading hog producer, there were over 18,000 hog farmers in 1997, while less than 8,300 exist today, with most animals in this sector now raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or factory farms.

For those who missed the consolidation of livestock in the 1950’s and 1960’s when it happened to the chicken growers, and then the 1980’s and 1990’s when they came for the hogs, this year will be the final sell-off of the family dairy farmer. The final sector reliant on livestock will at last be captured.

In addition, the industry trend towards animal confinement that has taken off in the past decade in dairy will increase significantly if these small and mid-sized farmers are allowed to fail.

Increasing consolidation in the dairy industry has also played a factor in the current crisis, creating an uncompetitive market for dairy farmers. Just one cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) controls 40% of milk produced in the U.S., severely limiting competitive pricing for farmers. But not only does DFA have undue market power, they also have a history of market manipulation and were fined $12 million last year manipulating the milk prices in the commodities market.

U.S. Faces Catastrophic Loss of Dairy Farmers in 2009

Leading farm advocacy groups such as Farm Aid and the National Family Farm Coalition are estimating the potential loss of 20,000 family dairy farmers as a result of the current milk crisis. If action isn’t taken soon in Washington DC, America could lose up to 30% of U.S. dairy farmers — possibly more — as they strain under the monthly cost of debts, which are piling up each month.

Meanwhile, banks have already started cutting off farmer’s access to loans across the country and have increasingly begun seizing herds when farmers can’t make payments.

In a phone call received last week, one farmer told how a neighboring dairy farmer in eastern Iowa had lost his farm. The 550 head family dairy farm was seized last month, forcing a father and his two sons off the farm. Only five years ago, the father had expanded their operation so he could eventually turn the farm over to his sons. Now that dream is gone. To make matters worse, the bank seized the last trailer full of cows on a Friday and the youngest son got married the following day, a wedding that turned from a celebration into a tragedy.

The same farmer who related this story said that he had received a call from his banker who was coming to visit his farm the next day, with no reason given. The farmer said he was current on his payments, but wasn’t sure if his credit would be cut off like it had to several dairy farmers he knew across Iowa.

Stories like this are becoming increasingly common in rural America, especially in dairy country – states like California, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin.

The loss of so many family dairy farms could launch the next Great Depression for rural America’s economies. As farmers are forced off the land once again, as they were in the 1980s, the businesses and communities that rely on them stand to lose their tax and customer base.

Crashing the Farmer’s Price for Free Trade

While cyclical problems of supply and demand and have caused numerous market collapses in the past, a closer look at the dairy crisis exposes deeper fundamental problems in the dairy sector.

Currently the chattering political class in Washington DC keep repeating the line that the current crisis is due to “overproduction,” but an inspection of dairy imports and exports tells a different story

A recent post from John Bunting, a New York dairy farmer who writes for Milkweed and runs, tallied the imports of milk protein concentrate or MPC and found a record increase in imports in the first quarter of 2009. Between January and March of this year imports of milk protein concentrates (MPCs), not including casein and other dairy products, increased a whopping 24.59% according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Services.

MPCs are broken-down proteins and fats created by milk being processed at high temperatures and contain tasty things like bacteria and somatic cells. More problematic are the fact that MPCs are considered a glue additive and while not actually approved as a food additive by the FDA, Bunting calls them “technically an illegal ingredient,” can be found in such things as baby formulas, sports drinks, yogurt, pizza and ice cream.

If that doesn’t sound too bad then remember that these foreign milk-like substances are coming from China, India and a host of other countries that don’t have very stringent food safety regulations. Think milk from China, melamine in baby formula, etc – not a good strategy for food safety.

Another interesting trend pointed out by Bunting is the loss of dairy exports by the U.S. during the first quarter 2009, totally over $638 million over the same quarter in 2008. On top of this, Leslie Hatfield reports over at the Huffington Post that according to the National Milk Producers Federation dairy imports into the U.S. “have risen from $80 million to almost $3 billion in the last 10 years.”

So if we have record imports of milk products that compete against our own farmers on their sales in the U.S. and then they have a net loss approaching a billion dollars in trade that takes away from further potential sales, plus a massive increase in imports over the past 10 years, then what we really don’t have is a “surplus” of milk – but a serious trade deficit when it comes to milk products that is pushing American’s dairy farmers to the brink this year.

