Tag Archives: Danone

OPINION: Abuse of dairy is long-running orchestration of deceit

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, March 3, 2023

In what appears to be scripted unison, the disappointing draft guidance on imitation milk labeling, published by the FDA on Feb. 22, is timed perfectly for Danone’s new advertising campaign to position its Silk Nextmilk as “the better milk.”

This includes putting imitation ‘Nextmilk’ mustaches on the adult daughters and sons of several “Got Milk” celebrities that donned real milk mustaches decades ago.

Never has the flagrant abuse of misleading marketing been more corrupt.

Danone officials have been quoted in news releases saying their NextMilk campaign is aimed at “inspiring a new generation of plant-based milk drinkers.”

In fact, Danone is deliberately corrupting the iconic milk mustache of the former MilkPEP ‘Got Milk’ campaign, which was originally launched by the California Milk Processor Board that started Got Milk 30 years ago.

This move by Danone’s Silk actually mocks producers of Real Milk. 

Several weeks ago, in Farmshine, I authored an article detailing Danone’s timeline on plant-based imitations for the milk, yogurt and cheese categories and the company’s stance on seeing this fake-milk area as the growth market they are investing in.

The recent FDA draft guidance on labeling of plant-based and other imitations is pathetic. FDA has caved to big global corporations seeking to exploit the nutritional benefits that are unique to real milk for their own fake-product financial gains. 

FDA even acknowledged in its draft guidance that consumers are confused about the nutritional differences and that a smaller percentage of consumers may even be confused about whether or not these products contain milk. Somehow, the FDA concluded that consumers are not being misled!

The FDA draft guidance “recommends” a “voluntary” statement about nutritional deficiencies, but this is not mandatory.

Even the voluntary statement criteria are described as being measured against USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “substitution levels” for key nutrients, not what milk actually contains.

Furthermore, no importance is given in the FDA draft guidance to the differences between calcium additives and natural bioavailable calcium. No importance is given to milk as a COMPLETE protein with all 9 essential amino acids we must get from our foods and beverages because our bodies don’t make them.

Animal-derived protein, like in dairy and meat, contain all of these amino acids. Plant-derived proteins only contain some of these amino acids. Consumers need to know this.

There is much to say about the FDA’s track record of ignoring its own standards of identity for milk and other dairy products. The current administration shows little respect for milk’s integrity in the new draft guidance and other bureaucratic moves.

What will the dairy checkoff programs do about the manner in which Danone is stealing and perverting past real milk campaigns to dupe consumers into thinking NextMilk is real and better? What will be done about the packaging made to resemble whole milk?

We asked that question in an email to DMI’s press office and are still waiting for a response.

(UPDATE: The following response was provided to Farmshine by the DMI press office two days after this article was published: “The trademark registration for the ‘milk mustache’ expired and was not renewed by the organization which managed the campaign. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the national and local dairy checkoff teams along with MilkPEP, NMPF and IDFA remain focused on engaging consumers with the nutritional value that dairy from a cow provides. It’s important to note plant-based alternatives overall are down 2.6% year over year, according to IRI data.” )

To me, it appears the dairy checkoff organizations are unconcerned. We have researchers paid with checkoff dollars looking at ways to fractionate milk and develop new protein drinks that address other desires of consumers — practically giving in to their survey findings that consumers don’t think dairy protein has any advantage over plant protein. 

BUT IT DOES! Why are we not pushing that message? Does USDA forbid such comparisons by checkoff organizations? Or is that a convenient excuse?

Now is not the time to give up the fight. Now is not the time to say, oh well, protein is protein so let’s blend them and make new beverages or let’s focus on other ways to draw consumers. Now is not the time to be shy, but to be bold.

Now is the time to push the education of consumers and rally the troops to support real milk and dairy.

All of the checkoff emphasis on ‘sustainability’ is not going to sell milk.

All of the emphasis on Gen-Z and ‘meeting consumers where they are’ is not going to sell milk.

Gen-Z has been robbed of the opportunity to have good tasting whole milk in school where they grow up receiving two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year with the only milkfat option being fat-free and 1%. They have been sold a bill of goods by Big Food while farmers have paid billions out of their own pockets in checkoff funds over the past 12 years to ‘play nice’ with the enemy.

