Milk is Milk Blog by Alex Avery

Today is a first for us. As many of my readers know, my organization - the Center for Global Food Issues - has been striving to educate consumers about false and misleading dairy labeling claims using Internet media. In addition to this blog, the Milk is Milk Web site posts frequent news articles, action items, and links to our partner sites. While some of our efforts have extended to offline activities (such as submitting a request to the CEO of Wal-Mart that his company might embrace non-misleading labeling practices on their organic offerings and running newspaper ads in select papers in key dairy producing regions), the majority of our efforts have been focused online.

Well, that is about to change a little. The Center for Global Food Issues will be launching three billboards that will, quite literally, take the Milk is Milk campaign to the streets. The billboards, two of which will be unveiled today, will be placed along Route 99 in California. “Why California?” you ask. Because, even though you might think that when you go to your local Whole Foods that the food is being sourced locally, the fact of the matter is, as one small family farmer in Connecticut put it, “Almost all the organic food in this country comes out of California. And five or six big California farms dominate the whole industry.” Unfortunately, California just happens to be the state where much of these organic interests exist, and where much of the misleading messages about conventional milk comes from. Check out our press release here.

To all the avid readers of this blog, don’t worry. We’ll continue to fight this good fight online as well. I’ll make sure that my blog is updated consistently, and in fact, we’ve just recently made some improvements to our Web site that will syndicate its articles more widely. Heck, you can just think of these billboards as offline banner ads. And for my California readers, keep your eyes open and let me know what you think about our new billboards. After all, everyone - not just people with access to the Internet - deserves to know that milk is milk.

Milk is Milk blog by Alex Avery

The Pew Trust is bankrolling a $2.6 million national study on industrial farming with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. The report will address environmental impacts, animal welfare issues, and the use of antibiotics. Chaired by former Kansas Governor John Carlin, the 18-member commission includes, among others, former Clinton administration USDA Secretary Dan Glickman (who as head of the film industry lobby, has remained conspicuously silent on recent and upcoming anti-ag movies including “Fast Food Nation”); tree-sitter and jailbird Daryl Hannah; $10/pound “natural” bacon purveyor Bill Niman and several scientists who support animal rights. Pew typically seeks to play a “middle of the road” space to bring disparate parties together through these types of initiatives. However, they usually end up simply giving credibility and empowerment to the folks who oppose traditional and conventional agriculture (and animal agriculture). According to the Des Moines Register, “The livestock commission does not have an agenda going in,” said spokesman Ralph Loglisci. “My biggest concern is that industry not be concerned,” Loglisci said.” Industry should indeed be concerned. The Center for a Livable Future promotes “Meatless Mondays” and has ties to the GRACE Factory Farm Project, which helped produce the anti-livestock production movies “Meatrix” and “Meatrix II.” GRACE, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, is funded at more than $2 million a year by its founder and principal Helaine Heilbrunn Lerner. Lerner has contributed nearly $9 million to GRACE since 2000, primarily through her $66 million foundation the Tamarind Fund. ActivistCash writes that in 2001 Lerner-sponsored funds “jointly gave $900,000 to another Johns Hopkins program– this one tied to the $100-million Humane Society of the United States — for an animal-rights program targeting lifesaving medical research protocols that use animals,” the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. If Pew truly has no agenda, they should exclude their advocacy partners who have a clear animal rights and anti-animal agriculture bias. on industrial farming with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. The report will address environmental impacts, animal welfare issues, and the use of antibiotics. Chaired by former Kansas Governor John Carlin, the 18-member commission includes, among others, former Clinton administration USDA Secretary Dan Glickman (who as head of the film industry lobby, has remained conspicuously silent on recent and upcoming anti-ag movies including “Fast Food Nation”); tree-sitter and jailbird Daryl Hannah; $10/pound “natural” bacon blog by Alex Avery The Pew Trust is bankrolling a on industrial farming with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. The report will address environmental impacts, animal welfare issues, and the use of antibiotics. Chaired by former Kansas Governor John Carlin, the 18-member commission includes, among others, former Clinton administration USDA Secretary Dan Glickman (who as head of the film industry lobby, has remained conspicuously silent on recent and upcoming anti-ag movies including “Fast Food Nation”); tree-sitter and jailbird Daryl Hannah; $10/pound “natural” bacon

Milk is Milk Blog by Alex Avery It’s hard to say, from OCA’s perspective, whether the Week of Action with Public Citizen’s Food and Water Watch urging Starbucks to buy milk produced without the use of productivity supplements was a success or not. I saw only a couple of mainstream news articles about it, and a press release from DC quotes Adam Eidenger, a pro-hemp, anti-baseball employee of the Organic Consumers Association. From where I sit, the quotes from an anonymous Starbucks spokesperson were very telling, and confirmed what I have written here in the past. It is NOT consumers who are asking for premium priced niche market milk.

The Ithaca Times published an article on the local event in Ithaca. This article quotes Tony Del Plato of Food & Water Watch - apparently no real consumers were available in Ithaca either. The article also quotes an anonymous Starbucks spokesperson countering FWW claims as saying, “During the last five years, Starbucks began making single-serve flavored organic milk, organic milk for our hand-crafted beverages and organic soymilk as an alternative to cow’s milk available to our U.S. company-operated stores. While consumer demand for organic milk in our stores is very minimal, Starbucks will continue to provide our customers with the choice of organic milk. Offering these choices is an appropriate way to provide products that meet Starbucks consumers’ expectations regarding the complex subject of bovine growth hormones.”

Bravo to Starbucks for listening to their customers and not to those special interest groups who claim to speak for them. I think it’s time for a group of consumers to file suit against OCA for giving consumers a bad name. Any interested parties please contact me here.