Dairy Industry

The California Milk Advisory Board continues to ply its "Happy Cows" advertising campaign, but there are few happy dairy farmers right now. Frustrated with low milk prices, dairy farmers are selling cows for hamburger meat and threatening to dump milk into sewers. Many are burning through their life savings hoping to survive the slump, and others are exiting the business. Two farmers have killed themselves. The pain is being felt throughout the U.S.

As American forces work to revive Iraq's tattered farming economy, they seem to have found an effective new weapon. Cows. At the suggestion of an Iraqi women's group, the Marine Corps recently bought 50 cows for 50 Iraqi widows in the farm belt around Fallouja, once the insurgent capital of war-torn Anbar province.

Like many Chinese peasants of his generation, 53-year-old Wang Zhengnian had never seen a cow until he reached adulthood. He certainly never drank a glass of milk. The fact that Wang now spends his days tending 400 cows on a farm near Beijing says a lot about the way China created a dairy industry out of thin air. But in their haste, the Chinese made mistakes that left six babies dead and hundreds of thousands ill from tainted milk. Milk is not part of the traditional Chinese diet.

Five years ago, dairy farmer Leroy Shatto was struggling to stay in business. Today, his herd has more than doubled amid a surge in demand for his product. The difference: a marketing campaign touting Shatto milk as free of artificial hormones. Osborn, Mo.-based Shatto milk comes plain or flavored, but all comes from cows free of the genetically engineered hormone supplements that many conventional dairies give cows to boost their milk production.

Milk from cloned cows is not welcome at the nation's biggest milk company. Although government scientists have said food products from cloned animals are safe, Dean Foods Co. of Dallas said Thursday that consumers didn't want milk from cloned animals. The $10-billion company owns Land O'Lakes and Horizon Organic, among other brands.

Under pressure from supermarket chains and their customers, California cows are going drug-free. The giant Central Valley dairy co-op that produces 4 of every 10 glasses of milk drunk by Californians is phasing out the use of a synthetic bovine growth hormone that increases how much milk cows produce. Despite evidence that the rBST hormone doesn't harm humans, California Dairies Inc. said its biggest customers such as Vons and Safeway didn't want it in the cows.

Tulare County supervisors gave final approval Tuesday to plans for a controversial dairy operation adjacent to Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, the site of a historic all-black community founded 99 years ago. However, the approval came amid signs of progress in a possible deal between the property's owner and critics of his plan for the site about 150 miles north of Los Angeles.

The state and an environmental group filed lawsuits Thursday to block construction of a 12,000-cow dairy next to Allensworth State Historic Park, a remote patch of prairie where a former slave established an African American community nearly a century ago. The suits against the Tulare County Board of Supervisors contend that the panel approved the dairy without properly considering the possible effect of odors, flies and water pollution on visitors to the park and on nearby homes.

Prices of milk, cheese, ice cream and other dairy products will rise this summer in the United States as more dairy processors pass on their skyrocketing raw-milk costs. Farm-level milk prices will hit new highs in 2007 because of rapidly growing export demand, tight global supplies and only modest gains in U.S. production. "We're going to be hitting record milk prices here in the U.S.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that the number of organic farms is booming to meet consumer demand for healthy food. In Washington, a state known more for its apples than any other crop, there are 45 organic dairies. Five years ago, there were just two. The challenge has been feeding all of those cows. Acreage of organic forage, such as hay and alfalfa, has grown 40% in the last two years, yet isn't keeping pace with demand.