I put prune juice on my shredded wheat buscuits. It looks like a dirty SOS pad floating in a cess pool.

I don't ever cough anymore though. I don't dare cough.

There are many other issues with dairy besides the organic one--- http://www.milksucks.com

thanks for that link. we enjoy milk a lot but sometimes after drinking it i don't feel that well.

Howard Lyman , dairy farmer turned vegan, says milk is even more destructive than meat. he says if you have to choose between the two, get rid of milk.
But getting rid of both is better.

This has been known by people who follow food and health issues for some time. Those interested should subscribe to the wonderful Organic Bytes email newsletter (free) at http://www.organicconsumers.org/

Cornucopia Institute also does a great job of watching over food safety issues (since the FDA and USDA are not). Thank you, Cornucopia.

I'm wondering if those who are vegan or anti-milk or anti-meat could give me info comparing the inputs needed to produce sustainable, grassfed meat and the inputs needed to produce the similar quantity of tofu(i guess organic). Also info comparing grassfed milk versus the same quantity of organic soy milk.

I'm just curious to see those side by side because all the arguments against meat bring up how much goes into it and how destructive it is for the environment. But what about growing soy? You need to plow if you are growing organically (no-till generally needs roundup to kill back weed growth before the crop germinates), you also need to cultivate. How much fuel does each cultivation pass take? How much fuel to harvest the beans? How much energy to shell and create tofu or milk?

Thanks.

Also, seems like Target has a lot invested in the USDA's interpretation of organic.

Unless you are a baby cow, you might want to consider not drinking cows milk.

Thanks tpaduano.
A good question.
But just consider it intelectually. If you feed and water a cow to produce milk, wouldn't it be more efficient to just grow the milk? You have to do all that tilling and harvesting of grain to feed cows anyway, why not cut out the middle bits.
If you utilize grassfeeding, ie grazing, the cows need an imense amount more land than the soybean farm would occupy, and grazing is dramatically destructive to topsoil and therefore plantlife, and because root structure can't be maintained, landslides and floods(in extreme cases) are increased.
Soybeans are essentially blended, filtered, and mixed with water and sugar to make soymilk.
And you wouldn't be using Roundup on an organic soybean farm.

I don't have a source for this(sorry, I hate to do this) But a vegetarian diet, as compared to the standard american diet uses 6 times less resources. Resources include water, electricity, gasolene, etc.

A Vegan diet uses 20 times less resources than the standard american diet.

With this info, you can interpolate the data to conclude that Non dairy diet uses 3.5 times less resources than just a vegetarian diet. That is huge.

Let's all drink the milk of human kindness.

That's an image I could do without KEM, thanks.

Flashpoint:

Either I am grossly misinformed or you or grossly misinformed. You state, "If you utilize grassfeeding, ie grazing, the cows need an imense amount more land than the soybean farm would occupy, and grazing is dramatically destructive to topsoil and therefore plantlife, and because root structure can't be maintained, landslides and floods(in extreme cases) are increased."

What I have experienced, first hand (I am a farmer), and read, mainly Joel Salatin, is that by using management intensive grazing, mig, you can actually increase organic matter in the soil and get lusher stands of grasses and other pasture plants. Also, mig allows you to use less land than traditional grazing techniques because with mig you are moving the cows to fresh paddocks almost daily. This allows the plants to grow back quicker, thus less land needed. This also mimics the natural behavior of large herds of bovine like Buffalo. When used in conjunction with other species like sheep and chickens it creates a system that itself mimics (as best agriculture can) a natural grassland ecosystem. Big animals graze and move on, birds follow behind and spread cow pies around and eat parasite larvae.

I do not see how grazing is "dramatically destructive to topsoil.' Grazing keeps the topsoil covered, while plowing and cultivating exposes the topsoil and creates opportunity for erosion and carbon loss. Grazing is actually beneficial to topsoil because it creates more! Animals leave their droppings behind as they graze, this organic matter enriches the soil and creates more of it. And, when a plant is grazed, ie it's leaves cut, it will tiller its root system, creating better soil structure.

Look, I do not doubt that eating traditionally raised, grainfed meat or milk is bad. I know it is, I don't eat it. But I have yet to see how cultivating beans is better than creating permanent grasslands for cows to graze.

Again, does anyone have any sourced info that I can read myself that compares grassfed beef to organic soy production.

Thank you.

