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The FoodPrint of DairyA FoodPrint Report
Introduction
When you reach for the milk to splash in your coffee, select a slice of cheese for your burger or pick your late-night ice cream treat, you’re presented with a lot of options from organic to grassfed. You’re also faced with many questions about how these products affect your health and what kind of a larger system they’re a part of. Maybe you’ve heard that family dairy farms are going out of business across the country and you want to support them. Or perhaps you’ve just read that article about the lakes of manure at factory farms. And wasn’t your friend just talking about the growth hormones in milk? Do you really want to eat that?
Just about any way you measure it, the US dairy system is in crisis. Most of our milk today does not come from family dairy farms with a few dozen cows grazing on grass, but instead from massive megadairies housing thousands of cows in miserable conditions. Their manure is stored in huge pits that smell terrible and are prone to leak and contaminate the water in surrounding areas. These operations produce so much milk that the price paid to farmers for milk has plummeted far below the cost of production — forcing many small family-run dairy farms out of business and even leading to an increase in the number of farmer suicides.
The system is working out well for the big dairy processing plants that largely control it. But it’s terrible for farmers, workers, dairy cows, the environment — and you, the consumer.
A different system is possible. Milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, and the rest can be nutritious and delicious parts of our diet. Family-run dairy farms can be a healthy part of the rural economy and environment. Farmers can get a fair price for their milk, and workers can be paid and treated well on humane farms. Across the country, community residents, farmers and workers are advocating for tools like state policies that curb megadairies and a national supply management program to guarantee a fair price for all farmers. More and more farmers are transitioning to produce grassfed milk, and demand at the grocery story is skyrocketing.
The dairy industry is complicated, but that also means there are many ways in which it could be improved for farmers, workers, animals, the environment and the consumer. In this report we lay out the many problems with the current system (especially its catastrophically large foodprint), while charting a path for how it can be better.
What Dairy Cows Should Be
Dairy cows should live in conditions that give maximum consideration to their health and well-being, as well as to that of farmers, workers and the surrounding environment. They should spend most or all of their day grazing on pasture and should be:
- housed at a density where their water use and waste is not a burden on the local environment.
- raised by farmers who are guaranteed a price for their milk to cover their costs of production and by workers who are paid a living wage and treated well.
They should not be:
- given artificial growth hormones.
- pushed to produce at an unhealthy rate that shortens their lifespan.
Milk should:
- Have meaningful and verifiable labels that consumers can easily understand.
- Be nutritious and delicious.
The Basics of Milk
You put it in your coffee every morning, but how much do you know about where milk actually comes from and how it gets to your table?
What Does a Dairy Farm Look Like?
The dairy farm pictured on milk and yogurt cartons often features cows grazing on grass, with a red barn in the background. Some milk still comes from farms like this, with cows kept on pasture most of the time, coming indoors only to be milked or in bad weather. But the majority of milk today instead comes from huge megadairies housing tens of thousands of cows confined in a huge barn or on a dry lot, with no access to vegetation.
In between the all-pasture farm and the megadairies are many family-run farms with a few hundred cows, which generally house their cows in free-stall barns, where the animals can move around, feed and lie down as they like. Many of these also give their animals some access to pasture — most often to heifers or dry cows, since they do not need to be brought to the barn for milking. According to a 2014 survey, 60 percent of farms gave access to pasture to milking cows and more than 70 percent gave pasture access to dry cows, with smaller farms more likely to give pasture access.1 These mid-size farms generally grow some of their own feed, including hay, corn or soybeans. Silage — hay or corn stalks that have been partially fermented — is also a common winter feed.
Traditionally, dairy cows were milked twice a day, in the morning and evening. Today, with the imperative throughout agriculture to produce as much as possible, it is common for farms to milk three times a day, and some large dairies milk four times a day, with the average US cow producing nearly 23,000 pounds of milk annually.2 Milk production taxes the cow’s body, and pushing an animal to produce more shortens her life.
Dairy Animal Lifecycle
Like all mammals, cows produce milk after the birth of a baby. After a nine-month gestation and the birth of a calf, dairy cows are usually milked for about ten months, during which time they are impregnated again. They are then given a two-month rest before the birth of their next calf. A mature dairy cow produces a calf every 12 to 14 months.
