Milking the Consumer?

Last week I bought conventional (i.e. non-organic) milk, cheese and yogurt.

Hold your applause, nay-sayers!

Well, the fact was that I had spent a small fortune on organic milk the last several months, only to be dumping most of it down the drain when my finicky M would refuse to drink her milk. I was feeling like I was literally pouring money down the drain. At over $6.00 for a 2 litre bottle, it was really cutting into my (non-existant, but desperately needed) grocery budget. Husband gasped at the price when he found one of my grocery bills. After some debating about the merits of organic dairy, he insisted that if I was going to buy organic that I only buy organic for the kidlets and conventional for him.

Then I started wondering. What makes organic dairy so much better than conventional that you need to pay nearly twice the price?

A friend had mentioned that she had heard that Canada doesn't allow the use of growth hormones or antibiotics. I thought this needed more investigation. After some basic research, I found this was indeed the case. Hurray for Canada! Those poor Americans, drinking Bovine Growth Hormone in addition to their milk! I just watched a little snippet of "The World According to Monsanto", a movie about the mega corporation that is basically taking over worldwide food production with their GMOs. Really worth watching. The movie discussed the links between BGH and breast and prostate cancers that the manufacturer knew about, but chose to overlook.

Apparently the manufacturer, Monsanto, even tried to bribe officials at Health Canada in order to get BGH passed in Canada. A few brave scientists stood up against the mammoth corporation and were later fired from Health Canada. Curious. I guess this is a whole other issue about food safety and large corporations influencing the decision-makers. Scary, but I digress.

I also found out that Canada doesn't allow antibiotic residues in dairy milk. Antibiotics are allowed, as the Canadian Dairy Association says it is cruel to not allow an animal to be treated for an illness, but the milk is dumped until there are no detectable residues found in the milk. http://www.dairygoodness.ca/en/consumers/food/dairy-products/milk/the-canadian-dairy-farm.htm

Organic milk is often touted as being "healthier" but I found an interesting, and rather one-sided study, that takes issue with that statement. In this study, the Centre for Dairy Research found that there is no marked difference in the nutritional value of organic milk versus conventional milk. The article states that the most important factor in determining a more nutritious cow milk(i.e. such as containing more Omega 3s) is access to high quality, fresh pasture. http://www.cdr.wisc.edu/pdf/07julrustyorganic.pdf

So, this seems to makes sense but don't forget to look at where the article is coming from. It doesn't discuss any particular "disadvantages" of conventional milk. It may not be the most independent study but it does acknowledge that feed is an important factor in the quality of milk. This is one bonus point for any milk that comes from happy cows that are able to roam and graze in a nice pasture.

At this point, I was really leaning towards conventional milk because the differences between the two did not seem significant. I mean, if conventional milk doesn't have antibiotic residues or BGH, what am I buying organic for?

I went to stock up on our week's worth of conventional (Dairyland) milk, yogurt and cheese. Buying it gave me a sense of freedom from my earlier adherence to the principal that organic must always be better...but it made me question, maybe it was at least better sometimes?'

Then I began thinking about pesticides in dairy as they have been on the forefront of my mind lately with the work we are doing to make Richmond pesticide-free (well, cosmetic pesticide- free). The Organic Center (http://www.organic-centre.org/) is a fantastic resource for looking at this issue. Of course, they do want to further organic farming methods, but they do so with peer-reviewed and extensively researched materials, mostly from U.S. goverment sources such as the USDA.

Their article on pesticides in milk was very informative (http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Milk_Pesticides_FAQs.pdf). To summarize, the USDA's Pesticide Data Program tested milk in 2004 and found that all conventional and organic milk samples contained the pesticides DPA and DDE (a breakdown product of DDT). This was expected and is "normal" as these pesticides still persist in the environment even though they were banned in the 1970s. It will take years for them to fall off into undetectable levels but apparently, it will happen. But the interesting part of this study was that 24% of the conventional milk tested contained synthetic pyethroids and almost 9% contained a product of an insecticide called carbofuran. The organic milk did not detect any level of either of these pesticides.

The most interesting part of this article was that they compared the levels of pesticides you'd find in an apple to that found in dairy. Apparently, if you are concerned with pesticides, you should start with buying organic apples! 100 conventional apple samples contained an average of 1,210 parts per billion of a pesticide known as diphenylamine but the conventional dairy samples contained an upper level sample of 0.5 parts per billion. This study doesn't consider all pesticides but knowing the basic comparisons was informative.

The problem with pesticides is that they build up in little increments over time in your body (from your food, your lawn products, from your drinking water, etc.) Even if 0.5 ppb seems small, it is still a measureable amount of pesticide in something you, or your child, are consuming. There is growing evidence that pesticides are toxic to humans and can lead to serious health problems, such as: miscarriages, early birth weights, leukemia, brain tumours, lymphoma and cancers that affect the kidney, prostate, pancreas and lung. The Canadian Cancer Society also states that babies and children are at an even greater risk from pesticides because their immune systems are still developing.

Well, the search continued... and I was really interested to learn more about the differences between organic and conventional dairy locally, so I called Avalon Dairy. I assumed that Avalon Dairy was a small, local dairy that was probably as close to "organic" as I needed if I was going to go the conventional route. The glass bottles just screamed "buy me because I am from a small, local dairy with happy cows".

But apparently Avalon's conventional dairy comes from a dairy pool. Yep, no small scale dairy but a processing plant. Their milk does come from various dairy farmers in the Fraser Valley, where one requirement is that the cows are pastured at least 6-8 hours a day. The milk is brought in to their plant and processed in much the same way it would be at larger dairies; it is pasteurized, homogenized and bottled.

But it was their other side- their organic dairy that was really made me question some of my earlier ideas of going conventional. They stated that their organic dairy cows are from two certified organic dairies- Bradner Farms in Abbotsford and one on Barnston Island. To begin, the cows' drinking water is filtered four times, the cows have at least 16 hours on organic pasture a day (more than twice what a conventional milking cow would get) and then their supplemental feed is certified organic, and free from GMOs (another topic that comes up in the Monsanto film that is fascinating and terrifying all at once!) Avalon's website also states that they don't use antibiotics at all in their organic dairy and rely on holistic methods to address animal health, which is required by their organic certification. (http://www.avalondairy.com/certified.html)

The other major organic milk producer in B.C. is Olympic Dairy. They state on their website that they are certified organic by the Certified Organic Association of British Columbia (COABC), and that the term organic, "describes a process of food production that avoids the use of synthetic inputs such as chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, chemical growth regulators/hormones and antibiotics." (http://www.olympicdairy.com/health-education/organic.html)

Sounds pretty good. It seems like the cows, the environment and public health is held in high regard with their organic practices. Since good quality and quantity of pasture consumed by cows seems to determine a more nutritious milk, and organic cows are getting significantly more pasture time, this would lend a point to the organic side. I can also be confident that no GMOs (or, aptly named, "Franken-foods") are splashing into my child's breakfast cereal. Another point! What is that 2? 3 points? I am starting to think that maybe I may have acted too rashly when pushing aside my organic beliefs this time.

This week I bought organic dairy again. Well, it was on sale. I will be buying it whenever I can now that I know how much better organic can be. That said, I have to say I also feel a certain level of safety that at least our goverment has banned BGH in milk and that when we go out for dinner, M and E can have a glass of conventional milk. But, if we are ever in the U.S., then they will be allowed to drink anything they want as long as it isn't milk!

Bottoms up!