Organic Industry Watchdog Files Trump Test Case Against Factory Dairies

LA FARGE, WIS: The country’s preeminent organic industry watchdog, OrganicEye, filed formal legal complaints against two industrial-scale Idaho dairies as “test cases” for the incoming Trump administration to adjudicate. Despite voluminous documentary evidence submitted to the USDA, regulators under both Democratic and Republican leadership have refused to take action to protect ethical industry participants and US citizens who pay a premium for organic food.

OrganicEye, a farm policy research group based in Wisconsin, filed complaints against two large Idaho dairies, Sunrise and Deelstra, both of which operate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) certified as organic.

“Hundreds of legitimate organic family-scale dairy farms have been forced out of business because of the unjust market conditions that result from these practices,” stated Jim Gerritsen, a certified organic farmer in Maine since 1982 and president of the OrganicEye Board of Directors.

He continued, “When we commercialized organic farming and food production in the 1980s and lobbied for passage of the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) in which Congress gave the USDA the authority to regulate organics, it was, in part, an economic-justice vehicle to save family farms that were going out of business on a wholesale basis. That worked well until corporate agribusiness started profiting by gaming the system.”

The two Idaho operations named in OrganicEye’s complaint, Sunrise Organic Dairy in Paul (5500 cows) and Deelstra Dairy in Wendell, are certified by Oregon Tilth and the Idaho Department of Agriculture, respectively — both accredited by the USDA. These two certifiers recently appeared in a study published by OrganicEye spotlighting “ethically challenged” certifiers that, in the vernacular of the researchers, have “betrayed the interests of organic farmers.”