After a three-and-a-half year battle with Dean Foods regarding the legality of milk it labels as Horizon Organic, the organic industry watchdog group The Cornucopia Institute has filed additional legal actions against the nation’s largest dairy processor, which has nearly $12 billion in sales and controls 50 different milk brands.
Cornucopia, a farm policy research group and family farm advocate, filed a formal legal complaint with the USDA claiming that one of Dean’s Horizon suppliers, a dairy in Snelling, California, was skirting the law by confining the majority of their cows to a feedlot rather than allowing them fresh grass and access to pasture as the federal organic regulations require.
Cornucopia has also asked the Inspector General at the USDA to investigate appearances of favoritism at the agency that has benefitted Dean Foods. Cornucopia charges that past enforcement of the Organic Foods Production Act, the law governing organic food labeling and production, has been unequally applied toward major corporate agribusiness by the USDA.
"We are asking the USDA, once again, to investigate serious alleged improprieties at dairies that produce Horizon organic milk," said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst with the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.
Besides the legal issues that Cornucopia raised, they suggest Dean Foods has seriously injured the value of its Horizon label and the reputation of organic milk. "In the eyes of consumers, factory farms–with questions about humane animal husbandry and records of endemic pollution–do not meet the ethical litmus test," Kastel added.
Cornucopia’s most recent complaint is the third filed with the USDA alleging Dean Foods has broken the federal law that governs organic production. Prior complaints also charged Dean was confining cattle on their two corporate-owned dairies, managing as many as 8,000 head of cattle each.
Although the USDA, based on Cornucopia research, sanctioned or decertified two independent factory farms supplying Horizon, the federal agency dismissed both legal complaints against Dean Foods itself. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Cornucopia, the USDA never investigated or even visited Dean’s largest corporate-owned industrial dairy, in the desert-like conditions of central Idaho.
"It appears that Dean Foods has more political clout in Washington than the two independent factory farm operators that were found to have been abusing the trust of organic consumers," according to Will Fantle, Research Director at Cornucopia.
According to FOIA documents, Dean Foods hired lawyers at Covington and Burling, one of the capital’s most powerful and influential legal and lobbying groups, to plead their case.
"The USDA closed complaints we filed in 2005 and 2006 without ever having visited the Horizon dairy in Idaho, and warned Dean Foods in advance before inspecting their Maryland farm," stated Fantle.
In a letter to USDA Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong, Cornucopia asked her to investigate why the agency arbitrarily chose to adjudicate some of the formal legal complaints filed by Cornucopia but looked the other way when it came to the largest corporate dairy processor and marketer in the country for almost identical alleged offenses.
Cornucopia’s letter stated, "Conditions on the 8,000-head factory farm operated by Dean/Horizon in Idaho were very similar to the factory farms that the USDA has already sanctioned. The only discernible difference appears to be how much money Dean Foods has spent on lobbyists and campaign contributions in Washington."
"My family and 1800 or so other organic farmers around the country have worked hard to build the stellar reputation organic dairy products deservingly enjoy in the eyes of consumers," lamented Tony Azevedo, one of the first organic dairy farmers in California milking 350 cows near the town of Stevinson. "Virtually every other name- brand organic dairy product in the country depends exclusively on real family farmers to produce their milk. We don’t want subterfuge by confinement dairies giving us all a black eye and endangering our livelihoods."
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