Young cattle are called calves up to about five months. For their first two years, females are called heifers; once they give birth to a calf and begin milking, they are called cows. On average, farmers replace 25 to 40 percent of their cows every year, and many farms keep some or all female calves to raise as the next generation.
Cows Are Bred for Specific Purposes
While all cows produce milk, dairy cattle are breeds that have been bred for high milk production and quality. Holsteins and Jerseys are the most common dairy breeds. Beef cattle, like Angus and Hereford, are instead bred for rate of weight gain and yield. Beef cows produce milk for their calves, but do not produce enough for human consumption.
Definitions
Dairy farms use some specialized terms for their animals. Here’s what you need to know to not stand out around the barn.
| Heifer | A young female bovine who hasn’t yet given birth to a calf and is therefore not producing milk. |
| Cow | A female bovine who has given birth to at least one calf and has entered the milking herd. |
| Dry Cow | A cow who is between lactation cycles and not being milked. Typically this is for the last two months of a pregnancy. |
| Megadairy / Factory Farm | A dairy operation housing over 1000 cows in confinement. The technical term is Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO. |
| Grassfed / Pastured Dairy | A dairy farm whose cows get some or all of their nutritional needs from grazing on pasture (or eating hay in winter). |
The Current Dairy Crisis
Since 2015, the price that farmers get for their milk has been well below what it costs them to produce; it costs them money to produce our nation’s milk supply. In the last year, farmers have been paid about $16 for 100 pounds of milk, while that amount costs them about $23 to produce.34 Four years of these prices mean farmers can’t pay for feed, seed, vet visits, equipment repairs — or even for heat, electricity or food for themselves and their families.5 Megadairies can absorb these losses, but family farmers cannot.
This price drop has caused dairy farms to close in record numbers. In the last year, for example, Wisconsin (the second largest dairy state), lost nearly 700 dairy farms, an almost 30 percent decline from the previous year.6 Trends are similar in other dairy states.
The situation today’s dairy farmers are facing is catastrophic, and comes on the heels of decades of dairy consolidation. In 1997, 125,000 US dairy farms were milking 9 million cows.7 In 2017, the number of farms had dropped dramatically to 54,000, while the number of cows had grown to 9.4 million.89 In about the same period, annual US milk production grew from 167 billion pounds to 218 billion pounds, meaning that much more milk is being produced by more cows but on many fewer farms.1011 In fact, over half of all milk sales in 2017 were from operations with over 1,000 animals, with fully one-third of sales from dairies with over 2,500 cows.12
How Milk Pricing Works
Dairy farmers sell their fluid milk to a processor, which bottles it or turns it into cheese, yogurt or another product. In economic terms, dairy farmers are called price “takers” rather than price “makers,” because the extreme perishability and constant milk production makes the farmer dependent on the processor. If the processor declines a farmer’s milk, the farmer has nowhere to put it because he only has limited storage and the cows will just keep producing milk the next day. This gives processors a great deal of power to pay whatever price they want; the farmer has to accept it or risk not having their milk picked up.
Dairy Cooperatives
In an effort to gain more power over their own prices, dairy farmers established cooperatives, as far back as the 1800s.13 Pooling milk from many farms gave cooperatives the bargaining power to negotiate better prices for their farmer members and has continued to be a successful strategy for farmers for many years. However, dairy coops have evolved and grown; the largest today controls one-third of the US milk supply and is involved in all parts of the supply chain, including processing and distribution.14 Many farmer members of the largest dairy coops say the coops act more like corporations than organizations working on farmers’ behalf, pointing to expensive corporate offices, lack of transparency in dispersal of milk payments15 and, in the worst cases, outright corruption and collusion.16
Milk Pricing is Broken
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has also attempted to address farmer price issues and today sets regional base prices for milk.1718 Unfortunately, that price today is not based on how much it costs a farmer to produce milk, including feed, fuel, equipment and other farm expenses. Instead it is based on market prices of milk products: butter, cheese, dry whey and powdered milk. Manufacturers of dairy products (which are usually the processors themselves) tell USDA how much they were paid for their butter and cheese every week; these numbers are then plugged into a complex formula that determines the price that processors must pay dairy farmers for their milk. Since it is not a system designed to cover farmers’ production costs, the base price is often far less than what farmers need to break even.
