Sunday, September 30, 2007

Big, Organic Dairy

"Zipping along in a four-seat helicopter, Don Odegard can see Watts Brothers Farms from miles away.

Its dairy cows are dark dots ambling toward an indoor milking carousel. Others munch on grass in irrigated pasture before retreating from the Eastern Washington sun to shelters the length of three football fields. They rest there and eat dried organic hay and other feed before heading to the carousel again.

It's not exactly Old MacDonald's farm.

Watts Brothers, which started milking cows in December, is Washington's largest organic dairy with 2,200 milking cows.

State regulators and some small dairy farmers speak highly of it, but critics question whether milking thousands of cows is worthy of the term "organic."


Read the article