"Vegetarians argue that cows and sheep require pasturage that could be better used to raise grains for starving millions in third-world countries. This argument ignores the fact that a large portion of our earth's land is unsuited to cultivation. The open range, desert and mountainous areas yield their fruits in grazing animals. Grasslands perfectly suited to grazing cover an area in China's interior equal to three times the entire amount of land under cultivation in the rest of the country.24 Citing the arguments of vegetarians, the Chinese government has opted for more intense cultivation of existing agricultural lands rather than development of these untapped regions in order to supply much-needed animal products to the Chinese diet.

A far more serious threat to humanity is the monoculture of grains and legumes, which tends to deplete the soil and requires the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The educated consumer and the enlightened farmer together can bring about the return of the mixed farm, where cultivation of fruits and vegetables is combined with the raising of livestock and fowl in a manner that is efficient, economical and environmentally friendly. Cattle providing rich manure are the absolute basis for healthy, sustainable farming. On marginal land, wise grass feeding practices can actually improve soil quality and restore pasture land. It is not animal cultivation that leads to hunger and famine but unwise agricultural practices and monopolistic distribution systems."

The above quote is from the Weston A Price Foundation, a valuable source of nutrition information.

I hope it answers your question. Soy isn't farmable on grazing land so they are not in competition. The Weston A Price Foundation has a not so favorable (to put it mildly) take on soy. You may want to check it out.

The first post really missed the point of the article and misdirected the discussion. The point was that some companies - it is alleged - are breaking the existing rules while at the same time benefiting economically from the price surplus on organic products.

I find this interesting because many practices that the USDA permits for organic certification are not what most people think of when they buy organic foods. In fact, the EPA's 4B inert list of chemicals which are all permitted in organic agriculture contains a number of endocrine disrupting chemicals that at this point are not regulated under any regulation or law. USDA organic certification is utterly meaningless as far as I am concerned.

The way to get real organic is to go to your local farmer's market and talk to the farmers. Learn their practices. Find out what chemicals they use. It's easy. Most of them want to tell you... many small farmers really use great practices and take care of the land and animals. It's the big outfits that are the problem because they will do everything within the law to maximize their gain, despite whatever negative consequences this may have. And as this case alleges, some companies won't even go that far. They don't care about the cows and they don't care about you. They care about money. Also, buying local also greatly reduces transportation energy usage, which for many agricultural products is many times the energy required to produce the product to begin with.

And then for corporate greenwash, Target says "it is disappointing that these types of lawsuits are attempting to override the USDA and regulate the organic industry and retailers with their own beliefs of what constitutes an organic product."

News flash to Target: The USDA didn't want an organic standard. They fought it for years. Maybe you should stick to selling worthless plastic crap instead of food. The original Organic standard was written by Harry McCormick at Oregon Tilth, and he did this out of genuine concern to create a standard that would reflect good land-use management and create a healthier, more sustainable product. This was good for organic farmers and good for organic consumers.

The USDA copied and weakened that standard for their corporate masters, so if anything, Target's response is a complete rewriting of the history of the development of organic standards, and in my mind fits even a narrow definition of Greenwash. We determine what is organic and what is not. If the USDA had its way, they would have permitted sewage sludge application to agricultural fields as being organic, even though sewage sludge is highly contaminated with toxic compounds and uptake into plants has been demonstrated. It's true... http://www.ewg.org/reports/sludgememo

If Aurora broke the rules, they should have had their certification pulled until they could demonstrate complete compliance with existing standards. It's about time the lawyers started suing if the USDA isn't going to do its legally mandated job. The standards are frequently ignored precisely because producers know that even if they have some non-compliance issues, they can still sell organic. The whole system is corrupt, and so nobody should have any fanciful notions about commercial organic food being all that much better than commercial conventional food. It's really pretty much the same stuff, they just make a lot more money on the organic. Support your local small farms.

Grass fed animals have a higher percentage of Omega 3,a fatty acid. I think it is very important for our health and why I want grass fed meat, eggs and dairy. I wonder what farmed fish are fed (corn)? If these companies cannot guarantee their animals are grazing greens, I mine as well just eat the corn! There are more chickens in the world than people, chickens are not that hard to feed compared to most domesticated animals. Marvin Harris has a great explanation of India and vegetarianism in his book Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches. He suggests that if the majority of people in India started eating meat very little land would be available for growing food and would cause much greater starvation. I was also reading a book by Paul Farmer in which he mentions due to worries about flu spreading, the Haitian people were told to slaughter all their small pigs and they were given huge pigs of which they could not possibly feed.

Grass, good hay and some soybeans, a little silage at milking time.

"KEM PATRICK December 13th, 2007 5:15 pm

I put prune juice on my shredded wheat buscuits. It looks like a dirty SOS pad floating in a cess pool.

