Three moos for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is aiming to close a loophole in organic standards for livestock. Under the proposed rule, organic cows must be let out to graze in a pasture at least 120 days per year, and must get 30 percent of their feed from such grazing. The old rules merely said cows must have "access to pasture" -- which, undefined, allowed some "organic" operators to cut corners.
source: Bloomberg News
source: National Organic Program - Access to Pasture (Livestock)
see also, in Grist:Why that organic label on your milk doesn’t tell the whole story
“Historic consensus” at G8 on climate change, says Obama
Britain’s Prince Charles warns of evironmental doom
Comments View as Flat
Wolverine Posted 2:05 pm
05 Nov 2008
Three Boos For USDA
This is actually very bad for the environment. You're conflating animal rights with the environment by praising this. Cattle are non-native, unnatural animals that do great harm when they graze natural areas, especially in the western U.S. The natural environment would be far better off if they were never let out of their barns.
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Pangolin Posted 3:26 pm
05 Nov 2008
Just try and milk an american bison
After she's given you a good goring and trampled you to death you're not going to have very much in the bucket left to make cheese out of.
Sorry Wolverine but even the local natives only eat acorn meal a few times a year and the immigrants never do. As long as we're eating animal protein keeping the 1200 lb. bio-reactor alive and harvesting 13 times their weight in milk they yield per calf is a better deal.
It's a nice fantasy but the return of the buffalo commons is a long way off.
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caniscandida Posted 4:28 pm
05 Nov 2008
Don't blame the cows!
It is true that we have here yet another case in which animal-rights ethics and environmental ethics perhaps come into conflict. But it is not necessarily more than a short-term problem, so long as we are seriously committed to reducing and reforming the dairy industry.
Meanwhile, the individual cows who are alive and hungry today certainly do not deserve to be punished. We can let them have their pasture, in the short term, provided we allow their herds to dwindle away naturally.
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SkyHunter Posted 5:05 am
06 Nov 2008
Milk=veal
Whether it is organic or not is irrelevant.
In order to keep cows producing milk they must be kept impregnated.
If you drink milk at all you are supporting the veal industry.
http://www.tomregan-animalrights.com/archive/veal.html
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sustainableearth Posted 3:34 pm
08 Nov 2008
grazing
Actually, cattle are grazers just like bison were, so they help fill the niche that bison used to, although I agree that public lands are often sensitive and shouldn't necessarily be grazed. Well managed pasture, on the other hand, is good for the environment in that it can sequester a lot of carbon. Pasture based farming and strict grazing standards are a big plus for the environment when done right.
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flomiller Posted 12:42 am
25 Nov 2008
grass versus grain
Trampling may well be a significant localized issue, and the environmental effects of grazing will vary according to farmers' management practices, but feeding cattle grain instead of grass is vastly more consequential in terms of climate change. Even if the grain is grown organically, there's the energy put into growing, processing and distributing it.
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