By Kirsten,

Thought Milk? campaign outreach flier.

We wanted to have something to post around our campus and town to attract people to our blog..Something eye catching and maybe a bit playful.  I ended up making this missing cow/milk carton flier to play up the fact that irresponsibly run farms have unhappy cows and lesser quality milk. And who wants that? Look at him! He’s too cute to be sad ;). Just another reason to know where your food is coming from…

By Mike

Russ wrote in an earlier blog:

Ron’s advice to consumers is to know your farmer. That’s our advice, too. Are smaller farms better, in terms of human, animal, and environmental health? We certainly think that it’s easier for a smaller farm to use better practices, but larger farms aren’t necessarily an evil. But unless you know your farmer, you have no way of knowing what kind of farm you’re supporting.

This is the central message of our campaign – know where your milk comes from. Another important message that comes with this, then, is be willing to pay more for your milk. This does not just mean buy the milk that has the highest price tag. It means be willing to take a few extra steps to try to find out where your milk comes from.  Doing a little research, asking questions, and contributing to the cause of campaigns like this one are the kinds of ways of paying more that we have in mind. 

When you start to think about where your milk comes from you may develop a better understanding of the costs to society, animals, and the environment that aren’t sufficiently captured in market prices. This is a central theme to our outreach (see our multi-media outreach materials). These unquantifiable costs provide wiggle room in terms of farm production styles and it is really up to the farm in most cases to determine which and how much of these costs they will incur. The incentive to be neglectful with these other costs surely is there—it’s cheaper, in terms of time, money, and effort—you name it, so it’s up to the rest of us to do a little quality assurance.

It’s costly to follow sound farming practices. For example, why pay more for a larger plot of land when you can squeeze hundreds or thousands of cows uncomfortably on a smaller plot? The product will still be the same (all else being equal) and can be sold for the same price as the milk from another farm that opted for the larger plot size-to-cow ratio. With more cows huddled closer together, it becomes easier to produce more and therefore make more profit (all else being equal). Cow well-being is just one example of an unquantifiable cost. With a little thought you could come up with many more, anything from employee stress to cutting corners with environmental stewardship – pick your favorite unquantifiable cost and run with it.

Without being checked, these “other” costs have the potential to continue to get worse and impose indirect costs to you, society, and the environment, etc. This is because in a competitive market environment, farmers always need to increase profit. One way to do this is to increase capital and become more efficient (e.g., more land, cows, labor, machinery, etc.). The problem is that when there is more, say, cows to manage and machinery to operate, it becomes increasingly difficult (therefore costly) to continue with sound practices. For example, as mentioned in an earlier blog, the managers at Ronnybrook Farm know the names of all of their cows, presumably translating into more consideration for each. If they tacked on an extra hundred cows then they would have to develop a more costly system for keeping track, maybe even causing them to scrap that aspect of their practice.

Similar to the wiggle room for which suite of unquantifiable costs to opt for, farmers have the option to decide how to develop their operations to increase profit and remain in business. The mega farms in California that operate thousands of cows might opt to simply buy more cows and pack them in or go into contract with processing companies that are aligning themselves with popular marketing schemes (such as the organic market). Other farms might be a little more creative, especially if profit is not their only motivating factor. This is the case for Ronnybrook Farm. To remain competitive, they decided to invest in machinery that would allow them to bottle their milk onsite, making it possible for them to sell directly to the public. This was an attempt to increase profit, but it has also served to undermine the very problem that we’ve identified in our campaign – there is no way for us to know the source of most of the milk we buy. By investing in a means to sell directly to the public, Ronnybrook has made it possible for consumers to see how their milk is made and can therefore keep track of any indirect costs that they don’t want to support.

We don’t expect people to drive from NYC up to Ronnybrook Farm every time they run out of milk. Although commendable, that would incur undue costs of its own – e.g., adding to the unemployment count. Traveling upstate for a gallon of milk would not even solve the problem. The fact is that no individual can fix the problems with milk farming. This is something that needs to be done on a collective level, to limit the collective costs that neglectful practices incur. All we are asking is that people think about where their milk comes from and think twice before they reach for a gallon of milk in the local food market. It is hoped that this thought will lead to other actions, such as contributing to campaign efforts to help reveal the sources of the milk we buy.

Thought Milk Campaign

By Russ

This blog, and the campaign to raise awareness to problems with the U.S. dairy industry, was born out of a humble desire to know where our milk comes from. We thought that following the flow of milk up stream to the farm would expose the dangers of industrial farming, and argue our case for us: smaller farms are better for cows, people, and the environment.

We faced a road block almost immediately: how do you find a dairy farm? As other blog posts have mentioned, finding the source of your milk is very difficult. But we needed to see a dairy farm. We needed to see how milk is processed - not only for the sake of our campaign, but for our own piece of mind. Like everyone that drinks milk, we have some skin in the game.

