Milked We investigated organic milk in Ontario, tracking its journey from cow to carton, and found the product is no different than cheaper conventional milk. So why are we paying more?

Aline Dimitri, the food regulator’s deputy chief of food safety, says, “When it comes to the safety of the product, there is no difference. People may feel that one is safer to consume than the other, but that is not supported by science.”

“The milks are the same – they are identical with respect to the testing and quality standards. There’s no added hormones. No antibiotics,” says Graham Lloyd, of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the quasi-governmental organization that controls the organic and regular milk supply.

While Canada’s organic dairy farmers do some things differently than their conventional colleagues – like sending their cows to pasture and using only chemicals that are considered natural – it’s not reflected in the end product.

We visited organic and conventional farms, tested milk in labs, and interviewed industry experts, dietitians, scientists and professors, and found that consumers’ belief is cultivated by mischaracterizations about conventional milk and a 100-year-old, mystical farming philosophy that denounces regular milk producers as too reliant on chemicals. The organic seal of approval is awarded to farmers for meeting bureaucratic standards that emphasize note-taking and gives points to farmers who try but fail to meet them.

The Star investigated organic milk in Ontario, tracking the staple’s journey from cow to carton, and found the product is no different than cheaper regular milk: The nutritional content, the synthetic vitamin D added after pasteurization, the levels of pesticides and metals and heart healthy fats – all the same. And Canadian law forbids antibiotics and added growth hormones in any kind of milk.

In the past six months, an estimated 1.2 million Canadians have purchased certified organic milk. In 2017, organic milk sales totalled $77 million. Lucas Oleniuk

Its popularity stems from consumers’ perception that organic milk is purer and more natural, not only because it’s made the old-fashioned way from happier cows on cleaner farms but because it is free from unhealthy additives, such as antibiotics and hormones.

Lewis, 42, is one of more than an estimated 1.2 million Canadians who in the last six months have scooped up milk brands stamped with the country’s certified organic symbol. While fewer people are drinking milk overall these days, organic milk is holding steady in Canada’s $5-billion organic industry, with an estimated 2017 sales totaling $77 million.

“I just believe in it,” she says of organic milk. “It’s better for animals, more humane. And nothing’s added to it.”

At $3.99 a litre, it can be double the price of a litre of regular milk. But like bread and diapers, it’s non-discretionary for Lewis and her growing family.

Chantelle Lewis stops her shopping cart in the dairy aisle of a west-end grocery and pretzels around her giggling toddler to swipe up two frothy bottles of organic milk.

Organic farmer Thorsten Arnold wrestles with this disconnection between what the science says and what he knows about the farming system that makes the milk. Arnold, a board member of The Organic Council of Ontario, a lobby group, acknowledges the milks may be similar and that the organic milk processing system “is very much like the conventional system.” He says that some of the benefits of organics are “hard to trace in food” and that “today’s analytical methods of science are inadequate” to do so. He says reducing organic agriculture to an end product is a mistake that misses the point of this “holistic system.” Organic milk “brings health, animal welfare and environmental benefits,” says Ottawa-based Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA), another lobby group. “Choosing organic milk means consumers are supporting the reduction of toxic synthetic pesticide use on pastures and cropland among many other benefits,” COTA executive director Tia Loftsgard said in a statement. “Choosing organic dairy products is not only about the final product, nor the farm it was made on. It is about supporting a system that is trying to do better across the supply chain.”

John Brunsveld, owner of Lizton Acres organic dairy, hand feeds a calf in its outdoor pen in Puslinch, Ontario. Brunsveld believes organic cows are happier cows. Lucas Oleniuk

Organic cows are happier cows, says John Brunsveld, sitting at the large kitchen table on Lizton Acres, his hilly patch of land near Hamilton, Ont. where 130 Holsteins and Holstein-Jerseys wait for their afternoon milking. Brunsveld says that fresh air and forage make all the difference. “I think God made an animal to walk around on grass,” he says. “They’re better off.” They may also be healthier, according to Martin de Groot, 64, owner of Mapleton’s Organic, an organic milk producer and ice-cream maker in Moorefield, Ont. Tall and wiry, with deep tan lines marking a face that has spent decades in the fields and barn, de Groot says organic farming reduces an animal’s “stress level” and gives them room to move. That lowers their risk of disease, he says. “Organic farmers pay more attention to animal welfare issues because they really care about the animals.” And they work more in concert with nature, says Gerald Poechman, a long-time voice of the industry. Regular farmers use chemicals as a “crutch” to keep their crops weed-free and pests at bay while organic farmers diligently work the land to try to head off such problems before chemicals are needed. This extra work is part of what justifies the extra 30 cents per litre that organic milk producers get when their product leaves the farm for the processing plants, Poechman says.