Further exacerbating the problem is a shrinking number of places that farmers can sell to. Historically, most regions had many dairy processors, so farmers — or their coops — could negotiate for a better price. Now, however, some regions only have one or two. In recent years, even the remaining processors have been consolidating, or they prefer to pick up milk from just a few large dairies instead of many smaller farmers. Some large grocery chains have now begun to produce their own milk, leading dairy processors that have supplied those stores to end contracts with their farmers. If the only processor in the region terminates farmers’ contracts, they are left without a place to sell their milk and few options besides selling off their cows.19
Get Big or Get Out
With milk prices not adequately compensating dairy farmers for their work and costs, a fast-shrinking number of buyers, and cooperatives (which often seem to work against the interests of their farmer members), many smaller farmers have just two options: get big or get out. Large dairies can take advantage of economies of scale, as well as subsidies and tax incentives for expansion. Farmers, who cannot expand or who do not want to wait for milk prices to go back up, wait anyway until they can’t wait anymore and have to get out of the business. In the last year, surplus prices have dropped so low that even midsize dairies, which had expanded in recent decades (simply to remain viable), are also getting out.
Problems with Megadairies
As long as there’s still enough milk to make all the Greek yogurt and ice cream we can eat, why does it matter if family farms close and all our dairy products come from huge industrial operations? After all, larger operations are more economically efficient in terms of equipment, land and other resources.
The answer is that big operations only look efficient if you don’t look at the externalized costs: all the costs created by the megadairies that are paid by someone else. If a manure storage lagoon leaks and pollutes the water table, as just one example, the operator generally doesn’t pay all the costs of cleanup. Instead, the town pays for a new water filtration system or individual families have to purchase bottled water. The megadairy can do business as usual, with other entities cleaning up its messes and picking up the tab. Megadairies treat cows inhumanely, pollute the air and water, and extract wealth from the local community instead of supporting the economy. In short, megadairies cause mega problems.
Animal Welfare Concerns with Megadairies
Cows that are housed in megadairies have one purpose: to produce as much milk as possible. The near-constant production takes a toll on their bodies, and the conditions they live in can be stressful, leading to shortened lifespan.
The Shortened Lifespan of a Megadairy Cow
Dairy cows are pushed to produce so much milk that they are spent in just a few years. Dairy cattle can live to age 15 or 20, and in a humanely-managed herd, cows can effectively produce milk for 12 to 15 years.20 But in a megadairy, cows stay in the herd only until about age five, when their productivity begins to decline and they are sold to slaughter as beef. Dairy cows culled for low productivity or other reasons make up about 8 percent of US-produced beef.21
Male dairy calves also have shortened lifespans. Not being able to produce milk, they are essentially extraneous to dairy production and are sold as meat — this is true not just at megadairies, but on most family-scale pasture-based farms, as well. Male dairy calves are sold either to be raised as full-grown beef cattle or as veal, to be slaughtered at 18 to 24 weeks of age.22
Physical Manipulations of Dairy Cows
To adapt cows better to the close and stressful quarters of a megadairy, some operators perform painful mutilations on the animals, including removing part of their tails or their horns. Fortunately, these cruel practices are on the decline. Some animal welfare labels for dairy indicate that the animals did not undergo these procedures (see labels section below as well as our comprehensive Food Label Guide for Dairy).