To be honest, soy beverage has always been an alternative for those who can’t consume milk, and it remains the most nutritious of the fakes. But the proliferation of fake imitations is now just completely out of control, and most of these beverages aren’t much more than water, flavor and additives.

Danone is using “artificial intelligence” to redesign its imitation products. This global giant takes the lazy and perverse path of stealing not only milk’s name through misleading advertising, it is using a former real milk advertising campaign to promote an imitation product. 

Danone is packaging Silk’s fake imitations in red and white cartons to resemble whole milk in the supermarket dairy case, and even adding the words ‘whole’ or ‘whole fat’ under the brand name to make consumers THINK it’s the whole milk more people are turning to. 

In 2019, Danone even trademarked the phrase and artwork for its imitation beverage: “Silk – the original nutrition powerhouse”.

Silk? Original? Nutrition Powerhouse? Give me a break!

Danone is thumbing its nose at dairy farmers and using “sustainability” as the virtue signal to get away with these perversions.

In fact, I got a text message from a farmer this week who caught the tail end of a Today Show spot on television, where they interviewed the Danone Silk models, wearing Nextmilk mustaches like their celebrity mothers or fathers did years ago in the Got Milk campaign. 

This farmer thought actor John Travolta was going to do a Got Milk mustache campaign. But no, Danone hired his daughter to do a Silk NextMilk mustache campaign. Even the Today Show headline called it a ‘new milk campaign’ and highlighted the way the FDA draft guidance makes it all possible. 

No one was there to talk about the nutritional differences or to talk about real milk. 

Americans are being misled, dairy farmers are being thrown under the bus, and children are being deprived, while government agencies facilitate, and checkoff organizations twiddle their thumbs or say their hands are tied. 

We are thankful there are champions in the United States Congress who have introduced legislation to try to turn these circumstances around. We are thankful that Pennsylvania lawmakers are working on resolutions to file with federal government agencies on these proposed rules.

We are thankful for people like dairy producer and country singer Stephanie Nash of Tennessee who was interviewed on the Fox Business channel about the FDA guidance. She put it straight: ‘Milk comes from cows, not a lab.’ 

This is going to require all of us to get involved.

Here’s what you can do:

Call your Senators and Representatives and ask them to cosponsor the Dairy Pride Act and Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act.

Call your state lawmakers and ask them to pass resolutions in support of whole and 2% flavored and unflavored milk options in schools and then formally file those resolutions on the open USDA proposed rules docket.

Sign and promote others to sign the Whole Milk in Schools petition at https://www.change.org/p/bring-whole-milk-back-to-schools

Write a brief public comment and urge others to comment by April 10 on the USDA school nutrition proposed rule that would limit flavored milk in schools. Simply tell USDA our children need the nutrition whole milk provides, so school meals should include the options of whole and 2% unflavored and flavored milk. Comment on that docket at link https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FNS-2022-0043-0001

Write a brief public comment and urge others to comment by April 24 to the FDA to stop allowing beverages that aren’t milk to be labeled as milk. Comment on that docket at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FDA-2023-D-0451-0002

And stay tuned on how to get involved as the next round of USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee deliberations recently got underway. The stage is already set for more demonization of milkfat and abuse of milk’s integrity there as well.

This abuse of milk cannot stand. It’s going to be up to us — the grassroots farmers and citizens — to stand in the gap for what is right.

Danone may dump Horizon Organic – announcement follows Northeast contract terminations, big investments in fake-milk

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By Sherry Bunting, previously published in Farmshine, February 3, 2023

PARIS, France — Danone put Horizon Organic on the proverbial chopping block last week, positioning itself to take another step away from real milk after spending the past several years building an operational runway to catapult the French-based global food and beverage giant even further into the world of fake-milk.

On January 26th, Danone announced it is exploring the “strategic option” of selling its U.S. organic dairy line — namely the Horizon Organic and Wallaby businesses. 

“Both are strong, much-loved brands with compelling growth opportunities,” said Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique in a brief press release. “That said, seen through the lens of our Renew Strategy, which requires us to stay disciplined in how we allocate our resources, they fall outside of our priority growth areas of focus.”

Previously, Danone executives noted Horizon and Wallaby represent 3% of global revenues and have a “dilution impact on operational margins.”

On the chopping block 

Wallaby is an Australian-style organic yogurt found mostly in natural food stores as well as the Whole Foods chain throughout the U.S.