Additionally, for the month of March, Bunting reports that dairy exports fell by 32.9%. Even with Vilsack’s recent implementation of the new dairy export program, it’s hard to imagine making up that $638 million in time to save the thousands of dairy farmers that will be forced to shut down their barns by the end of this year.

Loss of Family Dairy Farms = Death of Rural America’s Economies

It’s estimated that dairy farmers are currently losing up to $200 per cow, per month. Since dairy processing and dairy farms have one of the largest economic multipliers of any segment in agriculture, with each cow generating $17,000 per year in economic development in the form of jobs, goods and services created, the loss of a single 85 head dairy farm will drain a local economy of nearly $1.5 million in economic activity.

For the eastern Iowa county that lost a 550 head dairy farm last month, that’s $9.4 million flushed out of the local economy forever.

Unfortunately, the number of dairy farms being forced out of business is just beginning. In the next few months, as more banks cut off additional loans to farmers, these numbers are going to climb to record levels for the dairy industry.

A recent conversation with a dairy industry worker revealed the loss of 10 additional dairies across Iowa in the last 6 weeks – totaling another 3,060 dairy cows or $52 million erased from small town local economies across the state.

And while $52 million is chump change for Wall Street banks, which are churning through government bailout cash faster than a five-legged mule, losing a third of U.S. dairy farms this year will be catastrophic for our rural communities.

For people who are having a hard time understanding how bad this will be: This could be rural America’s last stand for independent family farm agriculture. Increasingly, family farmers, rural Americans and farm advocates are pleading with President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and Iowa’s Senator Tom Harkin to do something about it before it’s too late.

Every day, every delay, costs America another farmer. And our farmers are not a renewable resource that can be grown and planted in a single season.

If up to 30 percent of dairy farmers are forced to go into foreclosure, the U.S. could see over 3.1 million of the nation’s 9.3 dairy cows sold off and potentially liquidated. A quick calculation shows the current dairy crisis, if allowed to continue, will blow a $52.7 billion hole in rural America’s economy – most likely more, as the ripple effect will send a shockwave through small towns and businesses across the country.

Rural America is Too Big to Fail

While Senators and Congressmen lined up in Washington during the past year to offer Wall Street a sweetheart deal for making a mess of the U.S. and global economy — erasing a lifetime of earnings for tens of millions of investors because of years of excessive greed — and then reluctantly bailed out Detroit for the sins of auto execs, politicians have done relatively little to help dairy farmers who are facing the crisis of a century.

Sure, Secretary Vilsack has made several small attempts to jumpstart the system, with a few stopgap measures, including $150 million in Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) payments — which provided farmers who previously signed up for the program a meager $1.51 per cwt subsidy; the USDA’s March purchase of 200 million pounds of surplus nonfat dry milk for use in domestic feeding programs; and a recent use of the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP) to subsidize 92,000 tons of dairy products destined for overseas. However, these steps have done almost nothing to stem the tide.

Unfortunately, none of these actions have translated into higher milk prices. Most U.S. dairy farmers see these attempts as worse than the usual band-aids farmers have been thrown in the past because it allows politicians to pretend they’ve actually solved the crisis when really it’s getting worse every day.

Conversations with dozens of dairy farmers from across the country reveal that the government MILC checks are barely able to cover costs of electricity, let alone feed bills, which have grown by up to 10 percent in the past four weeks.

“We’re not asking for a bailout, we’re just ask for a fair price,” says Jerry Harvey, a third generation Iowa dairy farmer who milks 70 cows in Promise City, Iowa.

And as many farmers across the country are now saying, if Washington thinks there are banks too big to fail, wait until Americans have to rely on food from foreign countries, which have much looser food safety regulations, to feed their families.

All these farmers are asking for is a fair price for the food they produce for American consumers, it’s time some folks in Washington start putting their heads together for a sustainable solution. The cost of failure for America’s dairy farmer is not something the U.S. can afford.

The bill passed by the Kansas State Legislature would have required an additional disclaimer on labels for dairy products produced from cows not treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST), a genetically engineered, artificial hormone that induces cows to produce more milk. (For more about this issue, check out this recent post, or the Humane Society’s informative post.)

The Governor’s office sent out a press release late Thursday, explaining why she vetoed the bill:

“…the Bill before me…provides for changes in dairy labeling that could make it more difficult to provide consumers with clear information. The milk labeling provisions negatively impact a dairy producer’s ability to inform consumers that milk is from cows not treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBST).”

