From The Spring 2005 Issue of Natural Grocery Buyer

Organic milk: the cream of the crop

Aaron Dalton

Retailers don’t have to worry about organic milk passing its expiration date—the product is practically flying off the shelves. Horizon Organic, the nation’s leading producer of organic milk and the fourth-largest player in the entire milk category, has achieved better than 20 percent growth each of the last five years. Today, shoppers can find Horizon Organic milk not just in natural foods stores, but also in 70 percent of conventional grocery stores nationwide.

The popularity of organic milk encourages more stores to carry the product, and as it becomes more widely available, more and more consumers try organic milk, driving a positive cycle of increasing sales, says Barbara Haumann of the Organic Trade Association.

“Organic milk is definitely growing in acceptance and popularity,” says Haumann. “In the face of competition from stores like Whole Foods and Wild Oats, mainstream markets are adding organic products in order to attract and keep consumers, and organic milk is one of the most popular products in that mix.”

The OTA’s statistics support these assertions. Organic dairy sales grew more than 20 percent in 2003 to nearly $1.4 billion. More than 40 percent of this sales volume ($616 million) moves through conventional grocery channels.

Roughly half the sales growth was driven by the milk and cream subcategory, and the OTA’s 2004 manufacturer survey predicts the growth trend will continue for the foreseeable future, with organic milk sales forecast to increase at a 17.3 percent average annual clip from 2004 to 2008. Such growth makes it the fastest-growing subcategory in the organic dairy landscape.

What exactly makes organic milk such a popular product? “As consumers take a closer look at the relationship between food and overall health and well-being, they often look to organic,” says Gwen Scherer, marketing director at Horizon Organic in Boulder, Colo. “When people look for organic food choices, they often look at the foods they consume the most. ... Kids and expectant moms who need the calcium and vitamins in milk can drink organic milk to get all the good things they want and expect from milk without the antibiotics, added growth hormones and dangerous pesticides they don’t.”

Indeed, it is precisely the lack of these antibiotics, added growth hormones and dangerous pesticide residues that makes organic milk “organic,” says Theresa Marquez, vice president of marketing for Organic Valley Family of Farms in LaFarge, Wis., and president of the Organic Center for Education and Promotion. The Organic Rule enacted in 2002 set national organic standards that Marquez calls the strictest food-product standards in the world.

Organic dairies are forbidden from injecting their cows with growth hormones to increase milk production, nor can they use antibiotics to treat infections. “When mastitis [an infection of the udder] hits a cow in a conventional herd, the farmer can take out a syringe and give the cow a dose of antibiotics. The organic farmers can’t do that. They can use homeopathy and tinctures like garlic, but if they have to use antibiotics, the cow must be removed from the herd.”

Marquez says farmers have found that susceptibility to mastitis seems to be genetic, and that after culling their herds for a couple of years, the herds get healthier.

Other rules apply to organic dairy production. Cows must have access to grassy pastures and be given certified organic, vegetarian feed. Organic dairy farmers are even restricted in the insecticides they can use. “That’s the worst thing for them, because they hate the flies,” Marquez says.

The inability to use conventional pesticides may annoy the farmers, but it seems to bode well for organic consumers—and sales.

Organic milk may be good for you, but does it taste good? The skyrocketing sales figures alone would imply that organic milk is finding fans for its flavor as well as its health benefits. Organic Valley saw its sales jump 33 percent from 2003 to 2004, racking up $208 million in sales.

Marquez did point to one taste test in California, run by a newspaper, that offered consumers three milk choices—Organic Valley brand milk, a private-label organic brand, and a conventional brand of milk. Organic milk did extremely well in the taste tests, Marquez says.

Marquez believes that any taste advantage could be traced to the composition of organic herds. “Most conventional milk comes from Holstein cows, but a lot of our farms use mixed cows such as Guernseys and Jerseys,” Marquez explains. “Organic certification requires grazing and access to pastures, but Holsteins are lousy grazers because they’ve been bred to just want to stand in one place. The milk from the mixed herds usually has higher levels of proteins and solids, and that gives the milk body and flavor.”

Aaron Dalton (aaron@imaginationwins.com) is a freelance writer in New York.