Green Options

Why this matters to green and organic products, is that more and more, stores are offering their own brand of organic and green products. And so now green businesses face the same challenges and pressures with which major consumer package goods manufacturers have struggled for years - How to deal with private label.

What’s the integrity of your organic milk?

The Cornucopia Institute’s Organic Dairy Products Scorecard pulls no punches in its ratings of organic milk producers.

Which brands are at the bottom?

The factory farms of Horizon, Aurora, Woodstock, Natural Prairie, and Shamrock.

The recently updated Organic Dairy Scorecard rates 107 organic dairy producers based on their answers to an in-depth survey asking about:

• the milk supply source (farmstead or open market)
• the amount of pasture time for the herd
• the use of hormones and antibiotics
• the health and longevity of the cows (cull rate)
• the source of replacement animals (organic or conventional farms)
• their organic farm certifier

“Consumers who pay premium prices for organic products do so believing that they are produced with a different kind of environmental ethic, a different kind of animal husbandry ethic, and social justice for family farmers. But not all organic dairy products are alike.” - Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst, Cornucopia Institute

In an exposé of factory farm dairy producers and the brands that threaten to take over the organic dairy industry, Cornucopia’s scorecard helps consumers all over the country to select foods best representing their values.