I don't ever cough anymore though. I don't dare cough."

That gave me a good laugh.

For those people talking about organic soy milk: DO YOU KNOW THAT ORGANIC SOY now is virtually non-existent? Almost ALL soy is GMO; and much the same applies to corn.

However, whereever you get the soy milk, there's often or usually rice and almond milks. I go for the almond, but have had the rice, and they're both good. The fully natural almond has no added sweetener, etc., so you can adjust to your tastes yourself.

Use those for drinking straight, as is, or sweetened, or for cooking, recipes, for cereals, whatever; and a good thing about these milks is that they keep for a long time while not opened yet. Once opened, I was told the the almond milk keeps for around ten days, and the containers are around half a litre, I guess, but even if larger, they're small enough that it's easy for these to not be at risk of being around ten days once opened.

Maybe there are enough organic soy farmers for this organic soy milk, but plenty of organic-labeled food products are not quite organic; there's fraud, as well as predatory capitalism, in the organic industry too.

As for dairy cows being abused, I have never seen this and had several families of relatives who were LONG dairy farmers. You'd never see on their farms and in their barns what I just read over at milksucks.com. I definitely believe what that site says, but I've never seen anything like that on my relatives' farms, or any others I've been too.

Theirs were mostly south-eastern Quebec (Canada) farms, and one in northern Vt, and they usually had no more than 45 milking cows each. So while the odours were intense enough up close, you could easily get used to them in less than a week's time, and you didn't have to get far from the location of the mounds of manure outside the barns to no longer be able to smell it.

As for consuming meat, we should either not consume any, or get meat from farmers who properly treat the animals, don't inject them with various anti-biotics, let the animals have plenty of time outdoors in the fields, free to go about as they please, etc. It's more expensive than the meat of animals that aren't humanely and properly raised, but I found a little local store that sells the top quality beef recently and can take a $6-7 package and make three meals of it.

We're, I've read anyway, not supposed to eat more than around 6oz. of meat a day anyway.

As for E.Coli and other bacteria harmful to human health, I am not sure, but would guess that this is with non-pasteurised milk; although also meat, but I'm not going to address it, focusing on the milk topic.

I read over at cbc.ca over the past year that Canadians are seriously enough fighting to get the federal govt to legalise consumers being able to purchase raw milk, but the govt sticks to its infantile and pro-Big Business ban; nationally refusing to relent in its pandering to pig Big Business. The only Canadians allowed to consume raw milk are dairy farmers, but they have to keep it on their farms; except for the trucks that pick up the milk and haul it away for killing it, i.e., pasteurisation. Of course visitors to a farm can surely drink raw milk there, but they're apparently not allowed, i.e., legally, to buy any, and definitely can't leave the farm with any; unless willing to risk paying a fine.

That's very unfortunate, for while pasteurised means the bacteria, if or when there is any to worry about present in the milk, is killed, it destroys the quality(ies) of the milk, though maybe not the protein, or some other nutrients; and unlike raw milk, once the pasteurised kind goes rancid, then DO NOT DRINK that stuff. From what I read, rancid milk, which only happens with the pasteurised kind, is hazardous for human health; while raw milk does not go rancid, only sour, and that can be used in recipes, being safe for human consumption. My grandmother used to make a delicious sort of pudding with her soured raw milk, perhaps adding sugar, if not surely, and then a person could add rice and spices, whatever suits their tastes. Sour cream is another thing soured raw milk can be used to make, and I'm not sure if there is any other way.

The U.S. has a greater allowance about raw milk for consumers, but not Ca.

For people with children being given milk of other animals than mom, human, raw milk is what the children should get; again, from what I've read, though it makes sense to me. The bacteria in the milk that aren't harmful to health, some of this is good for building up the immune system, and we all need that, but esp. children. That quality disappears with pasteurised milk.

Some people want the pasteurised milk because of the added vitamin D, but there are other sources of this; although I'm not sure how easy it is for North Americans to access the other sources.

I've read many times that it's good to be hygenic, but not too much; get rid of ALL bacteria and there'll be nothing or little left for causing the immune system to develop strong(er) resistance(s), antibodies I think they're called. Maybe that is in part why people developed lactose intolerance; or some of these people anyway.

One thing is certain, apparently anyway, and it's that humans suffer far more health problems today than was the case several and more decades ago.

