NPR dairy farm series

I have been listening to the recent series on dairy farms on NPR's Morning Edition. Yesterday's was about groundwater pollution in New Mexico. From the article:

More and more milk comes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where large herds live in feedlots, awaiting their thrice-daily trip to the milking barn. A factory farm with 2,000 cows produces as much sewage as a small city, yet there's no treatment plant.

Here is a link.

Today the piece was about an Ohio farmer, Warren Taylor, who raises his cows outdoors on grass (the CAFO cows are fed a mix of corn and soybeans). He also pasteurizes at a lower temperature and does not homogenize the milk: the cream rises to the top, and you have to shake it before pouring. The milk is sold 48 hours out of the cow and he won't deliver more than an eight hour drive. He claims that all this makes the milk taste better. He can only produce about half the milk per cow that the CAFO operations produce, so his milk costs about twice as much.

Read it here.

Both pieces have good examples of dairy industry propaganda. In the New Mexico piece, the industry sponsors a billboard with an image of a family in front of a green field with cows grazing in an effort to dampen public support for tougher regulations of the CAFO farms. Of course, the image is nothing like the actual farms.

In today's story, the industry spokesman disputes that Warren Taylor's milk tastes any better than industry standard milk. He speculates that it is a "placebo effect." People just think it tastes better because they are paying more for it.

The piece ends with customers at the local Whole Foods tasting Mr. Taylor's milk and just going bananas about how good it is. It would have been better had he asked them to compare it to the standard milk.

I used to buy milk from a local farm when I lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was definitely better than the industry standard, and not that much more expensive. I miss it, especially their egg nog, which they sold this time of year.