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Organic Milk Actually Becomes Organic

Lots of buzz at last week’s Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) conference surrounded a rather astonishing development in the organic world: the U.S. Department of Agriculture had finally done something, well, good.

After five years of debate, on February 17, the USDA had amended the standards for organic milk to reflect what most consumers thought “organic” meant in the first place. So now (or at least by June 2011, when the amended standards take effect for all suppliers) when people buy milk labeled “organic,” they’ll be getting what they paid for.

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An Interview with Organic Valley’s Theresa Marquez, Part 1: Our Broken Food System, Agriculture of the Middle, and the Co-op Model

I’m thinking a lot about food systems these days. Fundamentally, there seems to be collective agreement that ours is broken (unless you happen to work for Monsanto or Smithfield), so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how we might fix it. (Jill Richardson’s excellent “Recipe for America” has a few ideas too - that and her La Vida Locavore blog are well worth reading.)

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about food systems that are:

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