Cattle Confusion

"We are therefore not surprised to learn that Horizon and Aurora have been busy lobbying the USDA to keep pasture and feed requirements vague--hoping to deceive consumers by claiming that organic dairy animals must have access to pasture, but then not requiring a particular minimum percentage by weight of their feed--at least 30%--to come from pasture grass. What this means in practical terms is that the USDA will soon propose new federal organic dairy standards that allow so-called organic factory farms to create the impression that their milk cows are being grazed on pasture, while in fact unscrupulous certifiers and bureaucrats in the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) will allow them to get away with "symbolic access to pasture" i.e. intensively confined, stressed-out dairy cows briefly chewing their cuds outside giant milking parlors in between their three-times-a-day milkings."

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