USDA's Organic Factory Farming Scandal Continues to Unravel

[S.Annadana]

USDA's Organic Factory Farming Scandal Continues to Unravel
6/16/2008

22,000-Head Missouri Operator Faces Court Action

What has been dubbed the "largest scandal in the history of the organic industry" has taken another victim. The USDA announced this week that Promiseland Livestock, LLC, a 22,000-head cattle producer, had "willfully" violated the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, the law regulating the industry.

Promiseland, and its principal owner Anthony J. Zeman, were found by the USDA to have failed to keep adequate records, the backbone of organic certification, to confirm that all their cattle were managed organically. Promiseland management also refused on multiple occasions to openly share records with the USDA and prevented agency officials from carrying out an unannounced inspection at Promiseland's facilities.

"It's about time the USDA started taking action against scofflaws like Zeman who have abused the trust of the organic consumer and put the livelihoods of ethical family-scale farmers at risk," said Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog. The Institute, based in Cornucopia, Wisconsin, has filed a series of legal complaints against giant industrial dairies, milking as many as 2000-10,000 cows, and representing their milk as organic.

The USDA's Promiseland investigation is a direct result of Cornucopia's investigative work targeting Aurora Dairy the nation's largest supplier of private-label organic milk and supplier to Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and other major retailers.

Aurora was found by federal investigators to have been confining cattle to giant feedlots instead of grazing as federal law requires and also had been bringing in conventional cattle that didn't qualify as organic. Aurora was obtaining dairy herd replacement animals from Promiseland, the nation's largest supplier of organic dairy replacement animals.

Large industrial-scale dairy operations push dairy cattle for high levels of production and sometimes slaughter cattle after a year or two, due to stress-induced health problems. The unsustainable approach demands a steady stream of replacement animals.

"Some of my cows are well over a dozen years old. They have names not numbers," said Barb Buchmayer of Purdin, MO, a certified organic dairy producer milking 45 cows. "Our cows are so healthy and live such long lives that we have extra heifers each year."

"Unscrupulous cattle suppliers like Promiseland are the crutch that have made these factory farm operations possible," added Kastel.

Cornucopia provides a scorecard (The Cornucopia Institute) ranking major organic dairy brands; 90% were meeting the highest ethical standards.