Our quest led us to Ronnybrook Farm, about 110 miles north of New York City. We found Ronnybrook Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket, where they sell milk, and other dairy products, that they produce and package on their farm. Besides making delicious dairy products, Ronnybrook is in the business of connecting with consumers. They want their customers to know where their milk comes from, and they were happy for us pay them a visit.

Ronnybrook Farm is a beautiful place, and visiting the farm just feels good. We’d encourage you to peruse the photos of our visit. They are a mid-sized dairy farm by industry standards, milking around 100 cows. They pasture their cows, cut their own hay, and cultivate other feed crops for the herd. In 1991, they mortgaged the farm (which had been in the family for generations) to finance their own bottling opperation. It was the only way to stay in business, Ron, the owner, told us.

They know all their cows by name at Ronnybrook, and they take wonderful care of their herd. They also take great pains to produce raw milk that has very low bacteria and somatic cell counts. And when they contract with other farmers to buy a portion of their milk, they require those farmers to adhere to the same practices because they think it’s important. In short - they care about what they do.

We asked Ron, and his assistant plant manager, Amanda, if they thought smaller farms were better. They said no. According to Ron, they milk 100 cows because it’s what they are best able to manage. In his view, farmers that milk 500 or more cows, even in a confinement operation (CAFO), can take excellent care of their cows and produce great milk; it just takes much more work.

Ron’s advise to consumers is to know your farmer. That’s our advise, too. Are smaller farms better, in terms of human, animal, and environmental health? We certainly think that it’s easier for a smaller farm to use better practices, but larger farms aren’t necessarily an evil. But unless you know your farmer, you have no way of knowing what kind of farm you’re supporting.

Go to the Greenmarkets and talk to dairy farmers. Look up a farm in the yellow pages and schedule a visit. And most importantly, we need to have more transparency in the U.S. dairy industry. If we don’t know where our milk is coming from, we won’t be able to use our consumer dollars to improve the industry. We’re starting a letter writing campaign, and we have a letter that you can download and send to your congressional representative. Believe it or not, we actually can make a difference. And we’ll never know how great the change will be unless we try.

What are we really drinking?

By Kristen

We’ve all heard the benefits of dairy products in our diets. Milk can be a great source of vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin A & B, carbohydrates, phosphorous, magnesium, protein, zinc, and riboflavin. However, depending on where your milk and other dairy products are sourced, we may also be ingesting excess hormones and antibiotics. On top of that, the cows often live in unsanitary conditions that harm the animals and the environment.

Large-scale dairy farms house hundreds of cows in small, confined areas. The cows are forced to stand in filthy pens, are not allowed to graze, and have a much higher rate of contracting and spreading diseases. Growth hormones, such as rBGH and rBST, are injected to increase milk yields but can cause serious health problems for the cows.

Factory farms also create huge amounts of animal waste that is contained in open-air lagoons (ew!) and have been known to overflow or leak (double ew!). This can contaminate your ground water, as well as surrounding rivers, lakes, and streams.

Cows are grazers by nature. They like munching on grass in the fields with their buddies. Why would you want to eat a product made by a creature that is forced to eat grain (and god knows what else) and pumped with hormones and antibiotics? It’s all about knowing where your food is from, and by purchasing dairy products from small-scale dairy farms that practice healthy, eco-friendly methods, you can sleep easier knowing that you, the cows, and the environment are as healthy as all can be!

The links below have oodles of information regarding how truly icky all that factory farming is and how great organic milk can be.

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/dairy/#breeding
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Antibiotics-Factory-Farming-Facts.htm

Milk Money

By Russ

I have an image in my head of a dairy farmer rounding up a herd of milking cows, and leading them from the pasture to the milking parlor. The milking parlor is, of course, in a red barn with white trim, and the farmer wears overalls and a straw hat.

Okay, so the overall-clad farmer and the red barn are a bit silly, but the idea of cows roaming on pasture just seems right. And it is. Cows are grazing animals. I like to think that the milk in the dairy aisle of my grocery store comes from cows that spend their days on pasture like the happy cows from California that I’ve seen on TV. The cold truth at the bottom of my gallon of milk, however, is that pasture raised cows are just too expensive for the conventional dairy market.

Consider, just briefly, the numbers involved. The milk that most of us buy at the grocery store is sold by farmers on the commodity market in units of 100 pounds (a hundredweight). At the time that I am writing this, the commodity price in the U.S. for milk is $12.85/hundredweight. Farmers in the State of New York that make even a modest attempt to pasture their milking herds carry costs of around $15-$18/hundredweight - a loss of $3-$5 for every 11.6 gallons of milk they produce. Dairy farmers are losing their overalls trying to keep their cows on pasture.

The economics the dairy industry forces farmers to choose to either: (1) get dirty (2) get out of business or (3) get creative. Fortunately for milk drinkers, more farmers are starting to choose option three.