Horizon Organic is ubiquitous and foundational. It became the first public organic food company in 1994 and was purchased by Dean Foods in 2004, where it became part of WhiteWave holdings alongside International Delight, Silk and other fake-milk brands. A 2012 spin-off separated WhiteWave from Dean, taking former Dean CEO Gregg Engles with it, until April of 2017, when Danone purchased WhiteWave, and Engles continued as a current Danone S.A. board member.

The announcement that Danone may dump Horizon comes just before Danone’s fiscal 2022 earnings call, just before the final extensions expire on previously announced contract terminations for 89 Northeast Horizon Organic dairy farms, and just after Danone closed the book in its final negotiations under pressure from organic and consumer groups by presenting its 2023 Northeast Region Investment Package.

Ed Maltby, executive director of Northeast Organic Dairy Alliance (NODPA), recounted the final communication. 

Pegged at $18 million, Danone’s package “is designed to drive meaningful impact in the region and the organic farming community in both the immediate and longer term,” Chris Adamo, Danone vice president of public affairs and regenerative agriculture policy, told the Northeast organic community in his December 2022 presentation.

Three Northeast projects were promised:

First, a partnership with dairy farming co-ops and processors to invest more than $14 million to “establish new relationships with more than 50 dairy producers in western New York.” 

“A year earlier, in December 2021, Danone maintained they were going to take on 50 new organic dairy farm suppliers to replace those farms they had dumped as part of improving their trucking logistics,” Maltby reflected. “Is this investment geared to making these farms more efficient to improve the supply of milk to Danone, or perhaps to improve their co-op’s infrastructure? How can producers access this money or is it just for processors?”

Second, a ‘market-premium price payment’ is included, whereby Danone commits to providing “direct financial support to farmers in the Northeast, along with additional pay price increases totaling approximately $3.6 million.” 

Maltby wonders: “Is this the transition payment that Danone already said it had paid to producers that they dumped? Or is it an increase in pay price for those farms they took on when they dumped their existing producers?” 

Third, Danone pledges $500,000 in new grants, administered by The Organic Center in 2023, to “support projects connected to the future of organic dairy and Northeast farming.” Recipients can be individual farms, groups representing farmers, non-profit organizations, academic institutions and universities, groups that provide agricultural technical assistance or groups that train and educate farmers on emerging agricultural topics.

“(Adamo) left many of us, and a few State Agriculture Commissioners, confused about exactly who would get what, when, and how. The phrase ‘smoke and mirrors’ accurately describes the way they have attempted to make consumers believe that something is being done to assist Northeast organic dairy farm families when it is not,” writes Maltby. 

“Danone’s lack of transparency at every step, and their green-washing, does not surprise anyone. Their actions have highlighted the problems faced by the Northeast organic dairy community that we continue to work on with support from consumers and other organic advocates,” he adds.

The potential offload of Horizon is not surprising, considering Danone’s pattern of ending contracts with smaller organic dairy farms, consolidating its conventional non-GMO pledge milk via larger farms, while at the same time making a big push into plant-based fakes. These pathways integrate operational control with green-washed growth.

Meanwhile, the promises made by Danone appear to skate all the way around the core impacts and could be up in the air if Horizon Organic comes under new ownership.

The entire organic dairy farming complex has long operated as a premium-priced real milk option alongside what are now ramped-up and continually reinvented plant-based fake-milks. Now they brace for what a Horizon sell-off could mean, and hope to see a real dairy renewal strategy of their own. 

Danone’s timeline has shaped up like this:

In July 2016, Danone launched the Dannon Pledge for non-GMO verified, positioning its conventional milk supply around a concept of ‘almost-organic.’

In April of 2017, Danone purchased the Dean WhiteWave spinoff, which included Horizon Organic and the Silk, So Delicious, and Alpro plant-based brands. The DOJ Antitrust Division required Danone to simultaneously divest its Stonyfield Farms subsidiary.

In 2018, Danone quietly notified smaller Horizon Organic dairy farms in the western states that their future contracts would not be renewed amid a glut of organic milk and differences in how USDA’s organic livestock origin rules were being applied. Some of these producers were offered conventional non-GMO milk contracts using Danone’s proprietary Cost Performance Model (CPM). Some found other markets, and many exited the business. According to Danone’s 2021 Regenerative Agriculture Report, more than half of all U.S. milk collected by Danone now comes from farms with CPM contracts. 

