What’s Behind the Organic Milk Label?

  • Many people now choose organic milk, but there are some problems with the USDA organic certification. (Photo by Adrian Becerra)

Products labeled “organic” used to be associated with
hippie culture. Ever since the National Organic Standards
went into effect five years ago, organic has become big
business. Sales of organic products now total about 20-billion dollars a year in the U.S. But that quick growth
spurt is coming with some growing pains. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Products labeled “organic” used to be associated with
hippie culture. Ever since the National Organic Standards
went into effect five years ago, organic has become big
business. Sales of organic products now total about 20-billion dollars a year in the U.S. But that quick growth
spurt is coming with some growing pains. Julie Grant
reports:


Kara Skora is a part-time college professor, and her family
doesn’t make a lot of money. She’s wearing a hand-me-down
sweater. She’s been eyeing some bracelets at this Target
store, but she quickly walks away. She isn’t going to
spend her money on something so frivolous. Instead, Skora
goes to the dairy case and pulls out a carton of organic
milk. At $3.50, it’s nearly double the price of a regular
half gallon. But Skora thinks the higher cost is worth it
for her two sons:


“Because it’s the one thing. I mean, we don’t go out to
dinner, we don’t waste money on things. We don’t have much
money to spend. But I figured, this is becoming their
bodies. This is becoming their bones and their flesh, and what
little they have, they’re both skinny little boys. So I’m
willing to go into debt to get organic milk.


Julie Grant: “You really go into debt?”


“Oh yeah, we’re in credit card debt. I think a couple
thousand dollars of that every year is organic milk. It’s
the one thing we splurge on.”


Skora used to have to go to a health food store to find
organic milk. These days, she can buy it a lot of places.
And whether she’s buying it at Target or somewhere else,
she trusts that the government’s organic label means the milk
meets certain standards.


It used to be, a label that said “organic” could mean all
kinds of things. Different state agencies and private
organizations each had their own organic standards. Each
trained their own people to inspect farms – to make sure
farmers were meeting their organization’s rules.


Then, five years ago, the US Department of Agriculture
launched the National Organic Program. Now, the people who
inspect organic farms are all looking at the same set of
rules: the USDA’s national standards.


A national standard means farmers know what they need to do
to sell milk as organic in every state. So now big dairy
farms are churning out organic milk to be shipped out
across the nation.


Leslie Zuck is director of Pennsylvania Certified Organic,
one of the certifiers for the USDA. Zuck says the national
program has some problems. The standards aren’t always
specific, so it can be difficult for certifiers and farmers
to know if they’re doing the right things. For instance,
one big concern is how long dairy cows get to be out on grass:


“You go out there and you say, we don’t think enough
pasture, and they say how much is enough and we say, well, we don’t really know but we don’t think you have
enough.”


Since some rules are a little fuzzy, some certifiers are more
lenient than others:


“Some certifiers have interpreted that part of the regulation as
not really requiring that cows have pasture all the time, and that they don’t
really have to have a lot of grass to eat, they just have to be out there walking around few hours a day.”


Zuck says some dairy producers find out which agencies will
interpret the standards the way the farmers want, and hire
those certifiers:


Barbara Robinson: “Well, that shouldn’t be the case.”


Barbara Robinson is USDA administrator of the National
Organic Program.


“Certifying agents should all be applying rules in the same
way.”


Robinson concedes many issues, such as the required amount
of pasture, need to be clarified in the national rules.
Some environmentalists were appalled that a large dairy
producer in Colorado was certified organic. Aurora Farms
confined its cows indoors for nine months out of the year.
Robinson says the USDA considered revoking the company’s
certification, but instead signed an agreement – and she says Aurora
Farms has been improving its practices:


“I don’t have any problems telling consumers who go into
retail market and purchase organic milk at Wal-Mart that
they are purchasing properly labeled certified organic
milk. They can feel comfortable with that.”


And Wal-Mart and Target are exactly the kinds of retailers
that Aurora Farms supplies with its organic milk.


Meantime, the people who buy that milk say they expect the
government to make sure the dairies are living up to the
national standards. Especially since customers like Kara
Skora have to sacrifice so much to pay the higher prices of
milk with an organic label.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Blazing New Atv Trails in Parkland

  • Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:

Transcript

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:


As the name suggests, All-Terrain Vehicles are built to travel rough. ATVs power over
rocks and logs. Their go-anywhere knobby tires grip the land and take their riders just
about anywhere they want to go, and a lot of them want to go to public parks.


Whether it’s forests, dunes, bogs or a desert, riders say four-wheeling can be a fun way to
get out into nature. The vehicles are popular. Dealers are selling close to a million ATVs
every year, and sales are growing steadily. With that many people looking for a place to
play, states are scrambling to accommodate them.


In Minnesota, the state decided a long ATV trail might be a good way to attract tourism
dollars to a struggling rural area in the state.


Ron Sluka jumped at the idea. He’s the trail coordinator for a local ATV club. He’d been
wanting for years to build a trail in his area. Then he heard the state would pay for a
“destination” trail so well-built and attractive, people would come from all over to ride it.
Sluka thought it would be great news for his area.


He and county officials worked up a plan, but when it hit the local news, Sluka says a
few people raised a ruckus:


“The way it was presented to the people, eminent domain would take over in cases if
need be, and there were going to be up to 20 feet of your land taken for this trail. None
of the above is true, totally none of it is true, absolutely zero. But it’s too late: once
things are rolling, it’s rolling.”