Tail Docking of Dairy Cows
Tail docking, the partial amputation of up to two-thirds of the tail, usually performed without anesthetic, has been controversial in the beef and dairy industries for years. The vast majority of research on the practice does not find benefits for improved hygiene or animal health; most dairies that dock cows’ tails cite worker comfort as the reason. However, many studies have shown that the practice causes pain, and increases animals’ long-term distress from flies.23 The practice is banned in several European countries and a few US states and is opposed by numerous scientists, veterinary groups and others.242526 A 2005 survey found that tail docking was practiced by 82 percent of dairies,27 but this percentage has plummeted in recent years. By 2013, about half of all operations had cows with docked tails and only about a third of operations were still engaging in this practice.28
The dairy industry introduced a voluntary program calling for the discontinuation of all tail docking by the beginning of 2017. Dairies still engaging in this may be suspended from the program, which could make it harder for them to find a market for their milk.29
Dehorning of Dairy Cows
Removing the horns of dairy cattle reduces risk of injury to people and other cattle. Cattle less than eight weeks old can have their horn buds removed before they attach to the skull, called disbudding, while dehorning refers to the removal of horns after they have attached to the skull, but the terms are often used interchangeably. The practice causes pain and discomfort for the animal; as such, the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends procedures to reduce or eliminate these effects, including use of analgesics or anesthetics. Ninety-five percent of dairy operations practice disbudding/dehorning, but only 28 percent use pain medication. About a quarter of operations have avoided the issue altogether by breeding their animals with bulls that produce offspring without horns.3031
How Dairy Cows are Housed
Cow housing can vary a great deal between operations. The buzzword for housing in the dairy industry is “cow comfort,” as milk production slows when cows are hot, dry, hungry or otherwise uncomfortable. Even so, conditions can be dirty, overcrowded and hard on the animals’ bodies.
Free-stall barns, noted above, house cows in both medium and large operations in colder climates.32 Large operations in warm climates, such as the megadairies in California, Texas and New Mexico, often house cows on a dry lot, a large outdoor area with structures for shade. Both of these styles have separate areas for the animals to lie down, feed and be milked. Manure in free-stall barns is scraped or flushed out of the barn with water and stored in pits or lagoons (see details below); on dry lots, some of the manure turns into dust to be inhaled by the cows and the local community.33
Some of these operations give the animals sufficient space to move around and comfortable surfaces on which to walk and lie down, but many others do not. Flooring in indoor operations is generally concrete, which is hard, abrasive, and slippery, and can cause hoof damage.34 Another stressor in indoor dairies is stocking density: how many cows are in the facility.35 Too many cows can mean that those who are subordinate in the social order don’t get a place at the feed trough or enough time in a resting stall.36
Cows can spend 12 to 14 hours a day lying down, which is necessary for milk production and maintaining their general health. Cows actually place a higher priority on resting than they do on eating or socializing, indicating that it provides important biological functions.37 Resting places vary greatly among operations, from concrete covered with sand or sawdust to rubber mats. Like people, cows prefer lying down in soft and dry areas. Cows provided resting places that are too hard, wet or soiled spend less time lying down, which can make them stressed, decrease milk production and compromise their immune systems.38
Dairy Cows Should be Eating Grass
The digestive tracts of cattle have evolved to digest grass. The feed ration of most dairy cows that are housed indoors includes hay or silage (fermented plant matter, which they digest like grass),39 along with soybeans and corn, which they do not digest as well. A high percentage of grain in the diet can lead to acidosis, a condition of the digestive tract that can affect digestion and cause health problems from liver abscesses to lameness.40 Dairy cattle are also commonly fed byproducts from other industries, including brewers’ grains, cottonseed hulls, citrus pulp41 and blood meal,42 a dried blood slaughterhouse byproduct used as a source of protein. Some of these byproducts have negative consequences: for example, distillers’ grains, a by-product of ethanol production, increase ammonia levels in cattle waste — contributing to more odors43 and creating potential health problems for the cows and dairy workers.