In February 2019, Danone completed construction of the world’s largest plant-based yogurt factory in Dubois, Pennsylvania, where other non-dairy lookalike products are also made.

In February 2020, Danone told investors the rising global temperature is a business opportunity, and the company would accelerate food transformation with climate at the core of its growth strategy.

In October 2020, Danone announced its partnership with a bioscience startup to use artificial intelligence to explore new formulations to improve taste and texture of plant-based dairy alternatives.

In January 2021, Danone’s So Delicious brand launched its first plant-based cheese, and Danone S.A. was acknowledged as the largest plant-based company in the world. The company told investors it would grow revenue in plant-based with further acquisitions and a “plant-based acceleration unit.”

In April 2021, Danone and the EAT Lancet Commission announced a strategic partnership to promote a so-called “healthier and more sustainable food system by driving a change to planetary diets.” Danone pledged to use its ‘One Planet. One Health’ framework to “accelerate this food revolution.”

In July 2021, Danone announced three new plant-based fake-milk launches for 2022, along with a list of other lookalikes. During the July 2021 earnings call, Danone executives identified the U.S. as a “key plant-based market,” but noted 60% of U.S. consumers are not in the category because of product taste and texture. They announced a plan to win them over “with new dairy-like technology under Silk NextMilk, under So Delicious Wondermilk and under Alpro Not Milk.”

In August 2021, Danone sent letters notifying all 89 of its organic dairy farms in New England and eastern New York that their milk contracts would be terminated in 12 months’ time. Later, under pressure from organic groups, officials and consumers, Danone agreed to a Feb. 2023 extension.

In January 2022, Danone launched the three new fake-milks: NextMilk and Wondermilk hit U.S. dairy cases, and Not Milk hit shelves in Europe. 

(Interestingly, the Silk NextMilk Whole Fat has 6 grams of saturated fat from processed coconut and seed oils. That’s more saturated fat per serving than Real Whole Dairy Milk naturally from cows. Danone’s Silk NextMilk is packaged in red and white cartons with the words ‘Whole Fat’ appearing directly under the brand name to mimic the Whole Milk appearance. Interestingly, the FDA’s proposed healthy labeling rule sets a tougher threshold for saturated fat in dairy products compared to saturated fats from plant-sources.)

In March 2022, Danone described its Horizon Organic and “traditional dairy” holdings as “troubled offerings,” telling investors: “There are no sacred cows,” as they “keep pruning” the portfolio to “boost growth” and “distance” the company from “underperformance”… by investing more in “winning products” and selling existing brands or buying new ones.

In May 2022, Danone launched its “Dairy & Plants Blend” baby formula (60% plant-based, 40% dairy) “to expose children to food tastes early in life that can help shape their future food preferences… while shifting toward plant-rich diets and embracing alternative sources of protein to help reduce carbon emissions.”

In October 2022, Danone announced it would use artificial intelligence through its bioscience partner BrightSeed, to reformulate over 70% of its plant-based fake-milk alternatives to reduce added sugars and increase nutrient density. At the same time, it allocated $15 million to “partner with retailers on healthy eating education” and $7 million to partner with community-based programs that provide nutritious foods.

(Timing is everything: Danone is among the financial supporters of the infamous Tufts University Food Compass, launched recently into the federal nutrition policy arena through the Biden-Harris Hunger, Health and Nutrition Strategy and the FDA proposed rule on  “healthy labeling.” The Food Compass nutrition profiling algorithm rates nonfat dairy yogurt high as an encouraged food, along with plant-based fake-milks; but real milk and cheese are rated lower as foods to moderate or discourage. More artificial intelligence, to be sure.)

This brings us to January 2023, when Danone announced it is eyeing sale of Horizon Organic, saying it falls outside of their key areas of focus.

(Previously, Danone set its sights on being among the first multinational corporations to achieve global B-Corp certification by 2025, already certified in the U.S. Part of this certification involves accountability for social elements such as fair trade and treatment of suppliers. This posed a problem throughout 2022 as Danone was called upon to rethink the Northeast farm contract terminations or to provide financial assistance for the farms and the region.)