Sluka says now, it’s hard to get a rational discussion of the issues. Beyond property rights
issues and worries about the ATVs being too loud, there are other concerns:


“The residents have kind of been left out of the loop.”


That’s Deb Pomroy. She lives near the proposed ATV trail.


Pomroy says most of her neighbors don’t mind the local ATV riders. It’s that idea of
drawing ATVs from all over the state that freaks them out, and Pomroy has her own reasons
for opposing a trail here, where the Cloquet River has its beginning: wood turtles.
Pomroy is a biologist. She says this area is a refuge for the turtles. They’re endangered in
most of their range, and listed as a threatened species in Minnesota.


Wood turtles bury their eggs in sandy soil. Pomroy says they would love to bury their
eggs in soil disturbed by ATVs, but the eggs wouldn’t survive:


“Even stepping on a nest, which is buried in soil, don’t know there are eggs there, is
enough to destroy the eggs.”


The trail is on hold for now, while county officials and ATV riders try to come up with
an alternative. Concern about damage to sensitive environmental areas is one of the chief
reasons many environmentalists don’t like the idea of letting ATVs into parks.


Jason Kiely is with Wildlands CPR, a national non-profit group that works to prevent off-
road vehicle damage on public land. He says fights over ATV trails are inevitable, as
long as public agencies don’t involve all park users in a comprehensive planning process.


“Primarily because off-road vehicles affect every other use of the forest so significantly.
So we advocate for doing comprehensive travel and recreation planning, not just trying to
carve off the ATV piece, but multi-stakeholder planning efforts that offer something to
everyone.”


Kiely says the US Forest Service and many state agencies have a lot of work to do, to
find the right balance between preserving nature and allowing ATV riders to have their
fun on public land


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

New National Board Aims to Protect Native Fish

A new, national effort to protect aquatic species and habitats could bring needed cooperation between state and federal agencies. Individual states aren’t able to deal with the problems themselves, but say the newly-formed coalition of partners might help. The GLRC’s Kaomi Goetz reports:

Transcript

A new, national effort to protect aquatic species and habitats could bring
needed cooperation between state and federal agencies. Individual states
aren’t able to deal with the problems themselves, but say the newly-
formed coalition of partners might help. The GLRC’s Kaomi Goetz
reports:


The goal of the National Fish Habitat Action Plan is to clean up the
nation’s rivers, lakes and coastal areas. It also seeks to protect the more
than 800 different kinds of native fish from extinction. The plan is based
on an earlier successful model focused on the nation’s waterfowl.


Federal agencies, industry, tribal and non-profits groups have signed on.
So have several state Department of Natural Resources. Gary Whelan is
with the Michigan DNR, one of the agencies that’s signed on.


“When you’re trying to deal with things like water quantity in a system, and you
have a 100 dam owners you’re trying to communicate with, a couple
(state) agencies can’t possibly do that, nor do we have the financial
resources so you really need a broad-based coalition of people.”


Whelan says the initiative will mean a lot more money for states to
address water quality problems and fish habitat.


Organizers are creating a national board to coordinate all the efforts.


For the GLRC, I’m Kaomi Goetz.

Related Links

Salmon Stocking Cuts to Hurt Native Fish?

Several state agencies in the region will
reduce the amount of salmon stocked in Lakes Huron and Michigan next year. The change is designed to help the alewife population recover. Alewives are the salmon’s main food source, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports, some biologists think helping the alewife will hurt native fish:

Transcript

Several state agencies in the region (IL, IN, MI, WI) will reduce the amount
of salmon stocked in Lakes Huron and Michigan next year. The change is
designed to help the alewife population recover. Alewives are the salmon’s
main food source, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette
reports some biologists think helping the alewife will hurt native fish:


The total number of salmon stocked in the two lakes will be cut by more than
a third next year. The state agencies that manage the stocking programs say
there was widespread support for the decisions, but one dissenting voice was
the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, or CORA.


CORA supports recovery of native fish species like the Lake trout. Mark
Ebener is a fishery Biologist with CORA. He says you can’t protect
alewives and expect lake trout to do well.


“So you have to commit to one or the other. Instead of what the states are
going to do, and what Michigan is going to do, it’s going to protect alewife
by reducing stocking so they can have healthier salmon, but at the same time
it’s going to say, ‘Well tribes we still want you to support Lake trout
rehabilitation and we still support it and think it’s still feasible.'”


Female lake trout that have a diet heavy in alewives can develop a nutrient
deficiency. It causes most of their young to die soon after birth.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Pollution Breaks for Factory Farms?

Environmental groups allege the Bush administration might want to give large, so-called “factory farms” a break under the Clean Air Act and Superfund laws. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups allege the Bush administration might want to give large, so-called “factory
farms” a break under the Clean Air Act and Superfund laws. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Environmental groups contend that the livestock industries have asked the EPA not to require
they comply with the Clean Air Act and Superfund hazardous waste laws.


Andrew Hanson is an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates. He says the big farms
pump out large amounts of air pollutants like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic
compounds and particles.


“Those four categories of air pollution can be very harmful to people who live near these
operations, live near these manure pits and live near those free-stall barns that house thousands of
cows.”


A coalition of environmental groups has filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit, asking the Bush
administration to disclose any negotiations with the meat industry. But the White House says it is
not cutting any deals with the owners of large farms.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach, reporting.

Related Links