Organic dairy farmer Bill van Nes sits in his field at St. Brigid’s Dairy in Brussels, Ontario. Van Nes says he is always looking for natural methods to improve his farming. Lucas Oleniuk

Bill Van Nes, an organic dairy farmer in Brussels, Ont. says he is always looking for natural methods to improve his farming. He was recently considering stuffing old cow horns with manure and burying them over a solstice. “When you dig it up it’s got this incredible fungi, living stuff.” Calling it a “bio stimulant,” he says it could increase his soil’s fertility once he sprays it over his land. This practice, still used today by a handful of Ontario’s organic producers, originates with biodynamic agriculture, an early 20th-century farming philosophy that influenced the founders of the province’s organic dairy industry. It began in Germany during the 1920s with the teachings of philosopher Rudolph Steiner, also the father of Waldorf Schools, an alternative education program, who believed the spiritual and physical worlds were intertwined. The movement’s pioneers felt emerging industrial farming, with its reliance on expensive, synthetic chemicals, was harmful to the planet, says food economics professor Andreas Boecker of the University of Guelph. Biodynamic farmers, Boecker says, believed they could harness cosmic rays, redirecting them to heal the soil, by such practices as planting according to lunar phases or spraying crops with the brew created by burying cow horns filled with manure. The practice arrived in western Ontario in the late 1970s and early 1980s when a trickle of biodynamic farmers immigrated to Canada from Germany, Switzerland and Holland. Harmony Organic’s website warns consumers that some conventional milk packaging can “make you believe that what’s being purchased is better and healthier for you. The contrary is true.” Lucas Oleniuk Lawrence Andres, owner of Harmony Organic, the brand of organic milk Chantelle Lewis chose at that west-end grocery store, was one of the first such farmers in the province. He, on behalf of a group of five farmers, including Michael Schmidt, the raw milk activist, lobbied the milk marketing board – now the Dairy Farmers of Ontario – to segregate their milk into a separate stream. Seeing the organic movement take hold in Quebec, B.C. and stateside, the board approved the request. On June 14, 1994 a silver tanker carrying milk from five small organic farms trundled down a dirt road in Kincardine, Ontario to a tiny dairy where it was turned into the province’s first official batch of organic cheese. When the pilot project ended, the milk marketing board allowed this fledgling industry to continue segregating and selling its milk. Things picked up once organic producers set up booths in urban supermarkets, coming face to face with consumers, who were delighted to meet the farmers, with their calloused hands and sun-stained faces, who made their food. “It worked,” Poechman says. “We made an organic connection.” Today, the province’s organic dairy industry — there are 82 organic dairy farms compared to 3,483 conventional farms producing regular milk — still touts its superiority. Harmony Organic’s website warns consumers that some conventional milk packaging can “distort the facts” and “make you believe that what’s being purchased is better and healthier for you. The contrary is true. Conventional milk in any form is just that, conventional.” Dave Loewith, a farmer who produces regular milk, bristles at suggestions his milk is inferior. “The marketing just drives me crazy,” he says. “It’s misleading because it’s just not true.”

Dave Loewith, co-owner of Joe Loewith & Sons conventional dairy in Jerseyville, Ontario, bristles at suggestions that the conventional milk he produces is inferior. “The marketing just drives me crazy,” he says. Lucas Oleniuk

The B.C. Dairy Association, the marketing and education arm of the province’s milk industry, says in an article on its website: “There is no statistically significant evidence to support that organic dairy milk is more nutritious than regular milk” and that “both conventional and organic dairy farmers have environmentally friendly practices.” Information published under the heading “Facts & Fallacies” on Dairy Nutrition, a website run by The Dairy Farmers of Canada, which represents both organic and conventional dairies, says “there is no evidence to suggest that organic products, including milk, provide health benefits that are different from conventionally produced foods.” “It’s a myth,” professor Tim Caulfield, Canada research chair in Health Law and Policy, says about organic milk. Caulfield, who is writing a book about how we make our basic, every day decisions, including what kind of milk to buy, says the organic industry’s marketing creates a “health halo” that endows its product with benefits that don’t exist. “The evidence just isn’t there.”