Heading into February 2023, the contract extensions end for the terminated Horizon Organic dairy farms in the Northeast. Some have gone out of business. Others have gone to Stonyfield or Organic Valley, which eventually agreed to take on the remaining Northeast farms facing Horizon termination, along with 40 organic dairies cut last year by Maple Hill in New York.

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Danone’s Horizon confirms it will drop its 89 Northeast organic dairies (ME, VT, NH, part of NY)

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, August 27,2021

DEERFIELD, Mass. — Danone confirmed it will drop 89 Northeast Horizon Organic dairy farms by this time next year. The global corporation headquartered in France had purchased WhiteWave — including Silk plant-based and Horizon Organic milk — from the former Dean Foods five years ago.

Receiving the letters in late August are the Horizon Organic family dairy farms in Maine (14), Vermont (28), Washington County, New York (17) and the balance located in New Hampshire as well as Clinton, Franklin, and Saint Lawrence counties, New York.

Producers in the affected Northeast region say they saw this coming, but no one expected it to be this fast and this impactful in a region such as the Northeast where the organic milk market has had a long and growing following among consumers and some of the first organic transitions were with Horizon more than two decades ago.

Organic producers in the region also say the commoditization of their product faces the same consolidation trends as conventional dairy farms, in part due to the inconsistent interpretation of organic standards by certifiers and the delayed publishing and enforcement of certain rules by USDA.

Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, as well as Senator Patrick Leahy are looking into the situation. Maine’s Governor Janet Mills and Ag Commissioner Amanda Beal also announced state support for these farms and the state’s overall dairy industry through a stakeholders working group with short- and long-term strategies.

For its part, Danone is unequivocal in saying it is focusing on buying milk from new partners that ‘fit’ its ‘processing footprint.’

“Danone is offering a 180-day notice, or farms can sign onto a one-year contract with no contract option after that. Apparently, the farmers who contract for the year can leave with 30 days’ notice if they find another market,” writes Edward Maltby, executive director of NODPA in a bulletin as the news broke August 22.

That’s a big IF.

Other of the region’s organic processors are not known to have much extra capacity to pick up new organic milk shippers. Even conventional milk buyers are mostly not taking on new dairy shippers with several still enforcing base programs and penalties on existing shippers in the Northeast. (However, during the second half of August into September, overall milk supply in the Northeast and Midatlantic has been reported by USDA Dairy Market News as “extremely tight.”)

Maltby notes that this round of contract terminations are mainly in New England and do not extend past four counties in New York (extreme northern and eastern New York) and do not include Pennsylvania. He and other sources indicate Danone is setting an arbitrary line for milk to come from farms within a 300-mile radius of the plants that process it, so as they shift their manufacturing footprint, the farm footprint incrementally shifts as well.

Is this the future of unsustainable ‘sustainability’?

Month after month, the Northeast Federal Milk Marketing Order statistical bulletin shows handlers bringing in milk — including and especially organic milk — to FMMO 1 from the Midwest and Southwest United States. In fact, large quantities of conventional and especially organic milk come into the Northeast in tankers and packages every month from as far away as Texas and Colorado.

Danone issued an emailed statement to NODPA late Tuesday (Aug. 24) that confirmed the rumors and the numbers.

“We greatly value our relationships with our farming partners and did not make this decision lightly. Growing transportation and operational challenges in the dairy industry, particularly in the northeast, led to this difficult decision. Eighty-nine producers across the northeast received this non-renewal notice. To help facilitate a smooth transition, we are offering each producer the opportunity to enter into a new agreement for us to purchase their milk until August 31, 2022 to provide additional time and support,” Danone stated in an email response to NODPA.

“We will be supporting new partners that better align with our manufacturing footprint,” the company statement continued. “We are committed to continuing to support organic dairy in the east, and in the last 12 months alone, we have on boarded more than 50 producers new to Horizon Organic that better fit our manufacturing footprint. This decision will help us continue providing our consumers with the products they love.”

Danone’s statement indicates it is still committed to organic dairy in the East; however, on July 29th, during its earnings call with investors, Danone announced its plans to offer new versions of its FAKE-milk brands with what they say will be “improved taste and texture” later this year (2021).

Furthermore, Danone built the nation’s largest fake-dairy plant in Dubois, Pennsylvania, where it makes plant-based non-dairy substances marketed as “yogurt,” certain soft cheese lookalikes and, yes, fake-milk beverages will be produced there also.

