WASHINGTON, April 4, 2006 -- The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is calling on consumers to boycott milk brands that claim to be organic while routinely importing calves from conventional farms and raising the animals in intensive confinement, with little or no access to pasture.

"Consumers buying products labeled 'organic' do not realize that they often essentially being scammed by some of the larger companies who put pictures of happily grazing cows on their products, but in reality keep their cows confined in ways very similar to traditional factory farms. OCA is calling on consumers to boycott these bogus organic products , and give their consumer dollars to ethical producers who are upholding strict organic standards," says Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the Organic Consumers Association.

For the confused consumer trying to buy ethical organic dairy, there is a new study, Maintaining the Integrity of Organic Milk, produced by the Cornucopia Institute that rates 68 organic dairy name-brands and private labels, exposing the dubious practices of some so-called organic companies, and highlighting companies that are producing truly organic milk.

Ag Observatory published two somewhat contradictory stories from the newswires on March 15th that both relate to the discovery of the third case of mad cow disase. The first deals with legistlators who are capitalizing on this discovery to make the National Agricultural Identification System (NAIS) for tracing cattle mandatory. Right now it's voluntary, and as this article states,

About 10 percent of the 2 million premises nationwide have been registered.

They fail to mention, however, that these are mostly the largest feedlots and slaughterhouses.

Meanwhile, the other article outlines the USDA's plans to reduce the amount of testing of cattle at the time of slaughter.

I went to see a showing of Ceský sen (Czech Dream). There's so much to say, both good and bad, about this film. But i'll make this brief.

First, it's clear to me that state-funded filmmakers in the Czech Republic have way less rigorous ethics standards than any North American social science department. In order to make their statement, the two gonzos behind this film tricked thousands of (mostly poor) consumers, all seeking the consumer paradise that's supposed to be found at the end of the EU rainbow, to show up to the opening of their nonexistent big-box supermarket called "Czech Dream" (a would-be competitor to the UK supermarket Tesco that is rapidly coming to dominate European retailing).

The filmmakers' condescending attitude towards the consumer hordes seemed to get transferred to the liberal Madison audience with whom i was sitting. Just as 20 years ago tourists in Prague would snap photos of Czechs lining up to buy bananas (a vignette that is retold by one of Ceský sen's disappointed would-be customers), here were 1000 film-goers getting entertainment value from watching people of a different nationality ache longingly for cheap mineral water and other things we take for granted.

Caspian (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasian and Numbering), an American privacy advocacy group, is taking issue with Tesco, the UK's largest Supermarket chain, over their trials of RFID tagging on individual food items, as opposed to just the cases involved in shipping. Wal-mart, who pioneered the retail sector's mass adoption of RFID tags, has also been criticized for this.Here's the article

While i don't think that gleaning information from consumers is the primary purpose for RFID tags, it certainly represents a major threat, and once instituted, represents a major technological wedge that could help ratchet down privacy laws. It would be a truly golden opportunity for many a market research firm. Here's an article by Katherine Albrecht, the founder of Caspian, about the imminent use of RFID in supermarkets, in the context of other supermarket information gleaning technologies. The privacy advocacy groups, such as Caspian, also represent a potential ally against the dark lords of transnational commodity chain governance.