The Cornucopia Institute (CI) has recently completed a survey of organic milks, evaluating the methods of production and "rating the integrity" of various producers of organic milk and dairy products. Predictably, the companies which received the lowest scores are the largest ones. Their study is designed to reveal the "best" organically produced dairy and the worst - which it deems to be no better than conventionally produced dairy. Fortunately for consumers, CI says that the vast majority of all branded organic dairy products are produced at farms that follow legal and ethical standards.

The rating system had categories which ranged from "outstanding" down to "brand name", which in and of itself should tell you something about the bias inherent in the survey. Just like the article over at the Slate, there seems to be no distinction made between organic and small farm, family owned, self sustaining agriculture. CI says "organic consumers tend to want to know where their food is coming from and how it is produced," but the reality is that for most organic consumers it is sufficient to know that the product has been certified organic; consumers wishing to avoid GMO products and hormones in their milk do not necessarily care what farm the cows came from. It is possible that the CI is correct and that people should care, but at the moment that is not always the case.

Another point of contention is the use of the term "factory farm," which the Institute seems to have applied automatically to any production unit that it did not consider to be family owned. This is misleading, as there is a three year federal process to become a certified organic dairy. Because many larger stores opted not to participate in the study, it seems as though assumptions were made about their organic products - namely, that they were being produced in factory farming conditions. Companies like Wild Oats and Trader Joe's were given "one-cow" ratings, justified by the fact that CI said "we were able to determine that these brands were, at the time of our research, buying some or all of their organic milk from factory-farm sources. We conducted our research in this area through interviews with a number of industry sources and through federally maintained records." The Institute also said, in defense of their one-cow ratings, that "Many of these grocery chains have very little past experience in marketing organic food."

Perhaps a more informative study would have done a review of the federal certification process to determine its reliability - not a survey with dairy producers. It's an interesting look at the dairy industry, but the results need to be taken with a grain of salt.