Is your organic milk really organic?

December 30, 1:20 PMFood ExaminerEric Burkett

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The verdant, lush pastures of Aurora's Colorado dairy.
(Photo: Cornucopia Institute)

Organic food can be expensive, so many consumers have found the private labels brands offered by retailers to be an especially attractive option. Private labels are those brands that are manufactured by one company, and then sold under another company’s name. With the costs of everything rising so rapidly, it’s nice to be able to buy organic without completely gutting the grocery budget.

Private labels have other points in their favor: if you shop at stores like Safeway or Wal-Mart, it means you can pick up organic products along with the other items you’d typically buy at the store without making additional trips to places like Whole Foods or some other, high priced specialty retailer. But are you getting what you’re paying for? According to Cornucopia Institute, you’re not.

Cattle grazing contentedly amidst the green fields
of Aurora's Texas dairy farm. (Cornucopia Institute)

A Wisconsin-based farm policy organization, Cornucopia Institute issued a comprehensive report in 2006 rating 68 organic dairies around the United States. Just a few months ago, they updated the list to include 110 major organic dairy producers. In their update, private labels are invariably at the bottom of the ratings.

Brands such as Safeway’s O – Organic, Costco’s Kirkland Signature and High Meadows – Aurora, and Trader Joe’s all scored near the bottom for a number of reasons. Most startling, “not one of the private-label marketers was willing to tell consumers, openly, where its organic milk was purchased,” according to the report.

Many of the store brands – including Wal-Mart, Safeway, Target, and Costco – are supplied by companies like Aurora Organic Dairies, a giant in the organic biz. The problem is that Aurora’s organic housekeeping is highly questionable. Cornucopia has filed a number of complaints against Aurora to the USDA and currently, Aurora is the subject of 19 class action lawsuits by consumers in 40 states.

Included in the findings of fact by the USDA investigative staff were Cornucopia's original
allegations that cattle had been confined to a feed lot, in violation of the standards requiring
grazing, and that they had brought thousands of illegal conventional animals onto their dairies.
And, most poignantly, they repeated the term "willfully," when they found that Aurora had
marketed milk, labeled as organic, that did not have the legal right to be identified as such.

Check out Cornucopia’s ratings and see how your favorite brand stacks up against the others. You may be in for a rude shock.