Despite its folksy image, Horizon is emblematic of 21st century agriculture. It's a brand of White Wave Foods, itself a division of $10 billion Dean Foods, the largest milk bottler in the country. Yet big business doesn't have to be a dirty word, says Steve Demos, president of White Wave Foods and overseer of the Horizon brand, who resigned from the company not long after our interview.

"There's a certain idealistic appreciation for a farm with 10 cows grazing on a hill at sunrise," he offers. "But there are 280 million people in the Unites States. If moms and consumers care about avoiding hormones and antibiotics, then it's our job to fill that need as much as possible. And if profits are rooted in noble causes and honorable intentions, then honesty pays. Long ago they said that small was beautiful; they forgot to tell you it's not profitable."

Here's a little primer on the cash cow that is organic milk. It sells for nearly double the price of regular milk (approximately $4 to $2 for a half-gallon). Although it currently constitutes less than 3 percent of the American milk market, sales have increased 23 percent every year between 1997 and 2003. At its current trajectory, organic milk is poised to become 6 percent of the market by 2010 -- a $2.4 billion industry. Horizon, with annual sales of $218 million, is already the country's largest organic milk producer.

And, yes, building market share requires a clever sales pitch. "Nobody doubts the pure wholesome milk of the early American heritage dairy farms," Demos says. "We are marketing the very myth about early milk."

It's a myth that has certainly caught on. "Consumers always mention the happy cow," says Blanca Hernandez of the Hartman Group, a market research firm for natural foods. "Its brand reinforces their decision that they're buying something that's good for their family." Yet mainstream consumers, she adds, aren't aware of what qualifies as organic. "They don't know how exactly a product should be grown to be certified. It's not imperative to them. To them, the organic label simply means that their milk has been produced without the use of hormones or antibiotics. Those are the things they look for. It's what gives them peace of mind."

What most consumers don't know is that at Horizon's big dairies, such as the one in Idaho, the cows are raised in a manner that most experts don't consider organic. According to former Horizon Idaho dairy workers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing their current jobs, Horizon cows graze for only four or five hours a day and during only three months in the summer. While Horizon claims the cows get plenty of fresh air, that's because the barns are open structures. Their cows can see the fields but mostly aren't walking around in them. "Most of the time, the cows are inside the barn," says one former employee, who worked on the Idaho farm for eight years.

Like the steady stream of Mexican immigrants who milk them every eight hours, Horizon cows work hard. In Idaho, they are fed a steady diet of alfalfa hay, oats, soybeans, and grains such as barley and corn (all organic!), according to a Horizon spokesperson. This starch diet pushes the bovines to produce extra milk. While dairy cows on many pasture-based farms are milked twice a day, Horizon's cows produce enough to be milked three times daily.

In general, says Dr. Hubert Karreman, a dairy cow veterinarian, "grain-heavy diets aren't good for cows." Karreman is an animal husbandry expert who also serves on the National Organic Standards Board, a federal advisory board. Cows have evolved to eat grass, which is why their four stomachs, filled with an array of anaerobic bacteria, function like fermentation vats at a brewery. When the majority of a cow's diet comes from grain and other readily fermentable carbohydrates, their rumen, the first of those four stomachs, becomes acidic and the cows can become sick and die prematurely.

Former employees say they have no evidence of this happening at Horizon. The company, according to its spokesperson, generally sells its cows at an average age of 6 years old to butchers, while in general many organic dairy cows can live to be 13.

"It's fundamental to organic that cows are eating grass that's rooted in the ground," says Karreman, based in Lancaster County, Pa. "I'm not in favor of large confinement farms. I like to see cows out on grass, eating in the sunshine, enjoying the landscape. Organic should mean that pasture is the true source of nutrition for the animals."

Linda Tikofsky, a veterinarian at Cornell University, agrees. "Cows are healthier when they're out on grass," she says. Tikofsky explains that while there's nothing in Horizon milk that would hurt anyone, for her, an organic label would mean a sustainable system where the health of the animal and the environment is more important than manipulating cows to maximize milk production. "I feed my kids organic milk but not Horizon," she says.

There remains a serious debate about just how good milk is for anyone. Ask any vegan. Regardless, many nutritionists say the most nutritious glass of milk comes from cows that eat fresh grass. Studies in the Journal of Dairy Science suggest that grass-fed cows produce milk that is higher in beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E, and has five times more cancer-fighting properties. This also contains an equal ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Even amounts of these two fats result in lower risk of cancer, allergies, obesity and diabetes, according to a 2002 study in Biomed Pharmacotherapy.

Still, while the milk from Horizon and Aurora's confinement dairies may not be the cream of the crop, it's far from the milk produced by conventional factory dairies such as Borden, Alta Dena and Meadow Gold, all bottled by Dean, Horizon's parent company. These days, regular dairies can have up to 30,000 cows that are raised in huge contained barns with big lagoon ponds of manure out back. To keep all those cows healthy in such a confined space, they're pumped full of antibiotics. They're fed hormones to increase their milk production, and these conventional cows eat a tasty array of pesticide-laden feed. As calves, they're fed chicken manure because it's high in protein. Such milk is laced with a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and hormones such as rGBH, a controversial drug produced by Monsanto.

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