Organic Milk

I was making the rounds at the local cosco store trying all the samples. I get to this one which advertised samples of organic milk. Tasted just like milk to me. I asked the lady serving the samples, what made it organic. She said maybe happy cows. She really didn't know. What is organic milk. Stan

(quoted from post at 03:04:35 02/02/11) I was making the rounds at the local cosco store trying all the samples. I get to this one which advertised samples of organic milk. Tasted just like milk to me. I asked the lady serving the samples, what made it organic. She said maybe happy cows. She really didn't know. What is organic milk. Stan

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Just Google Organic Milk

No BST injected into the cows? It's banned here.

Organic Milk is about $3 to $4 higher than regular milk. Loaded with Bacteria. From what I've seen on tests of it, I wouldn't feed it to my pigs.

Another way to fool gullible people into paying more than it's worth.

May be different standards, but we have a couple registered organic farms near me. Crops are raised with no chemical fertilizer, no gene manipulation, animals are fed feed/hay and grass that was grown with no chemicals or additives, or manipulation. Products (milk, eggs, meat, etc) still is processed normally but seperate from non organic. We buy eggs from whoever in town has them. Every now and then we get milk from the nextdoor neighbor but I'm not crazy about it. In stores, you can buy eggs from either chickens in cages, chickens on the floor, freerange (feet can touch dirt), and organic. Considerable difference in the price and to me all cook, look, and taste the same.

Dave

Hmmmm. Organic milk.... I believe there's rules that prohibit the use of antibiotics for treating most if not all ailments that cows get... no chemical fertilizer or pesticides can be used for growing feed... Basically most of the mumbo jumbo that goes along with the rest of the organic movement. Also 'organic' type cleaners for the milk system, etc.
It's never really dawned on me how you can produce a higher quality milk by essentially refusing to treat mastitis by modern methods... Antibiotics exist for a reason...

Rod

Organic milk is: 1. Land has had no comercial fertilizer or chemicals for three years. 2. Cows have been fed this organic feed for at least 1 year. 3. Antibiotics only to save a cows life, then she must be shiped. 4.if an organic farmer runs short of cow feed, he can only purchase feed from another certifyed organic producer. BUT!!!, if he did not follow all of these rules, who would know??, as there is no known scientific teat that can measure if a product is truely organic, unless a chemical were applyed at the wrong time leaving a residue.

It sure is easy to badmouth something you don't have a clue about.

Organic to "me" is a way for a guy to get a fair price for his products by treating his animals humanely, not like a production unit. Others try to make a living by getting big and running the farm like a factory. Either way is risky and fraught with many pitfalls.

I grew up on a conventional dairy in the 1980's. We had 60 Holstiens milking in a tie-stall barn. On our road, there were 9 farms. 7 farms milked cows and we had the biggest herd. Today, that same road has three farms milking, one went organic, one got big (still small by today's standards @ 200 milking) and one is gonna quit this year. The big guy is hanging by a thread. The organic guy is gonna be the last one milking and he's in the process of transferring the farm to two of his sons.

Bigger isn't always better. Sometimes better is better.

Now, some big farms are trying to cash in on the organic tide, but they don't have a clue about what being truly sustainably organic means. They put 200 or 2000 cows on a couple-acre dirt lot and call it "pastured". They buy all thier feed and have it shipped in from miles away. They'll fail and badmouth organic to make themselves feel better.

Cash in on what exactly? In some places the market for 'organic' milk has already been flooded with the surplus getting dumpend into the 'conventional' market at a price they can't hope to survive on. Milk dumping was common in Europe and the UK in 2009 after the economic crash and the pain was a lot worse for the organic bunch.
Most of what I see in 'organic' agriculture is based on maintaing a dogma that existed 90 years ago while concoctign a PR speil around 'sustainability' to sell it to well meaning people who want to believe it's 'better'. How is running a sprayer with roundup in any way less sustainable than burning thousands of gallons of diesel to drag a plow, harrow and cultivator around to control weeds? I'd wager that less resources are used with chemicals...