“Supporters of the bill claim it’s necessary to protect consumers from false or misleading information. Yet there has been overwhelming opposition by consumer groups, small dairy producers and retailers to this proposed legislation. Therefore, pursuant to Article 2, Section 14 of the Constitution of the State of Kansas, I veto HB 2121.”

Despite this good news, Sebelius’ veto still could be overturned. However, two key legislators told the Associated Press on Friday that supporters of tougher rules for milk labeled as hormone-free probably can’t override her veto of their bill. Both Senate President Steve Morris and Rep. Larry Powell, chairman of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, noted that the bill failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto in either chamber when it passed earlier this month.

“The way the votes went, I don’t think we can override it,” Powell said. “I’m not sure we would want to waste the time trying.” The bill also contained other provisions on milk inspections, pesticide regulation and regulation of hog farms. Sebelius told the AP that legislators should approve those in separate legislation after they return Wednesday in their annual spring break. Morris said the issue is the perceived credibility for consumers of a hormone-free label on milk and whether that credibility is deserved. “I don’t think you need to mislead the consumers one way or the other,” Powell said.

“Governor Sebelius clearly recognized that the bill’s provisions on dairy labeling would have made it harder for consumers to get the information they want about the dairy products they consume and would have hindered dairy farmer’s ability to tell consumers that their milk is from cows not treated with rbGH,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

Due to growing consumer demand, companies are removing rbGH from their dairy products across the country. In addition, over 160 hospitals all over the country have pledged to serve rbGH-free products and the past president of the American Medical Association said in a letter to all AMA members that hospitals should serve only milk produced without rbGH. A recent report compiled by the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility found that more than half of the 100 largest dairy processors in the country have gone completely or partially rBGH-free due to consumer demand.

In her veto message, Sebelius cited such opposition, which she described as “overwhelming.”

“There was an outpouring of opposition by consumer groups, small dairy producers and retailers to this proposed legislation,” said Patty Lovera, Assistant Director at Food and Water Watch. “As she ascends to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Governor Sebelius has left a legacy of support for the public interest in Kansas with this veto.”

You can help uphold the governor’s veto here at Food & Water Watch.

On the heels of Yoplait’s announcement that they’re going rbGH-free, Dannon is now saying that its entire product range in the U.S. will be free of the much criticized dairy cow artificial growth hormone by the end of this year. As reported here, Dannon, like Yoplait, is citing consumer demand, rather than health concerns, for this change in policy.

“This is a response to our market evaluation and consumer preference,” Dannon’s senior director of public relations Michael Neuwirth told DairyReporter.com. Dannon claims to hold about one-third of the market and its shift in policy is a result of the tremendous efforts of every day citizens who demanded that their milk be free of rbGH.

So, it’s surprising then, that the folks in Kansas are moving ahead with eleventh hour legislation tomorrow to restrict “artificial growth hormone-free” and “rbGH-free” dairy labels. This legislation, if passed, would make Kansas the only state to restrict dairy labels in this way. At a time when more and more dairies are going rbGH-free in response to consumer demand, Kansas seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because this battle was recently fought last year in Kansas. Back then, Monsanto pushed a bill to end this informative labeling, but that legislation died in the Senate Agriculture Committee after considerate consumer opposition. Now proponents have tried to sneak the bill through again.

While the bill does allow for some claims about milk not being produced with artificial growth hormones, it does not allow phrases like “rbGH-Free,” and requires the use of what many consumer, health and environmental groups and dairy producers believe to be a misleading disclaimer on milk labels.

Additionally, this legislation could place a financial burden on small dairy producers and the State of Kansas. The bottom line is that the rules that have been in place for the last 14 years have worked just fine.

If you live in Kansas, Food & Water Watch and the Center for Food Safety both have action alerts so you can tell the Kansas House Ag Committee that consumers have the right to know what’s in the milk, and dairies have a right to tell them.

Photo: Tripping Along

Yoplait yogurt, the 19th largest dairy processor in the country, announced today that by August of this year, all Yoplait branded products will be made with milk that is 100 percent farmer certified to come from cows not treated with rbGH (or recombinant bovine growth hormone) an artificial hormone also known as rbST (recombinant bovine somatotropin).

In an e-mail announcement sent out Friday, Yoplait noted that it’s the first leading yogurt brand to go “rbGH-free,” which may come as a surprise to companies such as Stonyfield, Nancy’s, Cascade Fresh, Brown Cow, and other organic industry leaders, all of which have been in the forefront of the movement to reject the synthetic hormone in milk products.