Cattle kept in confinement, especially in overcrowded conditions, are more likely to be stressed than those grazing on pasture, and stress can make them prone to health problems.44 To prevent or treat infection, parasites and illness, dairy cattle are treated with a variety of drugs.4546 Unlike hogs or beef cattle, dairy cows that are part of the milking herd are not given routine antibiotics, but these drugs are regularly given to heifers, which have not yet begun milking.47 Milk is routinely tested for residue of several common antibiotics and other drugs; when cows are given any of these drugs for a specific condition, their milk must be discarded until the drugs have passed out of their system. However, a 2015 investigation by the Food and Drug Administration found that a small percentage of milk tested positive for antibiotics that are not supposed to be used on dairy cows at all, which suggests that farmers are not necessarily following the rules.48
Growth Hormone Use in Dairy Cows
In the late 1980s, scientists discovered they could produce recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST, also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone, rBGH), a naturally occurring growth hormone, through genetic engineering. Injected into a dairy cow, the hormone increases milk production by 15 percent. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its use in milk production in 1993. Milk produced from cows injected with rBST was the first genetically engineered food product to be approved by the US government,49 though it is banned in Canada and the European Union.50
The use of the hormone was controversial from the beginning. Because the FDA had determined it was safe, no label was required on milk from cows treated with it, and consumers objected to the lack of transparency. A 1999 Canadian study found no definitive human health impacts from the hormone, but found a number of impacts on cows, including a 40 percent increase in infertility, a 55 percent increase in lameness, and a 25 percent higher rate of mastitis, a painful udder inflammation, which requires treatment with antibiotics.51
Despite this opposition, many economists predicted very high adoption rates of the hormone, but instead many farmers have found that it was not profitable,52 especially as consumer pressure made supermarkets and dairy processors no longer want to use treated milk.53 USDA reports that its use dropped from over 17 percent in 2007 to about 14 percent in 2014.5455 Organic milk comes from cows not treated with rBGH.
Megadairies Are Bad for the Environment
Cows on pasture can feed themselves and return their waste directly to the soil. Thousands of cows living in confinement, on the other hand, need their food and water delivered to them and their tremendous volume of waste must be removed. All these inputs and outputs take a serious toll on the environment.
Cows Heat the Planet
Perhaps the most dangerous emissions from dairy cows are the tremendous amount of greenhouse gasses they produce, through belching and flatulence. A dairy cow is estimated to annually produce more than 330 kg of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.56 In California, the top dairy-producing state, dairy cows account for 45 percent of the state’s methane emissions and 38 percent of its nitrous oxide,57 another extremely potent greenhouse gas. Globally, the top five greenhouse gas-emitting meat and dairy companies together produce annual emissions greater than ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.58
Megadairies Pollute the Water
Megadairies also produce an incredible amount of manure. A 2,000-cow dairy generates nearly a quarter of a million pounds of manure daily, or almost 90 million pounds per year.59 Manure is high in nitrogen and phosphorus; these are important fertilizers in proper amounts but are toxic in excess. Nitrogen breaks down into nitrate, which causes algae blooms and dead zones in lakes and rivers. Nitrate is a human health hazard when it finds its way into groundwater,60 with the potential to cause serious illness in babies and pregnant women and an increased risk of colon, kidney and stomach cancers in other adults.61 Dairy waste can also contain pathogens such as E. coli or drug residues; wells in some counties with high concentrations of megadairies have tested positive for endocrine disrupting compounds.62
At megadairies, waste is generally stored in large open ponds, called lagoons, and sprayed onto cropland as fertilizer or injected into the ground. The lagoons release methane and are prone to leaks, releasing toxic liquid manure into ground or surface waters. In just one dramatic example from 2015, nearly 200,000 gallons of manure spilled from a storage tank in Oregon, flowing across private property, into a river and a bay. State officials had to close the bay to fishing for a week.63
Leaks are not the only problem. The manure from that 2,000-cow dairy contains as much nitrogen as sewage from a community of 50,000 to 100,000 people.64 That’s so much fertilizer that the standard practices to dispose of it are simply inadequate. It is not uncommon for operators to spray it onto fields at rates higher than the soil can absorb or under conditions that aren’t ideal, causing it to run off into nearby waterways or seep into groundwater. In some regions, land values have increased due to demand by dairy operators for a place to dispose of their excess manure.65
Dairy Production is Thirsty
Megadairies also need a lot of water to produce milk. Milk is about 87 percent water,66 so cows have to drink several gallons of water daily when they’re milking. Flushing all the manure and keeping the milking equipment clean takes even more: estimates range from 30 to 50 gallons of water per cow per day.67 This is especially troubling considering the expansion of megadairies in dry states like New Mexico, Texas and California.
