Fluid organic milk processing

Figure 2.4 compares the GHG emissions in different sectors of the fluid milk process from three LCA analyses performed for U.S. dairy farms. The Cashman et al. (2009) study was conducted using primary data from farmers and processors for organic operations. The Thoma et al. (2010) study utilized... 

In the United States, there is a federal standard for fluid dairy production that is known as the Interstate Milk Standard. This is a standard that is supported by the Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), both of which carry out various parts of the inspection process. The standard requires that dairy facilities can audit the milk from the farm through the plant and as finished product. Because this infrastructure already exists, the auditing of organic dairy production is quite simple. 

But even if we confine our discussion to the product as such, producers and sellers of organic foods still have an additional problem in capturing the full potential appeal of their products, namely that the term organic refers primarily to how the product was made, not to the product that resulted. (This discussion applies mainly to fresh fruits and vegetables, fluid milk, eggs, and other unprocessed or minimally processed foods standards for processed organic foods include prohibitions on many additives that definitely would affect the product itself, perhaps more significantly than they affect the environment. The same is tme for the non-use of hormones in animal production, which has health implications that some consumers definitely care about.)... 

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