“It’s an honor to welcome them into the no-rbGH club,” said Gary Hirschberg, the Stonyfield CE-Yo. “Better Yo-Late than Yo-Never.” In 1993, Stonyfield was the first dairy in the U.S. to secure agreements with milk suppliers not to use artificial hormones like rbGH (trade name Posilac) soon after it was introduced.

The use of rbGH has been linked to increased rates of infections in dairy cows, elevated antibiotic use, and unresolved questions about its links to serious human health risks, including cancer. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all 25 members of the European Union have banned the use of rbGH, and the Codex Alimentarius, the United Nations’ main food safety body, twice decided that it could not endorse the safety of rbGH for human health.

In case you can’t recall why U.S. companies have been pumping cows full of this junk for 16 years, just a small reminder that rbGH was brought to us by Monsanto, which has much sway in our government. (For the seminal article on the chemical giant, read the piece in Vanity Fair.) And, in yet another winning decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency gave its seal of approval, despite serious questions about the safety of rbGH.

According to the Breast Cancer Action (BCA), when rbGH is injected into a cow, that cow’s milk will contain higher amounts of another powerful hormone called insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1). IGF-1 is natural and necessary, but too much of it may cause health problems. Studies have shown that elevated levels of IGF-1 in humans may increase the risk of breast cancer. More research is needed to better understand whether the elevated levels of IGF-1 in milk make their way into our bloodstream. Although it hasn’t yet been proven that the use of rbGH will definitively lead to breast cancer, BCA notes that the current evidence is cause for concern and for action.

Slight problem: Yoplait, owned by General Mills, marketed its yogurt as being healthy for women, and participated in breast cancer awareness projects, including pledging a 10-cent donation to a breast cancer organization for every pink lid consumers mailed back to the company.  Because Yoplait yogurt was made with milk from cows injected with rbGH, there was a contradiction in their message.

Yoplait’s move away from rbGH can be linked in large part to the BCA’s Think Before You Pink campaign—which demands transparency and accountability on the part of companies that align themselves with breast cancer and urges companies to do all they can to ensure their products don’t contribute to the high rates of the disease. BCA uses the term “pinkwashing” to describe companies, like Yoplait, that participated in breast cancer fundraising or “awareness” campaigns but manufactured products that may be linked to the disease.

One of the reasons the Yoplait campaign was successful is due in large part to consumer education efforts by organizations such as the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “When Yoplait says that they’re dropping rbGH because of consumer demand, they’re not kidding,” said Rick North, PSR’s Project Director for Safe Food, who has been on the frontlines of this effort. “They’ve received thousands of postcards from all over the country opposing rbGH and also letters from hospitals and colleges expressing their displeasure with the hormone. This was not only the right thing for them to do, it was the smart thing.”

As it turns out, Americans don’t want their milk messed with. A recent Consumers Union poll [PDF] revealed that 70 percent of consumers polled are concerned about dairy cows being given synthetic growth hormones and 93 percent of consumers agree that dairies that produce milk and milk products without artificial growth hormones should be allowed to label their products as being free of these hormones.

Consumer demand for rbGH-free dairy led big retailers like Wal-Mart, Krogers, Starbucks, Tillamook, Safeway and Chipotle Restaurants to get on the milk wagon and phase out the hormone in all of their dairy products. California Dairies, Inc., which produces nearly 10 percent of the nation’s milk, went rbGH-free last year. And, by the end of summer 2009, the New England dairy industry will be rbGH-free as well.

Faced with dwindling sales of rbGH, Monsanto tried to thwart informed consumer choice by pressuring the FDA and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to restrict labeling of such products as “rbGH-free.” That didn’t work out too well, so Monsanto and their supporters launched a state-by-state assault attempting to ban or restrict rbGH-free labeling in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Utah, and Missouri. So far, these attempts have not been successful, as dozens of farmers, environmental and consumer groups joined forces to beat them back. Still limping along, a bogus non-profit called American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT) was formed last year to join the battle. This “grassroots” group received funding from Monsanto and was formed by Osborne and Barr, a PR firm founded by two ex-Monsanto employees. Seems that AFACT is actually ALIE.

In the meantime, stay tuned and ready for action to make sure your favorite dairy can continue to label their products “rbGH-free”. Be sure to buy rbGH-free milk from one of the aforementioned brands, and even better, buy organic. Click on your state to find a list of rbGH-free dairy brands at Sustainable Table.

