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...organic dairy farm in the rugged hills of southwestern Wisconsin. A former farm-equipment salesman, Kastel has become a leader of the organic-food movement. In 2004 he helped found the family-farm advocacy group Cornucopia Institute, which has filed seven complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the last two years - against Wal-Mart and some of the nation's largest organic milk producers - for failures to meet federal organic standards...
...Wednesday, the USDA announced its investigators had found that Aurora failed to keep proper records about how its cows were raised, and mixed regular cows with organic cows. The government and the company reached an agreement under which the company will be allowed to keep its organic certification if it makes adjustments that include reducing the number of its cows - from about 2,200 to 1,200. The farm also plans to expand its grassland to about 400 acres from 325. Clark Driftmier, a spokesman for Aurora, said these plans had been in the works for at least two years...
Under current federal guidelines, set by the USDA's National Organic Program, organic cows must have access to pasture, although how much is fiercely debated. So, a farm with 10,000 cows is as organic as one with 10 cows. But the growth of large-scale organic farms with thousands of cows has drawn the ire of purists like Kastel...
...organic producers. "We should welcome corporate investments - it's only good for organics if they subscribe to the same foundational premise that's made this economically successful," he says. Now, he's looking beyond organic milk - to chicken, wheat and soybeans. "There's a higher authority than the USDA," Kastel says. "And that's the consumer...
Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living things. It is because pesticides are harmful that the EPA and USDA have set limits on pesticide residues. These limits assume that everyone eats an average diet. If you eat more than the average amount of any one food, you exceed the safe limit...