To make milk worthy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic label, cows cannot be treated with antibiotics or synthetic growth hormones. The animals must be given feed produced without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And the cows must have "access to pasture."
The pasture part is problematic because the government has not spelled out what "access to pasture" means. As for milk marketed as "grass-fed," the FDA has not defined the term at all.
On this point alone, Big Dairy and food activists find common ground.
"Grazing is the key," wrote Rusty Bishop, director of the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "The problem is that the majority of organic fluid milk on the market is from cows on pasture an average of 60 partial days, and pasture grasses make up less than 5 percent of their dryweight feed intake."
Bishop's research center bills itself as independent but receives substantial funding from the milk industry. His comments about grazing are part of a June 2007 study that otherwise pooh-poohs the purported advantages of organic milk.
But his grazing gripe could have easily come out of the mouth of John Peck, who hails from way on the other side of the milk debate. The executive director of the Madison, Wis.-based Family Farm Defenders worries about factory farms co-opting the organic label and wants the government to establish grazing standards.
So while he agrees with Bishop on grazing, Peck's milk mantra couldn't be more different. "The best milk is milk that's unhomogenized, unpasteurized, grass-fed, in a glass bottle, from a farm within 20, 30 miles of you," Peck said.
That sort of certainty is harder to come by in the supermarket aisles, even for consumers up on the latest nutrition news.
Greg Resch, general manager of David's Natural Market in Columbia, buys Horizon Organic Milk Plus DHA Omega-3 Whole Milk Ultra Pasteurized for his family. The milk costs a whopping $4.99 for a half-gallon at David's, a small store that devotes an entire four-door refrigerated case to milk.
Resch chooses that particular milk because it is supplemented with docosahexaenoic acid or DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid that's derived from algae and thought to promote brain development. His kids aren't big on fish, another source of the nutrient, so the milk is his way of slipping a little brain food into their diet.