A milk tanker picks up milk at Joe Loewith & Sons, a conventional dairy. In Ontario all milk is pooled — organic and conventional streams are kept separate in dedicated tankers — before being processed at a plant. Lucas Oleniuk

A 2016 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that organic milk had a “more desirable” fatty acid composition because organic cows grazed and ate more grass than conventional cows. The meta-analysis drew its research from 170 studies conducted mainly in Europe. To test the levels of these heart-healthy fatty acids, the Star used a bag each of Loblaw PC Organics and regular Neilson milk. Results showed the same proportions of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats in all the samples, indicating the cows producing Ontario’s organic milk are likely not grazing any more than conventional cows. Dietitian Wendy Benson says that even if the province’s organic milk did contain the same amounts of Omega 3 fats found by the 2016 meta analysis, we would have to drink eight and a half glasses of full fat milk “each day, every day, forever” to get the benefit, she says. “Even then, the minute benefit would be subtle.”

Nutrition in organic and conventional milk 3.25% Neilson Milk 3.25% PC Organics

Same fatty acid amounts in organic and conventional milk 3.25% Neilson Milk <0.1% Trans Fatty Acids 0.8% cis Mono-Unsaturates <0.1% Omega-6 Polyunsaturates <0.1% Omega-3 Polyunsaturates 2.4% Saturates 0.1% cis-cis Polyunsaturates 3.5% Fat 3.25% PC Organics <0.1% Trans Fatty Acids 0.8% cis Mono-Unsaturates <0.1% Omega-6 Polyunsaturates <0.1% Omega-3 Polyunsaturates 2.2% Saturates 0.1% cis-cis Polyunsaturates 3.4% Fat Source: Gelda Scientific, Mississauga

The Canada Organic Trade Association says that time of year is an important variable for testing because “fatty acid composition is higher in dairy collected on organic farms during spring, summer and fall when cows are grazing.” The milk used for the Star’s test was bought in February, and COTA says organic milk sold in winter “might not show higher fatty acid levels.” Canada’s organic rules say that during grazing season, dairy cows must get at least 30 per cent of their “forage” diet, including grass, from pasture. On a winter’s day at Mapleton’s Organic dairy, 75 cows lolled around in a closed barn, quietly chewing their cud. Like many of Ontario’s dairy cows, they don’t go out for around six months from late fall to early spring. When temperatures fall, there is no green grass. And little sunshine.

Martin de Groot of Mapleton’s Organic in Moorefield, Ontario, keeps his cows indoors when the weather is too cold or too hot. “It’s an animal welfare issue.” Lucas Oleniuk

Cows don’t like the cold. “Or the heat,” owner Martin de Groot says. On a sweltering afternoon last year, he said he fought with an inspector who insisted the cows be turned out. He refused. “It’s an animal welfare issue,” he said, adding that in the summer he puts the cows out at night. Even if the cows graze more in summer there is an environmental trade-off, says Gail Carpenter, a cow nutritionist: Cows that graze more, produce less milk and fart and belch more for every litre they produce. That, she said, “increases the farm’s carbon footprint.”

Cows line up to go through the milking parlour at Lizton Acres. Dairy farmer John Brunsveld says he will try homemade remedies to keep his cows from getting sick before he turns to modern medicine. Lucas Oleniuk

John Brunsveld, 54, says he became an organic farmer 10 years ago after hearing of an American child who died after pesticides were dumped accidentally into his drinking water. One of the hardest parts of switching, he says, was resisting the urge to reach for antibiotics, which he believes are used too frequently on conventional farms. But before he figured out how to prevent illness without the drugs, he gave them medicine and then sold them. “I had to get used to not grabbing a bottle of penicillin when a cow gets ill,” he says. These days, when he notices a cow developing a urinary tract infection, common among lactating cows, he puts a homemade mixture of garlic and aloe vera down her throat. It’s not a cure, he says. “But they don’t get sick.” If all else fails, he will turn to modern medicine. Organic rules say that animals should not be denied treatment when alternative methods, such as homeopathy, don’t work. Any cow given drugs must be withdrawn from the milk supply for 30 days – after two courses of medicine in one year, they lose their organic status, the rules say. The cows can reacquire their organic status after a year, though some head to conventional dairies or become hamburger. When conventional cows are treated with antibiotics, they are kept out of the supply chain until the antibiotic has left their system. The impact on the consumer is the same: No milk in Canada can contain antibiotics. Every tanker of organic and regular is tested. If even a minute trace of antibiotic is detected, the entire load, which can be as large as 35,000 litres, is dumped. Then the source farm is isolated through further testing and required to pay for the entire tanker of milk – up to $35,000 – plus fines.

Milk transporter and grader John Stubbs, left, takes a sample of milk at Lizton Acres before transferring the whole batch to his truck. Milk is tested upon arrival at processing plants. Lucas Oleniuk