In the past, the only way for a dairy farmer to capture the full value of his or her milk was to make value-added products like cheese, ice cream, or yogurt. Increasingly, however, dairy farmers are bottling and marketing their own milk. Dairies like Milk-Thistle Farm, Battenkill Valley Creamery, and Ronnybrook Farm - all in Up State New York - deliver bottled milk from their farms directly to the New York Metro area. The milk is fresh, the cows are humanely raised, and you know right where it came from. True, it is more expensive (about twice as much as the mass-produced options) but that cost reflects the price of pasture-raising dairy cattle. In the words of Ron, of Ronnybrook Farm, “If we sold our milk on the commodity market, we wouldn’t exist.”

Of course not all farms can bottle their own milk, and the few that do could never produce enough milk to keep all of New York City in milk mustaches. But there is another option for consumers that hold much more promise for gaining real market share: the humane co-op. Hudson Vally Fresh, was founded in 2006, uniting small, conscious dairy farmers to ensure that their farms could continue to operate. Each farmer agrees to a set of humane practices, and the co-op guarantees the farmer at least $20/hundredweight for their milk. Hudson Valley Fresh milk is still more expensive, but milk should be more expensive.

Ask your local grocer to stock Hudson Vally Fresh milk. With higher the demand, more farms will be able to join the co-op. Then when you pour yourself a glass of milk, the image in your head of a farmer herding cows in from pasture won’t be so far from the truth.

mixed bag

There are horror stories being told about ground beef. Many of them - like the myths(or truths) about hot dogs - revolve around the fact that no one really knows what’s in ground beef. While it may or may not be true that ground beef is really hooves and lips, there are real reasons to be suspicious of the product. An October, 2009 article in the New York Times reported on an outbreak of E. coli in the U.S. that had been linked to tainted ground beef. It seems that you really don’t know what’s in that little pink hillock in your freezer, and more importantly, you have no idea where the “meat” came from.

So what does this have to do with milk? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have no way of knowing where your milk comes from, either. In an earlier blog posting, we have a link to a website that allows you to use the source code on the dairy products you buy to find out where it was processed. But that link only allows you to see where the milk in your gallon of skim was bottled, not the farm where the milk originated. The truth is that the milk in your refrigerator probably came from many different farms - hundreds in fact. The major milk distributors in New York City have contracts with anywhere from 200 to 500 dairy farms, and they mix the milk together in huge vats before bottling. It is actually not possible for you to trace your milk back to the cow. Not even the distributor can do that.

“But it’s all milk, what’s the big deal?” First of all, I’d encourage you to read the New York Times article linked at the beginning of this entry, because it will do a much better job of arguing my case. I’ll do my best in the mean time. The tainted meat linked to the 2007 E. coli outbreak was mixed together form many different sources that came from multiple countries. That made it very difficult to locate the source of the outbreak, leading to more potential cases of E. coli, and a much larger recall of ground meat. Not to mention the fact that a great many consumers would likely be wary of buying a pound of ground beef that was advertised to be from Uruguay, Bolivia, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. And yet we buy a gallon of milk that comes from 500 farms once a week.

Alright. I should make a disclaimer here: milk is pasteurized. That means they heat up the raw milk to the point where all the harmful bacteria are killed. So before anyone reading this starts to panic about getting E. coli from their breakfast cereal, take a deep breath - it’s highly unlikely. But to my way of thinking, that almost makes it worse. Since milk is mixed together from hundreds of sources, you have no way of knowing what type of farm produced it, or what the quality of the raw milk was. But the pasteurization process masks these issues in a superficially healthy product.

We need to lobby for better bottling and labeling practices. Stay tuned to the blog for suggested actions. That glass of milk you had with breakfast might not kill you, but is that all that matters?

Ronny enjoying fresh yogart

Snapshot of the 2+2=5 video by Radiohead. Perhaps a little on the creep… Click the picture again to watch the video

where is my milk from?

You’d be surprised. Did you know different brands of milk often come from the same dairy - and the same cows? Often, the same dairy provides milk for store and brand names, only differentiating them by their label!

Most dairy products, especially milk have a state and plant code. Go get the milk out of your fridge and, and find out which dairy it comes from.

Type in the code onto the milk carton to the left to find out where yours is from!

This tool only allows you to find where milk was processed. The code used to track down the plant is required by the USDA. Knowing where the processing plant that distributed your milk does provide insight into the farm source. Multiple farms supply these processing plants and the assemblage of farms involved changes regularly, providing no way for us to track down which farms are producing the milk that comes out of these plants.

Try plant code: 09-111. This is the plant for Wholesome Farms, the company that Hunter College in NYC is in contract with.

NY Fresh Farm Guide

Here’s a link to the Farm Fresh Guide, that lists nearly 2000 farms offering food, products, and services directly to the public throughout NY state