Sham Organic Milk Will Remain A Sham (for now)

"QAI is North America's largest for-profit organic certifier. Its job--along with the 94 other USDA-accredited certifiers-- is to confirm by inspection whether the producers, processors, handlers and retailers seeking the "Certified Organic" stamp are adhering to the 2002 organic standards. But controversy has erupted over what critics are calling QAI's loose interpretation of the standards--and whether the San Diego certifier is, in effect, allowing companies to bend, if not break, the rules.

Mark Kastel, cofounder of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based organic watchdog group, dubbed QAI the "corporate certifier of convenience" for its propensity to certify most of the "suspect" large-scale dairy operations that his organization is monitoring. According to Kastel, many of these "factory farms," which supply milk to Horizon (owned by Dean Foods) and Aurora Dairy (which markets under the Woodstock Farms brand), are skirting the rules by confining thousands of cows in feedlot-like conditions with minimal time grazing onpasture."

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