If I were making a list of the pioneers of the sustainable food movement in Northern California, Straus Family Creamery would be one of the first names I would add. For decades, the family dairy farm has been trying new approaches to reduce the environmental impact of their farm while also improving the quality of the product.

In 1994, long before the word organic had much meaning beyond of a tiny population, the Straus Family Creamery became the first dairy west of the Mississippi River to be certified organic. A few years later, they were one of the first dairy farms to generate electricity from cow manure. (Many additional ‘firsts’ are listed on the “Farm Tales” section of the company website.)

As part of the “How We Eat Series” at the Commonwealth Club of California, Albert Straus, president and owner of the creamery, told an audience in San Francisco about the dairy’s past, present and future.

Straus has been close to dairy farming throughout his life. He grew up on the farm in Marshall, California that his father, William Straus, started in 1941 with 23 cows. After going to college at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, where he wrote his senior thesis on creamery operations, he returned to the family farm. He currently has a herd of 300 cows — most are Holstein, some are cross-breeds of Holstein and Jersey. It is a “closed herd,” which means that replacement cows come from within the herd (i.e., no outside animals are brought in).

The organic certification regulations do not allow the use of antibiotics, something that can be a challenge. Straus meets that challenge by focusing on prevention: they ensure that the cows have clean bedding and frequent health checks. Switching to thrice-daily milking (most dairies milk twice a day) gives the staff more contact with the animals, thus allowing closer monitoring of their health (it also results in 10% more milk production). Having a closed herd, Straus said, is another factor that helps keep the animals healthy.

The diet of the Straus herd is mostly grass—about 80% is either grass from the Straus’ pasture (the farm includes 660 acres of non-irrigated pasture) or silage (a fermented grass product used during the dry season). The non-grass portion of the diet includes corn from the Midwest and barley, oats and flax from other parts of the country. Straus has their own mill to grind grains because most of the other mills are not certified organic. Feed is one of the largest expenses on a dairy farm — Straus estimates that it is 40 to 60% of the farm’s expenses — and so there is always an incentive to find cheaper alternatives. In the past, he has experimented with unusual feeds like the soybean pulp left over from tofu making, the rice cake from sake, and cacao hulls. Results with these feeds have been mixed. (Other livestock operators have been trying to cut costs by using much more shocking feeds, like “cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups” according to a Wall Street Journal article excerpted by FarmPolicy.com)

One of the novel features of the Straus operation is their “waste to electricity” system. The system, called a methane digester, collects manure in a covered container, where it is digested by microbes in an aerobic or anaerobic environment (aerobic = with oxygen, anaerobic = without oxygen). The microbes emit a gas that is rich in methane and can be burned in an engine to produce electricity. The digester produces all of the electricity needed on the farm, and sometimes even more, which results in their electricity meter running backward. Straus uses some of the manure-generated electricity to get around town: he drives an electric car. He has also been working on an all-electric feeder truck for the past few years (a conventional truck that has had its diesel engine replaced with an electric motor and a bank of batteries).

Operating a dairy that sells direct to the public involves much more than feeding and milking cows. Packaging, for example, is a big consideration. Straus sells their milk in reusable glass bottles (a deposit is required at the time of purchase and can be reclaimed upon return of the bottles). Straus said that each bottle is used six to eight times before it needs to be recycled. The authors of “Food, Energy, and Society” estimate that four uses are needed to make up for the additional energy needed to manufacture, wash and transport a reusable glass bottle relative to a plastic bottle, so the current Straus system is saving significant amounts of energy (while also providing better tasting milk). They have investigated plastic made from corn (polylactic acid, PLA), but rejected it because it is typically made with transgenic corn and offers few benefits when not composted properly (most landfills are amazingly inert places where nothing breaks down, neither paper, nor food, nor plant material).

Decades of innovation and striving have not quenched Straus’ enthusiasm. In the future, he hopes to expand the use of alternative energy on the farm; improve feed sourcing (buying local grains); improve the recyclability, re-usability, and sourcing of packaging (I would love to see them offer yogurt in reusable containers); experiment with different ingredients like agave nectar in their products; and continue to educate consumers and other producers about their practices.

The Straus farm and creamery is not normally open to the public, but offers periodic tours through the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT).

The audio from many of the “How We Eat” programs at the Commonwealth Club are available for internet streaming from the Commonwealth Club archive or for download via a podcasting service like iTunes.

Images courtesy of Straus Family Creamery