FDA Approval of Food from Cloned Animals Gets Stalled in Senate

A broad coalition of consumer, farmer, and animal welfare organizations last week applauded passage of a provision in the Senate's Farm Bill that would delay the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) endorsement of the use of food from cloned animals. This amendment calls for a rigorous and careful review of the human health and economic impacts of bringing cloned food into America's food supply.

"The passage of this bill with the amendment is like a gift for the holidays," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director of the Center for Food Safety. "The FDA's flawed and cavalier approach to cloned food and its potential impacts called for a truly rigorous scientific assessment. At a time when the FDA has repeatedly failed the public, this amendment will ensure that the American consumer is considered before any special interest."

The amendment requires that two rigorous studies be performed before the FDA is able to issue a final decision on food from clones. The amendment directs the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to convene a blue-ribbon panel of leading scientists to review the FDA's initial decision that food from cloned animals is safe. The amendment further requires the NAS to study the potential health impacts of cloned foods entering the nation's food supply, including the possible effects of lessened milk consumption (due to consumer avoidance of cloned food) leading to development of chronic diseases as a result. The bill also directs the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to examine consumer acceptance of cloned foods and the likely impacts they could have on domestic and international markets.

read more (Center for Food Safety)

Lawsuits Announced Against Nation's Biggest Organic Dairy

Class Action Suits Seek Damages from Sale of Fraudulent Milk

Acting on behalf of organic food consumers in 27 states, class action lawsuits are being filed in U.S. federal courts, in St. Louis and Denver, against the nation's largest organic dairy. The suits charge Aurora Dairy Corporation, based in Boulder, Colorado, with allegations of consumer fraud, negligence, and unjust enrichment concerning the sale of organic milk by the company. This past April, Aurora officials received a notice from the USDA detailing multiple and "willful" violations of federal organic law that were found by federal investigators.

"This is the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry," said Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group. Cornucopia's 2005 formal legal complaint first alerted USDA investigators to the improprieties occurring at Aurora. "Aurora was taking advantage of the consumer's good will in the marketplace toward organics, and the USDA has allowed this scofflaw- corporation to continue to operate," Kastel added.

Law firms based in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri have so far have filed one of the lawsuits in Missouri, with another suit, covering dozens of additional states where plaintiffs live, due to be filed in Denver tomorrow. The attorneys are seeking damages from Aurora to reimburse consumers harmed by the company's actions and are requesting that the U.S. District Courts put an injunction in place to halt the ongoing sale of Aurora's organic milk in the nation's grocery stores until it can be demonstrated that the company is complying with federal organic regulations.

Aurora, with $100 million in annual sales, provides milk that is sold as organic and packaged as private label, store-brand products for some of the nation's biggest chains, including Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, Safeway, Wild Oats, and about 20 others.

Independent investigators at the USDA concluded earlier this year that Aurora-with five dairy facilities in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands of cows-had 14 "willful" violations of federal organic regulations. One of the most egregious of the findings was that from December 5, 2003, to April 16, 2007, the Aurora Dairy "labeled and represented milk as organically produced, when such milk was not produced and handled in accordance with the National Organic Program regulations."

Note: Organic Connection only offers milk & dairy products from regional farmers, family businesses, farmer co-operatives or small organic companies. We maintain the preference and ability to communicate with real people in business rather than work with faceless corporations.

read more about the lawsuit (Cornucopia.Org)

Help Enforce the Integrity of Organic Milk Labels!

One of the Center for Food Safety's main goals is to protect the integrity of organic food so that consumers have a dependable, safe, and environmentally sustainable alternative to food produced through industrial agriculture.

Unfortunately, the ongoing actions of one dairy company have violated the trust consumers place in the organic label. On August 29th the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that from 2003 through 2006 Aurora Organic Dairy willfully violated the federal requirements for organic milk production by illegally failing to provide pasture, and by selling milk from cows that were not fully under organic management. The end result is that you - the organic consumer - may have paid a premium to purchase "organic" milk that was not truly organic!

Companies like Aurora hurt the integrity of the organic label, and threaten the future of organic agriculture. While the USDA has partially addressed Aurora's flagrant disregard for the organic standards, Aurora been allowed to continue to operate and many consumers are left feeling duped. CFS expects that there will be legal action taken against Aurora on behalf of consumers, and we want to make sure that YOUR rights are protected.

Aurora sells some of its milk under its own label: High Meadows. It also packages the majority of all private label organic milk and butter in the country for supermarkets such as Safeway, Costco, WalMart, Target and Wild Oats.

Center For Food Safety

Organic Dairy Agrees to Alter Some Practices

By Andrew Martin, New York Times, August 30, 2007

A huge Colorado organic dairy agreed yesterday to stop applying the organic label to some of its milk and make major changes in its operation after the Department of Agriculture threatened to revoke its organic certification for, among other problems, failing to provide enough pasture to its cows.

The dairy, Aurora Organic Dairy, which supplies private-label organic milk for many supermarket chains, must also remove some animals from the organic herd at its Platteville, Colo., farm, according to a Department of Agriculture statement released late yesterday that outlined the terms of a consent agreement with the dairy.

While the U.S.D.A. has taken action against other organic producers, the consent decree with Aurora represents a rare show of force against a leading supplier of products to the rapidly expanding market for organic foods.

Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone Being Driven Off The Market

The Organic Consumers Association has been working to educate and mobilize consumers and retailers (for example Starbucks) to boycott milk and dairy products derived from Monsanto's recombinant (genetically engineered) Bovine Growth Hormone.

The synthetic hormone is banned in most of the world, due to its links to prostate and breast cancer. Although it is still being injected into thousands of dairy herds in the U.S., grassroots pressure from health-minded consumers and public interest groups, like the OCA, have caused Starbucks, Chipotle, and many supermarket chains to put pressure on their dairy suppliers to stop using the drug.

Monsanto is furious that OCA and our allies have educated consumers about the dangers of rBGH, but with recent polls showing 80% of consumers concerned about artificial hormones in their food, there's little that the biotech giant can do to stop rBGH from being driven off the market.

read more

We don't sell homogenized or ultra-pasteurized milk?

There are a number of prominent brands of organic milk that are very readily available in health food stores and in supermarkets. It is great that they are organic, as it is very important to have foods from healthy animals raised in healthy farming systems. But, what about the processing?

Processing of any food (including milk) has the potential of reducing the level of healthy enzymes that are naturally present. It is the enzymes present that help with the natural digestibility and assimilation of the food.

When Louis Pasteur published his discovery of bacteria and the fact that heating could destroy bacteria, the authorities ordered the heating of milk, which came to be known as "pasteurization, " just in case TB was caused by mysterious bacteria in raw milk. As it turned out, it wasn't, but a whole industry had sprung up to pasteurize milk and so the pasteurization of milk became law.

When milk is homogenized, the process activates an undesirable enzyme called Xanthine Oxidase (XO). This enzyme is present only in homogenized dairy products. After being absorbed into the bloodstream, XO attacks plasmalogen (which helps keep arteries from hardening), and is deposited in the arteries. XO enters the body attached to fat globules in milk. Before homogenization, the fat globules are too big to pass through the intestine wall and into the bloodstream. Homogenization makes the fat globules so tiny that they easily pass into the bloodstream. Not to worry, you say - pasteurization kills the XO. True, it kills some of it, but not all. Forty percent is left in the active state.

We legally can't offer you milk that has not been pasteurized, but we can offer you milk that has not been homogenized. A healthier (and more flavorful) choice.