Organic Connection - Organic food issues & more

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Farmers & Rural Residents Call for Shutting Down "Organic" Factory Dairy

By Andrew Villegas, The Greeley Tribune (Colorado), Oct 25

Aurora Organic Dairy near Gill, CO will be allowed to continue operations despite a substantial fly problem bothering neighbors.

The Board of Weld County Commissioners decided on a split vote Wednesday to continue a hearing until August 2008 that could revoke the dairy's special permit to operate the dairy with 4,500 cows.

Of central concern to dairy neighbors is a substantial fly problem that they say has inundated their properties and homes. Commissioners are giving the dairy until August to absolve the pest situation.

"I would like this dairy to disappear," said Wendy Rogers, who owns a farm next to the dairy. "The dairy is too big to manage naturally."

[Note: Aurora 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.]

USDA lets "Organic" Factory Farms off the Hook

The USDA informed Cornucopia today that it had closed its investigation into Dean Foods' Horizon dairy in Paul, Idaho and another corporate-owned facility in Kennedyville, Maryland. The USDA investigation was in response to a formal legal complaint filed by the Cornucopia Institute in 2006.

"We know from our visit to the Idaho facility that they had no functional pasture meeting legal requirements and were unable to graze their huge dairy herd," said Mark Kastel, codirector of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute. Cornucopia's legal complaint included interviews with the veterinarian and with livestock professionals associated with Horizon's Maryland dairy indicating that they were not pasturing the animals there, either.

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Can Indian Point be attacked by terrorists? asks EPA

By Abby Luby, North County News, November 1.

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to know just how vulnerable the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants are to a terrorist attack. They want the information to be part of the decision in the license renewal process for the Buchanan based plants.

The EPA's comment is based on a court decision ruling against the NRC last year in the case San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (June 2006) where the Ninth Circuit court decided that the NRC was wrong in not considering public and industrial projects as terrorist targets.