Pasture fed cows - Organic Milk - Now you know

NO MORE EXCUSES!!!

Ok guys, I've run into a way that you can check where exactly your milk comes from. NO MORE EXCUSES buying corporate factory farmed milk! Let's put those factory farms out of their misery!

And this works wonderfully if you have a iPhone at the grocery store. You can look up the source and make a decision on the spot while you are at the dairy fridge.

Here's how to do it:
Step 1)Go to http://whereismymilkfrom.com/. On the left side, type in the plant # that you see on the milk carton. Usually the half gallon paper cartons will have a plant # that was printed at the time the whole carton was printed at the print shop. The gallon plastic containers will have a dotted plant # sprayed on them.

Here is a convenient full list of all the dairies.

Step 2)Next, go to Cornucopia.org and see if your dairy farm has 3+ cow ratings. The more cows the better! They even have a numeric score to differentiate the quality of the dairy farming operation. Higher the better!

I believe from my research (I am generalizing and it may not be true) that the half gallons contain better sourced (better quality) milk, whereas, the gallon containers are marketed as "bulk", of lower quality, and picked up by people trying to save a few pennies.

I noticed the organic milk gallon I purchased from Trader Joe's was sourced from Rockview Farms of Downey CA (plant # 06-98), which according to Cornucopia, is of questionable origin, since Rockview has a huge dairy operation in Nevada that mimics a factory where cows might not have pasture access.

The half gallon paper carton of organic milk I purchased from Fresh and Easy (a U.S. branch of UK's Tesco) had a plant # of 06-691 which meant it was sourced from Clover Stornetta Farms Inc of Petaluma. Going to Cornucopia, I found that it had 4 cow ratings which is satisfactory for me. I KNOW it's not a factory farm!

Economics:
The gallon of Rockview Farms "organic" milk from Trader Joe's cost me $5.99. The half gallon from Fresh & Easy only cost me $3.29 per half gallon, which is $6.58 for a full gallon. So it only cost me $.58 more to source from a cleaner and a more sustainable dairy operation! Not only that, when I clicked the Clover Organic Farms link on Cornucopia, I found that Clover sources all it's milk from either multigenerational family farmers or cooperatives.

I'd like to hear what you guys found out!