As for farming the land, TILLING IS A NO-NO from what I've read about organic and sustainable, environmentally friendly agricultural methods; and I worked on a farm back in the 1980s and did my own gardening, and could easily believe that tilling is not necessary, although if it's to be applied, then to do it in very shallow manner, like no more than 4" (to maybe 6", though am not sure about that depth) deep, say. Deep tilling, I read, ends up majorly depleting or destroying the soil's quality, at which point farmers can be easily sold on the idea that they will profit by using synthetic fertilisers, etc.

Instead of doing that, they could grow hemp and/or buckwheat, both of which are good revitalisers of the soil's health; and all that's not consumed from harvested crops should be composted on the soils of cultivation, to put back all that came from that soil so that what's not used goes back to where it came from, plain and simple. It is the naturally cyclical way of Nature.

All wild plants die where they grow and decompose there, keeping the soil's richness an ongoing reality or matter.

For weeds and insect pests, people can grow 'companion plants' to control against these problems, only, and/or which will aid the growth of food crops while possibly serving the other, both purposes. But people should first learn about what really constitutes pest, nuisance, plants, as opposed to plants people call weeds only because of not knowing enough about plants. The same applies to insects; it's important to not kill off the useful ones which are predators of the harmful buggers.

Some of those weeds aren't weeds at all; they're consumable. I don't recall the names of these plants that people traditionally treat as a nuisance or their worst enemies, but was introduced to some, and ate from some, just picking from the top of the plant and eating it there in the field, so raw and as fresh as could be. That was just a few years ago, and one of these plants is one that is a regular food crop in I believe African countries; African or Asian, but I think it's in Africa. What they correctly treat as real food, North Americans regularly think of as nuisance weeds.

I'd love to learn all of this stuff, but am alone to learn everything I do learn, and can't manage to learn or remember half of it all by myself, alone. It takes ... plenty of time to be able to absorb all of the details such that we can then recall them, particularly accurately.

Of course BIG CORP. has a whole hell of a lot to do with all of that past knowledge being ... PAST; forgotten, buried, incinerated if they could manage it. We, our ancestors once knew a lot that was beneficial and which Big Corp. and its buddy govts have helped to render into forgotten, shelved history, instead of living memory, which is what it was for centuries, and which is how we should have continued.

Etc.

I'm not a milk consumer; except [rarely]. And adults don't need milk, unless it's, f.e., the only way they can get calcium. My mother uses cheese for calcium.

I've had some organic milk from a local small farm here and it's good stuff, even in pasteurised form; but I've bought it several times and it's usually ended up rancid before I got around to opening the containers, so it was thrown out without be drunk at all. Hence, I gave up on it. And now I've switched to the almond milk, which is preferable anyway.

WATER, FOR CROPS VS ANIMALS:

Someone here asked if people could provide comparitive analysi information on the cultivation of crops and raising of animals. I forget precisely when this was, but believe it's over the past year or so that there was an article from The Independent, UK, which stated how much water is required for growing crops, vs raising chickens, I think turkeys were mentioned, sheep, hogs, and cattle, cows, the larger animals; and the difference is HUGE.

Crops definitely take the least, after which the chickens, etc. The larger the animal, the more it requires water.

And it's a strong argument against Big Agri. animal farms, when the business is animals. There's the water factor and the environmental one, both strong arguments against Big Agri., but us little people don't have the influential clout that the Big ... SCHMUCKS have.

Prison world this is.

Ever see the first sci-fi movie, 'Metropolis'? Fitting story, and there's a fair or better description page at Wikipedia.

www.whfoods.com , in case anyone's interested. It's certainly worth taking some time to become familiar with; and if then not happy with it, then forget about it. It's my most frequent reference, and when I find something on food at other sites, then I cross-verify with whfoods. It doesn't cover all foods, only what the site says is the top 100 nutritional foods, which is more than enough for me.

KEM, If I were stateside, I'd head out to the southwest for some camping, some sightseeing and a chance to sit 'round a fire and chew the proverbial fat with you: you give "wry" a new wrinkle, and I'd be happy to grow a few of my own cracking jokes with ya. But, um, you can have the pruned-up shredded wheat by yourself. Oh sure, I'd give it a try (if you let me talk you into a chocolate-filled habanero, it's a done deal!) but I'm going to keep enjoying my lucky heritage and opt for anything I darned well please for breakfast.

Doll: great post! Here's my take on it: grow what the land will produce most easily, eat what your body will use most efficiently, and live where those two factors meet. I've got loads of lactase production potential in my genes, and I do love cheese (I'm from Wisconsin, after all--hardy Dutch and Isles stock) but I'll gladly settle for a permaculture farm's bounty no matter where it's situated. That may soon be Taidong...if my brother's asthma lets up while he's down there, we're fixin' on making a little enclave. If the kraits don't get me, I'll be pretty darned happy.

