Organic Milk Sucks

I've been reading No Impact Man in preparation for the Texas Book Festival where the author will be speaking tomorrow. It occurred to me only yesterday that the book might be in a nearby library, and, what do you know, it was.

I've read a bit of the No Impact Man blog*, describing an interesting experiment where a man tries to get his family to the point of making no net negative impact on the earth. Of course he can't do it, but he gets far closer than I would have imagined and his life is far better than I would have imagined while he was trying. (To read about that journey online, I recommend starting here.)

One quote from the book confirmed something terrible I suspected. For milk to be certified organic, dairy cows cannot have any antibiotics ever. That is so stupid. They are trying to get people to quit giving their cows antibiotics for no reason. But when the cows are actually sick in some way that can be cured by antibiotics, I want those cows to get antibiotics. If you want your dairy to stay certified organic, however, and a cow gets an infection that can't be cured without antibiotics, you have to get rid of the cow. (The dairy farmer quoted says you have to send it to slaughter.) I really don't want to support that kind of idiocy anymore. I'm going to look more closely at my options at Wheatsville.

* Currently, the blog link starts a video, with sound. Usually it's not that annoying, but I'm warning you in case you're at work with the sound on.