When the fake-dairy plant opened in Pennsylvania in February 2019, Danone officials linked it to their global goal “to triple our plant-based business by 2025.”

Toward that end, during Danone’s July 2021 earnings call, Shane Grant, co-chief executive officer of Danone and CEO of the North America division, said: “The opportunity we see is really the challenge of that (plant-based) convention. We know that in key plant-based markets like the U.S., 60% of consumers are not in the (milk) category. We know the barrier is primarily product taste and texture. We will launch against this opportunity new dairy-like technology under Silk NextMilk, under So Delicious Wondermilk and under Alpro Not Milk.”

Danone also reported to investors its net income jumped 5% in the first half of 2021.

NODPA’s Maltby observed in a Farmshine interview this week that the discriminating higher-price-point consumer of organic milk is a prime target for imitation brands. He noted that organic milk has been “very price stable” on the retail shelf at $4 per half-gallon for the past decade.

“Even now, at a $27 to $29 pay price for (organic) producers versus a prior pay price of $35 or $36, the retail price has remained the same, indicating some room for growth,” said Maltby.

In fact, organic milk sales volume has been inching higher over the past few years, and during the Coronavirus pandemic, when all whole milk sales grew dramatically, organic whole milk sales volume grew by an even higher percentage in volume gains. Plant-based imitations grew on a dollar sales basis although volume is not tracked by USDA the way real fluid dairy milk sales are tracked by volume. Sales growth in plant-based imitations are also a function of the increasing price point, not so much reflective of volume.

Fake-dairy doesn’t offer the nutritional standing of real dairy products, but consumers are duped by advertising campaigns (especially Danone’s Silk commercials on television) into believing real and fake milk are interchangeable in their diets. 

Consumers are also being fed a steady diet of ‘save the planet’ rhetoric centered on plant-based and lab-cultured ‘alternatives’ thanks to regurgitated myths that do not tell the whole story about ruminant cows.

Danone has set a goal to be what it calls “the first carbon-positive dairy brand” by 2025. This includes its Horizon Organic brand. In a March 2020 Marketwatch report, Horizon was ranked as the world’s largest USDA certified organic dairy brand. A few months ago in April 2021, Danone released a report showing that its Horizon brand derived 18% of its carbon footprint from cow manure management, 14% from animal feed, and 9% from keeping milk cold in refrigerators. (That’s less than half, what is the rest?)

As dairy processing innovations continue to lengthen plant code to 30 to 40 days, and beyond, the processing trend in the fluid milk category – organic and conventional – is toward ultra high temperature (UHT) pasteurization and extended shelf life (ESL) aseptic packaging for extended warehousing, longer-distance transportation, and larger global circles of distribution where regional supply chains with fresher products will need to find ways to differentiate themselves.

Meanwhile, notes Maltby, it’s the total effect that consumers aren’t realizing because it’s not broadcast in advertising or on labels. The whole package, total effect of real dairy sales includes better nutrition, along with the components dairy farmers bring to their rural communities in terms of economic support and true environmental leadership.

“You don’t see this many organic farms dumped in a year. It’s unusual. This will have a dramatic effect on our rural communities and environment,” said Maltby.

In 2018-19 Danone began dropping organic dairies milking fewer than 500 cows in the western states, coming back to those farms offering conventional contracts using their proprietary “cost-plus” pricing method.

During a 2019 Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance (WODPA) meeting in Nevada, some of those affected producers shared this news and blamed inconsistent enforcement of USDA organic rules on access to pasture, percentage of dry matter intake from grazing and other production standards. 

Maltby noted that NODPA and other organic dairy organizations are advocating with USDA and their members in Congress to ensure the Origin of Livestock rule for organic certification is strong “to not allow transitioned animals to retain their organic certification for milk when transferred or sold.”

Maltby observed that USDA and certifiers have “created an un-level playing field with their failure to publish this regulation over the past decade.”

He says NODPA and other organic groups also seek better enforcement of organic production standards, explaining that some certifiers “are still not interpreting or enforcing the access to pasture regulation in their definition of the grazing season.”

NODPA is urging anyone with influence within the CROPP Cooperative and Lactalis/ Stonyfield, to encourage them to enter into discussion with the Northeast organic dairy community about ways to move forward.

