timboerger.net Not afraid of a few strong opinions.

Something Fishy on the Horizon

As a rule, we try to buy organic when we can.  In fact, I wrote about this once and how difficult it was to adjust to conventional grocery stores that do not really carry much for organics.  We've definitely had to make some adjustments, sacrificing what we had to but going organic when we could.

Recently though, we were looking at the brands of milk we were buying.  I drink a lot of milk.  Between a latte or two, a glass of milk for dinner and maybe one before I go to bed, I burn through milk pretty quickly.  Problem is that most of the organic milk around here comes mostly in half gallon cartons.  That's fine, but we end up paying for two or three of them at a time and at a premium as well.  Back in Maryland, we at least had some choices and the prices, while still more than conventional milk, were more competitive overall.  It seems strange to me that in the heart of dairy land, it's difficult to find organic milk in the grocery store.

Last week, we had a bit of a dilemma.  We were shopping at one of the bigger groceries around here and I needed milk, but I really would have liked a gallon of the stuff rather than the half gallon cartons.  We bought a gallon of Horizon Organic milk.  Something tugged at my memories about that there was something wrong with Horizon.  I couldn't place it though and didn't really think about it much except when I poured a glass of milk.  Finally this morning, I decided to poke around a bit on the ol' Internet and see if I could prod my memory and settle this once and for all.  A simple search for Horizon Organic though turned up a number of articles, both pro and con.  At some point, it was difficult to sort who was telling the truth and who was lying as it seemed that every site had some sort of agenda.  Something didn't quite pass the sniff test for me and I was starting to regret my purchase of their milk.

I decided that maybe I should look into all of the brands that I buy.  To that end, I looked up Stonyfield Organic.  First thing to jump out at me was the lack of disparate articles turned up in the search.  There was no great protest to Stonyfield, no calling for a boycott or questioning their commitment to organic dairy.  It raised some more warning flags for me with Horizon.

The search on Stonyfield did lead me to an interesting article from BusinessWeek back in 2006 called The Organic Myth.  Set aside the belligerent tone towards organics that seems rife in the article, there's some good information available on the challenges that organic producers face.  The most valuable information I got from the article was a reference to the Cornucopia Institute.  On their website, they have an ongoing dairy brand report card which is continually updated and listed every organic brand I had purchased recently.

What I found out is that there are some very good options for local organic milk, yogurt, cheese and the like.  I also found out that for the most part, we bought our organic dairy well.  But not recently.  Horizon scored a zero in their survey, not just for not responding to their inquiries.  The BusinessWeek article revealed some serious problems in terms of the ethical treatment of their dairy herd.  One big issue is their huge dairy farm in the a part of Idaho known for it's constant drought.  Many people equate organic to not only be free from antibiotics, pesticides and other non-natural additives,  but also sustainable land management.  Raising milking herds on a desert is not a sustainable practice.  Add into this that they are owned by conventional food giant, Dean Foods and the organic claims seem to be following more the letter of the law rather than the spirit intended.

It's not easy buying organics.  You have to do your research.  You have to find some time to get to know the people who are doing the farm work.  You have to be comfortable spending twice as much as you could probably buy at a conventional grocery.  But because of that, we know more of what we're putting into our bodies and hopefully that will make us happier and healthier in the long run.  I feel better prepared now going into the grocery as far as dairy is concerned and I can make a better informed choice.  Which means that Horizon is out.  If given the choice between Horizon and "conventional" dairy, I'll save my money and buy conventional.  Horizon doesn't meet my standards and I feel no obligation to support them.