Even Wisconsin, a state with abundant water resources, is struggling with how much water dairies are drawing from aquifers. High-capacity wells that draw over 100,000 gallons per day are proliferating to feed large dairies and intensive crop production. As a result, lakes and rivers are drying up, impacting property values68 and tourism in the state.69
Megadairies Pollute the Air
Huge ponds of manure have an obvious downside for the neighbors: they stink. The odors from a megadairy can dramatically impact the health and quality of life of surrounding areas, making it difficult for local residents to go outdoors.70Ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, two of the major pollutants from dairy manure, irritate the respiratory system and at high doses can even cause death.71 Particulates (tiny dust particles from dried manure), dust and feed have similar impacts. Cities in California’s San Joaquin Valley, near the heart of the state’s dairy country, have some of the highest rates of particulate pollution in the nation.72 Tens of thousands of dairy cows are chief among the contributing factors.73
Some states have laws and regulations regarding odor and emissions from CAFOs,74 but at the federal level, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not require farm operations to report air emissions. In 2018, the EPA exempted farms from the two environmental laws that require reporting releases of hazardous substances.75 The exemption was ostensibly to ease the regulatory burden for family farms, which have much lower emissions, but in practice, it shields industrial-scale dairies from any transparency about their air pollution and its burden on surrounding communities.
Animal Waste and Methane Digesters
Some constituencies, from the dairy industry to some environmentalists, promote anaerobic manure digesters as an environmentally sustainable way to manage the huge amounts of manure generated by factory farms. Unlike an open lagoon, a digester is a closed environment, using microbes, heat, water and agitation to process the waste. The methane is captured for energy, and the other manure outputs are cleaned of phosphorus and pollutants, making them safer to spread as fertilizer. The federal government has invested millions in digester research76 and some states offer significant incentives for their construction.7778
Sounds good, but digesters do not make megadairies “green.” Despite all the public investment in the technology, a new digester costs anywhere from half a million dollars to $2 million, making them not economical to build or operate without significant subsidies.7980 Instead of coming up with alternate solutions for how to store and manage animal waste, a “digester-first” model of managing manure assumes that huge manure lagoons are a necessary part of dairy production. Digesters need a steady high volume of waste to run efficiently, so the model of one megadairy supporting one digester further entrenches the large-scale confinement model of agriculture.81 The expenditure of public research and subsidy dollars in this technology also comes at the expense of similar investment in composting systems or pasture management.
Big Dairy Is a Bad Neighbor
The growth of megadairies has significant impacts on local communities, both in the regions where family dairy farms are closing and those where thousands of cows are being moved in.
Big Dairy Ruins Local Economies
The expansion of megadairies and resulting oversupply of milk is a major factor driving milk prices down82 and sending family dairies out of business. Squeezed by low prices, farmers are foregoing major purchases83 and cutting household expenses. Farmers still trying to hang on are sometimes unable to pay their electric bill or buy groceries. One dairy cooperative sent out information about suicide hotlines with the milk checks and calls to farmer support hotlines have increased.84
In addition to the grave psychological toll this takes on the family, the lost income has a ripple effect throughout the local economy: as farmers cut back, the supermarket, clothing store, coffee shop and other businesses earn less.
Across all livestock sectors, small and mid-size farms spend more at local businesses than factory farms do.85 Large shipments of feed ingredients and medications lend themselves to volume discounts from faraway dealers, and a megadairy is likely to have a veterinarian, as well as mechanics and other specialists on staff, rather than using the services of the community. Numerous studies in the last 50 years show that factory farms result in lower relative incomes; greater income inequality and poverty; a less active Main Street; a lost multiplier effect from interrelated business activity and fewer stores.86
The local economy loses out when family dairy farms close. And when a megadairy moves in, often receiving considerable tax breaks, its neighbors have to pay the real costs of the externalities that it offloads. In some dairy-intensive regions in California,87 Oregon88 and Wisconsin,89 the water table has become so polluted with animal waste that residents must purchase water to drink, cook and bathe with. In Wisconsin, property values of homes near megadairies have dropped by nearly 15 percent.90 Megadairies, often owned by companies headquartered in another state, are just as environmentally taxing an industry as coal or natural gas, polluting the land, extracting water and sending earnings out of the community.
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