“A year is a very short time,” said Maltby.

A boycott of Danone products is also mentioned in the bulletin at the NODPA website.

“We hope to direct people away from thinking too narrowly about Horizon and consider boycotting the Danone (Dannon) products instead, to raise the issue with some leverage for these family farms,” he said. “Danone obviously believes it has adequate supply in other areas of the U.S., at a lower cost and from larger operations, that make their trucking logistics cheaper and easier.”

While dairy producers pay the cost to transport their milk from farm to processing, the milk produced in the Northeast is considered higher-priced at the farm level in part because of the FMMO structure but also because the Northeast lacks capacity for “balancing” the organic fluid milk market with processing assets to take milk for Class III and IV products when Class I sales and processing ebb and flow seasonally.

In addition, more organic feeds are produced in the western U.S. and Canada, and there is a transportation component to that scenario from a carbon footprint modeling aspect that becomes a wash when they just bring the milk to the Northeast from elsewhere instead of inputs for cattle on Northeast farms.

The costs of assembling milk from multiple small farms in a region, including field inspections and interactions, is also considered a cost the global Danone company would like to control by sourcing from fewer and larger “new partners”.

However, remembering the food disruptions, waste, and shortages during the pandemic, especially from the centralized models of the meat and poultry industries, Maltby notes that, “If this is the cost of maintaining farms in our region, in our economies and our communities, isn’t that (food security) something for companies like Danone to consider?”   

Bottom line, Danone appears to be looking to control the criteria of its environmental claims so that other companies can’t mimic them. The company is reportedly looking to build a “Regenerative Organic” certification to differentiate its products in the marketplace and capitalize on buzz terms in the climate discussion.

Meanwhile, current USDA-certified organic dairy producers, especially small and mid-sized family farms, feel abandoned in that conversation because they say they don’t see USDA defending what already are the organic standards and regulations, allowing two things to happen simultaneously – the dilution of standards commoditizing their product in the sourcing by companies like Danone, which then turn right around to reinvent real and fake dairy niche differentiation with new partners.

Stay tuned for updates in Farmshine and at the NODPA website

With science-fiction, they socially herd us like cattle to ‘alternative’ squeeze chute

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, February 22, 2019

All circles lead back to marketing, which is on display right now with the EAT Lancet report in January and the EAT Forums and social marketing that are hitting us in rapid succession, having already filtered into the Green New Deal in Washington and other legislation proposed in California.

Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions expert from the University of California, Davis is not the only one questioning the GHG findings in the report.

He offered proof this week that the science director for the EAT Foundation, in an email (below), admitted the report’s dietary recommendations are not based on environmental considerations, they are based on – you guessed it – a hyper-charged version of the flawed dietary guidelines that have been making us, especially our children, fatter and sicker through ever-increasing government control of food choices!

This is a clear admission that the GHG figures being peddled are, as Mitloehner put it in Lancaster recently “without a single leg to stand on.”

This brings everything back to the common denominator in the ongoing social engineering project: USDA Dietary Guidelines.

In the pages of Farmshine for years (through two dietary guideline cycles, 10 years to be exact), we have warned about the Dietary Guidelines.

For months, we’ve sounded alarms about the genetically-altered yeast making ‘dairy without the cow’.

For weeks, we’ve been tracing the alliances of the Edelman company that has done the marketing and PR for DMI for 20 years and is also doing the social marketing and communication strategies for EAT Lancet.

That story was laid out here last week.

This week the EAT Lancet Commission’s desire for drastic reductions in meat and dairy consumption grew major legs as the Edelman social marketing machine — via staff loaned and now working as employees of EAT’s corporate initiative — have been in full artillery mode with our nation’s dairy and beef cattle in the crosshairs.

The right hand has been telling us we have a seat at the table, while the left hand has been working overtime to pull out the rug.

I’ll borrow this term: Resist! The Science Fiction EAT Lancet report is slowly but surely being spoonfed without a transparent airing in the press.

