Organic Milk: Are Some Brands Really Better Than Others?

Most of what you'll see on this blog is recipes and cooking tips, but healthy eating begins with healthy ingredients. A lot of people, myself included, go out of their way (and sometimes out of their budget) to create a healthier lifestyle and a healthier world by choosing organic foods. But how do we know if we're really getting what we pay for?

This thought occurred to me the other day while mulling over prices of organic milk. I try to choose organic foods as often as possible, but milk is the one thing that I always buy organic, mostly because my toddler drinks so much of it.

The usual brands I have to choose from are Horizon, Organic Valley and Target's Archer Farms brand. There's quite a bit of price difference among the three, and I finally decided it was time for me to do some research to figure out what I was actually getting from each one.

It's easy to assume that choosing organic milk is not just more nutritious, but that it serves as a means of supporting humane animal treatment, small family farms and environmentally-friendly practices. Unfortunately, I learned that this is frequently not the case.

In my research I stumbled across The Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit small farm advocacy group, which has done extensive research into the practices of 68 organic dairy brands. You can read the full report, or go straight to the dairy scorecard (don't skip this one) to see how the brands you use stack up. I did, and I was totally surprised to see that Horizon, the brand I usually buy, received a score of zero (the worst possible score) and was rated as "Ethically Deficient". Incidentally, Horizon is also the most expensive of the three brands I buy. You can bet this report has not only changed my shopping habits, but made me question many facets of organic practices.

If you regularly buy any organic dairy, I highly recommend at least scanning through the scorecard to find the ratings given to the brands you use regularly. Even if you're not interested in reading about all the details that affect the ratings, you have a right to know what you're putting in your body, and those of your family.