Agriculture is a business and those who manage better than the rest will survive. I don't beleive that has much to do with size but adapting to prevaling conditions and using your given advantages to the best benefit. NZ does this by running a pastoral based agriculture system and maintaining very low overhead. When you have crops actively growing 11 months out of 12... that's probably not so hard. When you get into our system and climate where feed needs to be stored for 7 months, all of the infrastructure needs to be bought/built to support that... and then idle it for 5 months so you can set out to pasture (using yet another major set of infrastructure)... it doesn't really make much sense to me from a cost standpoint. Running one system at maximum efficiency makes more sense to me. So... it brings me back to the original point... organic is about dogma.

Rod

Well, I remember our milk cows, there was "little Jersey", Suzie, and spot. They ate grass in the summer, hay and some corn in the winter, and I milked them by hand in a bucket while occasionally squirting some milk into the waiting cats mouth.

In the winter she would slap that ole tail around, covered with snow, ice and cow sh*t. Chunks of that would end up in the milk, along with pieces of hay, straw, and hair.

If she moved, or kicked a little then bigger chunks of crap would end up in the bucket.

I carried it to the house, my mother ran it through a milk strainer, set it aside, then skimmed the cream off. And we drank it raw.

and I am not dead, and best as I know it didn't make us sick.

guess I was a green weinie and didn't know it.!!

Gene

i guess you really don't know nuttin about milk.
FYI,milk having a high cell count or bacteria has nothing to do with being organic or not.

It has all to do with herd health,a clean environment and being clean with the milking process,wether milking by hand or machine,and how it is handled in the milk factory.

As far as i'm concerned all cow milk is organic,it ain't man made is it.

i leave it at that

I think it means.. there are no chemicals used on the farm.

No, it's about Value Added. It's about providing the customer with what they want and demanding a price that will allow you to do it their way. It's about raising your animals in a humane way and running your ground in a sustainable manner. It's about minimizing inputs, including fuel and especially fertilizer made from oil and natural gas. It's about opting out of the "get-big" rat race.

As I said - Both ways of staying in farming is fraught with many pitfalls. The economic downturn of 2008 was one for Organic. When people lose their jobs and retirement savings and are living off savings or government money, they tend to spend as little as possible on food. Organic suffered. Conventionally produced food is comparatively cheap due to government subsidies and policies. Many of the big guys who tried to CASH IN on Organic, got out at that time.

Dad's still farming, but the cows have been gone since 1996 and he has a full-time off-the-farm job. He also runs 2600 pigs on contract in a confinement operation. He's running 300 acres of ground and is basically taking the money from the off-the-farm job and the pig contract to run the farm. If he didn't, he'd have to sell the farm.

I have been working for an Agronomy business for 8 years, spraying crops. I've seen how Syngenta, BASF, Dow, Bayer, and Monsanto operate. "Treat the symptom". BASF geared up and produced huge quantities of Headline in order to treat Soybean rust . When it didn't hit this far north, they pushed hard to sell it to corn producers as a "cureall". You ever go to those meetings? "We don't know why it works, but if you spray this stuff on your corn at the exact right time, you'll see 15 bushel"! Anyone around here who sprayed Headline saw a decrease. But it's the farmer's fault -they sprayed it at the wrong time. Syngenta now wants farmers to treat for nematodes. Never mind the vast majority are beneficial.

Last fall, I bought my F-I-L's farm. He's been selling Organic eggs since 2004. Yeah, some of his eggs went to the conventional market in 2009, too. I have 8000 chickens in two barns. They are allowed outside in the summer and have the run of the barn in the winter. No cages, no hormones, no GMO feed. I paid nearly a million dollars for 360 acres with 200 tillable. Now that I own the place, I can go three routes - I can try to stay small and stay Organic, I can go broke, or I can try to get big and fight my neighbors to rent Widow Jones's land for $250 an acre, and go to the bank to beg for a loan to buy my $350 a bag quad stack corn. You can guess which route I'm gonna try.