The EAT Lancet Commission had little actual press since 2019 launch, but not to worry! The global food tranformation effort (EAT Lancet, EAT FReSH) is coordinated by the world’s largest marketing and PR firm — spawning the seemingly random and unconnected legislative and marketing campaigns from the Green New Deal and new global diet ‘wisdom’ (flexitarian / reducitarian) to the outright lies about cows in foundation versions of prominent news organizations like Reuters, Bloomberg, The Economist, The Guardian and positioning of the new PepsiCo’s Quaker Oat beverage launch inprime dairy case real estate this week, to the unveiling of Danone’s new non-dairy yogurt plant in Dubois, Pennsylvania geared to “take plant-based products to the max.”


PepsiCo and Danone are two of the 41 corporate sponsors of the EAT Lancet global food transformation propaganda, and they are launching their ‘solutions’ right now. PepsiCo launched it’s Quaker Oat beverage this week, and it’s showing up prominently in dairy cases like this one. Danone unveiled the largest ‘dairy free’ yogurt plant in the world in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, with its new ‘sustainable’ yogurt products reaching store shelves also in time to capitalize on the EAT FReSH social marketing campaign. Photo submitted by a Farmshine reader in northwest Indiana 

A convergence of the elite. It’s really one big thing, connected. The funding corporations are rolling out their food ‘solutions’ as we speak, hoping unwitting consumers will jump on the food-transformation-train.

I am resisting any brand that participates in this tomfoolery. 

EAT FReSH corporate sponsor Danone launched their marketing campaign for the new “dairy free” yogurt now made in Pennsylvania, and it has EAT Lancet taglines written all over it.

Of course, Danone is also a client of Edelman. So is PepsiCo.

Follow the money, folks.

Inside this high-stakes game is the world’s largest marketing and PR firm coining elite catch phrases about “eating within planetary boundaries” — you know — to save the planet, and other such “purpose-driven marketing” they are known for.

(Technically, the account director of Edelman Amsterdam planned and organized for two years as employee on assignment with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which is the organization launching the EAT FReSH initiative with the 41 corporate sponsors, including Edelman. When the EAT Lancet Report and EAT Forums did launch in mid-January 2019, Lara Luten left Edelman’s employ at that point to become the full time director of the communications and social marketing plans that have been laid).

Boil it down. The nobles are telling the serfs: Forget animal protein, ‘Eat cake!’

I’m not against dairy alternatives, they should be available. We are omnivores. Plants need animals and animals need plants and we need them both.

What I am against is global propaganda that positions itself as science and is being used to socially herd us like cattle to the plant-based chute without the integrity to tell us it’s a bridge to genetically-altered-laboratory-designer-proteins (aka fake-meat and fake-dairy) grown in vats and bioreactors. 

Roughly 70% of the available land for food production is grasslands and marginal lands. It is these lands that cattle can graze or where forages for cattle are harvested in systems much different from row crops and vegetable plots. 

Cows upcycle low quality feedstuffs and plant byproducts that we can’t use, and they turn it into nutrient dense, delicious milk and beef. (Those grasslands and forages sequester carbon too!!)

Animal Ag emits less than half of the total greenhouse gas emissions for all of agriculture, and if we look at this per unit of nutrition, it’s amazing.

Animal Ag (dairy, beef, pork, poultry all combined) are responsible for just 3.9% of the U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, but EAT Lancet tells a different story, and the lies are being exposed.

Just imagine how much stress will be on our so-called “planetary boundaries” if science fiction and social purpose-driven marketing prevails and more of us are “herded” or fooled into replacing more of our animal-based dietary nutrients with plant-based sources. It can’t be done. 

This is a Silicon Valley bridge to the billionaire-funded bioreactor factories to grow (3-D print) replacement protein from gene-altered yeast or gene-edited cell blobs. In fact, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was on CNN with Fareed Zakaaria Sunday talking about “cow farts being one of the world’s biggest problems” and the need for lab-cultured animal protein … to save the world. (Let’s be all the dumber for watching that interview clip here)

What Mr. Gates forgot to mention is his considerable investment in this disrupter technology of fake-meat, and that Microsoft is a corporate sponsor of EAT FReSH / EAT Foundation.

Yes, more science-fiction propaganda in the form of so-called purpose-driven marketing is coming from all sides and hyping up fast because the billionaire investors and food supply chain corporations need this social herding process to launch their new products. It’s not about people and it’s not about the planet, it’s about profit — at our expense!

No thanks here. I’m jumping the gate. The social-herders have gone too far.

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Top photo credit Michele Kunjappu