Origin of Livestock

Origin of Livestock

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Having recently eavesdropped at the incredibly successful farmers market in Boise that takes place on Saturdays, it was intriguing to listen to how many times the word "organic" was used. There seems to be a national passion, certainly amongst millennial's, about organic. To get things straight, the USDA's National Organic Program recently released the long-awaited proposed rule amending their "Origin of Livestock" regulations and here to help us understand what's required is the Cornucopia Institute's, Mark Kastel: "Once you have an organic farm and you have converted your distinct herd to organics, then after that every animal brought onto your farm is supposed to be managed organically from the last third of gestation before birth. All you have to do is milk one cow. You could be converting 3000 heifers to organics as long as you are milking one cow. We are afraid that this will be exploited. Cornucopia's suggestion is that you have to have a commercial dairy herd to go through that transition and that they should be shipping for a minimum of 180 days through a licensed milk hauler to a licensed dairy plant. That's a dairy farm and then if you have some young stock associated with that farm, then it's fine to sell all of those after they have been transitioned. We might even go further than that and say unless they have been milked first, they are not really organic cows. We are trying to close the loophole on these heifer factories creating organic cows through organic alchemy."

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