Organic farming and the hidden corporate agenda

The meeting on activist influence on agriculture in general and milk pricing in particular that I mentioned last month took place today. The main topic was the damage that is done to the image of regular milk by claims by organic companies that their milk lacks something that ordinary moo juice has…in this case antibiotics (strictly illegal) hormones (all milk has ‘em), pesticides, (not legal either) and yucky stuff (not a very scientific term and kind of hard to prove). These claims, made on cartons and in store displays as well as on buckets and buckets of Internet sites are illegal.

They constitute false advertising.

Organic, BST-free, and plain old store brand milk are chemically indistinguishable.
These claims make regular milk seem unhealthy and encourage consumers to either spend much more money than there is any reason to or to give up drinking milk altogether.

I was fascinated to hear that many of the massive anti-“factory” farming campaigns that reach public eyes are funded directly or indirectly by organic food giants such as Horizon and Organic Valley. (On that note, our speaker told us that some folks consider herds of over fifty cows to constitute a factory farm. Guess that makes Northview assembly line all the way. We happen to have just a couple more than that.) I always wondered what spawned such passionate dedication to a food and farming ideal that is actually not nearly as popular as attention by the mainstream media might suggest.
Getting paid for that rabid activism explains a lot.
Interestingly one of the entries in the blogroll, Milk is Milk, was mentioned.

Although the meeting was sponsored by Monsanto, the company which sells Posilac, so the speaker wasn’t exactly unbiased, he reiterated many points on activism that I have belabored for years in the Farm Side.
And here on Northview as far as that goes.

I’m glad I was able to attend. The speaker was so good at his job that two hours went by as if they were nanoseconds, the subject was captivating, and I will probably get a column out of it for next week.
Plus we got a nice lunch and a chance to catch up with other farmers who don’t get out any more than we do.
All in all, a valuable morning.