Great post Mike Corbel.

KEM thanks again for the laugh. I was distraught staring at my laughing cow carton from New Zealand wondering if it was worth a chit, when you described your breakfast of champions!

I agree with thewonderingyou, you've got a might wit my friend. thanks.

pac - out

www.notmilk.com is another good website. My husband and I recently gave up dairy and never felt better! There are so many good alternatives out there to dairy products these days. We even made one of his favorite Afghan desserts with soymilk instead of cow's milk last night! It tasted better with the soy!

culicomorpha December 13th, 2007 7:32 pm, said -

"the EPA's 4B inert list of chemicals which are all permitted in organic agriculture contains a number of endocrine disrupting chemicals that at this point are not regulated under any regulation or law. USDA organic certification is utterly meaningless as far as I am concerned."

My understanding is that there are huge differences between organic food and conventional food. Organic meat and dairy products, for example, have no growth hormones or antibiotics, and the animals are not fed the remains of other animals (a practice which causes mad cow disease and the human variant of that disease).

Here's a link to recent information on the EPA 4B inert list you mention:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_7077.cfm

For those here who may be unfamiliar with organic politics, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) are the "good guys" who are working hard to make sure the "bad guys" -- the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program (NOP) -- don't cave in to the Big Ag lobby and weaken organic standards (a constant struggle).

culicomorpha, what is your source for your statement that "the EPA's 4B inert list of chemicals which are all permitted in organic agriculture contains a number of endocrine disrupting chemicals . . ."?

tpaduano,

I'm not sure exactly about soy-milk or tofu, I personally hate the taste of either... but "a person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food," said Christian Peters, M.S. '02, Ph.D. '07, a Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of the research. "A high-fat diet with a lot of meat, on the other hand, needs 2.11 acres." - http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html

As for organic, different crops produce different yields compared to conventional. In another article on Commondreams, it says an acre of organic wheat yields about 90% as much as a conventional field:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0531-05.htm

Research that measures how much yield organic produces versus conventional can have widely varied results depending upon who funds the research. Some research says that organic produces half the yields while other research says organic produces as much, if not more, food.

For example here's one study which says "In temperate regions, winter cover crops grow well in the autumn after harvest and in early spring before the planting of main food crops. Research at the Rodale Institute (Pennsylvania) showed that red clover and hairy vetch as winter covers in an oat/wheat-corn-soybean rotation with no additional fertilizer achieved yields comparable to those in conventional controls."
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/organicagriculturefeedtheworld.php

It's hard to measure the ecological imprint of one's diet exactly, but the research seems to show that vegetarianism/veganism is the biggest step in the right direction.

The environmental benefits of going organic have nothing to do with yields. Organic food is better because it has more nutrients (20% more on average), and it doesn't pollute the environment with harmful pesticides. For all the op-eds in the corporate media attacking organic food as being low-yield, and not producing enough food for the world... you might think one op-ed would mention how much more land (4 times as much) a heavy meat diet needs compared to vegetarian. So what if my vegetarian diet needs 20% more land to be organic, 20% more of 0.44 acres is NOTHING compared to the 2.11 acres needed for a meat diet.

Break-the-fast -- the most important meal of the day

THE WONDERING YOU -- Did you find a 12-grain with "Wry" and wit it it?

KEM -- thanks, for BE'ing you

(and I didn't think it envisioned as poorly as you forced us to imagine, with allegory [or was combined with an analogy too?])

It tastes as bad as it looks.

Ah, foamweapons thank you for that info. That's a good starting point for me to put this all in perspective. The Cornell research seems to make sense. Anything is good in moderation, even milk.

Too many humans to feed! We need comprehensive population control. Too many people eating and corporate greed have led to the almost complete obliteration of organic farms in this country as well as a large portion of the world.

I say that if politicians really wanted to serve the greater good, they would off themselves, then ALL religious leaders and their followers should decide to meet their chosen maker.

MAXX68, the comprehensive population control will arrive when the methane gas in the Arctic bursts loose into our atmosphere in the next five to ten years.

Google arctic methane gas and then scroll down to the article titled, Arctic Methane Gas over 3,000 time more.

For information about energy inputs and such re: grassfed/grainfed/meat and vegetable production, check out a guy named David Pimentel out of Cornell University. He has written a bunch of interesting articles in several reputable journals. Look at his citations and you'll probably find some other articles more specifically geared toward land requirements of different diets.