Lot of folks jumped on the organic band wagon around here, and most have jumped off again. The protocol, and restrictions on drug ,fertilizer , herbicide use is not financially off set by higher prices. The market for organic grain pays better than feeding it to cows. People that do organic do it because they believe in the holistic nature of the theory , not for the extra cash. If they get any extra cash, they put in a lot of extra work to get it, I do not do it.

Rod, as Old Geezer said, you have to treat a sick cow with antiboiotics to save her, but then you cannot reenter the cow back into the organic milking herd. So you could sell her to a non organic dairy I suppose!. Jay

From one old geezer to another, this organic things is full of bull. (milk from a bull?) The fact is to become an 'organic' producer it is a government certification and takes at least three years to get. In the case of milk the processor and packager must also be certified. This is not from any organic watchdog group but from the USDA. Based on simple facts I would truly question whether the milk is organic. Maybe the FDA and the USDA would also like to know.

I think you'll find that the segment of the population that will pay for organic is less than 2%. It's probably more like 1/2 of 1%. There's lots that will 'buy organic' if it doesn't cost them more... but that's not helping the producer. It's a niche market and once the niche is filled it becomes mainstream. When that happens the price will collapse. We've mostly seen that already around here where the large chains hae gotten into their own branding of 'organic' and standards that go with it... and they're working to suppress the producer price and control the game.
In this province we have half a dozen certified organic milk producers spread out over 600 miles and only one plant in the province at the far end willing to process the milk. Thus far I don't believe the trucking costs can be overcome by the 'value adding' and unless something has changed recently all of that milk is going into the same bulk truck as the rest.
As far as the road and pony shows that the drug and chemical companies sponsor... no... I don't go to very many of them. There's lots of sources of good reliable information out there without listening to some salesman ride in on a white horse with a bunch of BS... and there are lots of proven products out there that work and save time and money. I think it's entirely up to the individual to figure out what ones work best for their operation...
We also had 5000 layers here for 30 years and they're gone 11 years now. Good luck to you but I can't imagine running that on a floor operation... and I really don't see how it would be worthwhile here for the prices that we pay for feed and receive for eggs and there is a significant premium here for 'free range' eggs.

Rod

Big 10-4 to you farmerboy... It never fails to amaze me that people who are in the business of growing food will b*tch and scoff at what the people will pay for, instead of just growing what the customer wants and selling it to them. Seems a funny way to do business, telling people what they should and shouldn't want....

Hey Rod,

Well, I sell to Organic Valley and they're asking their producers to expand (can't have more than 10000 birds with Organic Valley, but most guys are 2500 and less) and are looking for new producers. They must be finding a market for the eggs. Really, $3.50 for a dozen eggs isn't too much to ask. just 'cause Kwik Trip has eggs for 99 cents doesn't make 99 cents the standard price. Many chains use basic foods loss leaders - milk, eggs, chicken, flour, etc - so you come in to buy the cheap milk and then you pick up a box or 10 of cereal and couple bags of chips since you're there.

The large chains you mention are part of the problem with organic. Organic standards need to be constantly policed or they'll become watered down and worthless like the "Natural" name. Walmart wants to sell organic and will get it from China or Mexico if they can save a penny. We have federal standards to prevent this. All producers need to be certified by an independent certifier like Indiana Organic or MOSA. We also have independent watchdog groups like the Cornucopia Institute (who are currently giving Organic Valley grief) to keep and eye out for cheaters.

I'm obviously pro-organic, but I'm moreso pro-local. The disconnect between the producer of the food and the consumer of the food is too great. Having Idaho potatoes or California cheese in Wisconsin is idiotic. I tell everyone I talk to about this - unless they have been on the farm that produced their food, they have no idea what sort of quality they're getting. You can get real garbage from your local farmer's market. You can get good quality food from Walmart. Unless you go on the farm, you'll NEVER know either way.

3.50/dozen for eggs is probably cheap compared to 'here' when talking free range. I would not want to try and sell them for that here either if that's the store price you're talking about. The cost to maintain and operate a grading station and all of the HAACP protocols would be a major inhibitor to it's cost effectiveness...

Rod