Now that The Cornucopia Institute has made public a document that indicates that the United States Dairy Association discovered that the nation?s largest organic factory-farm dairy operator “willfully” violated the federal organic standards, it has also been revealed that one of its certifiers, the Colorado Department of Agriculture had also “willfully” failed to legally perform their oversight responsibilities under these same organic federal regulations. Understandably, American organic consumers are quite up in arms about the fact that one of the most commonly purchased organic products may indeed have not been organic at all for the longest time, and now questions are being raised regarding the legitimacy of other products that are labeled “organic.” If this ignorance of regulations could have occurred so willfully in these various instances, how are we as American consumers to know what is legitimately organic and what is simply being labeled as such even though all the guidelines are being ignored?
The situation at hand involves USDA investigations of the Aurora Organic Diary which operates factory farms in Texas and in Colorado, and their certifiers, that were brought into action by formal legal complained filed by The Cornucopia Institute in 2005. These investigations confirmed suspicions held by The Cornucopia Institute that this giant industrial-sized dairy which milked thousands of cows in each of its respective locations, were not providing their cattle with pastures, as is required by law, had illegally brought conventional (non-organic) cattle into their operations and had committed a series of other very serious violations of organic production. Thus are the need for research and an outcry for proper check-ups of these various “organic” institutions necessary by the American organic consumer, because we eat this way for our health and for the health of the earth, so we must stay on top of making sure that we are truly consuming what we think we are buying.