AR-News: Dairy addresses public's mad cow fears

[jim robertson]

Dairy addresses public's mad cow fears

By Tim Christie
The Register-Guard



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JUNCTION CITY - When mad cow disease was found in a Washington cow last 
month and jittery consumers started thinking more about where where their 
food comes from, Lochmead Dairy decided to confront the issue head-on.

Lochmead posted notices on dairy cases at its more than 40 Dari-Mart stores 
from Albany to Cottage Grove, explaining that mad cow disease isn't spread 
through dairy products. To underscore the safety of Lochmead products, the 
notice said the dairy hasn't introduced an outside cow to its herd in 25 
years, has never fed its cows animal byproducts and has never given bovine 
growth hormone to its cows.

As a producer of more than 1.5 million gallons of milk and a half-million 
gallons of ice cream per year and the employer of more than 450 people, 
Lochmead has a lot at stake.

The family-owned dairy has painstakingly built a reputation as a producer of 
milk and ice cream products that appeal equally to the harried mom picking 
up a quart of milk at a Dari-Mart on the way home from work to 
health-conscious consumers shopping at Wild Oats Natural Food Store.

"The people that come to our stores are people who pay a little more 
attention to what they're buying," said Jock Gibson, the dairy's president.







Jock Gibson, Lochmead's president, examines soybean feed at the dairy in 
Junction City. The company mixes its own blend for quality control.



David Sevilla prepares cows for milking at Lochmead Dairy in Junction City. 
The company's tradition of animal-friendly practices, such as feeding no 
animal byproducts or growth hormone, gives it a marketing edge among 
health-conscious consumers, OSU food scientist Lisbeth Goddik explains.

Photos: Brian Davies / The Register-Guard







The dairy's milk comes from Holsteins on Lochmead's 3,000-acre farm north of 
Junction City. The milk is processed at a plant four miles away on Junction 
City's main drag. The company is the only dairy left in Oregon that still 
raises cows, processes the milk and sells it at its own stores.

"They have an extremely progressive attitude," said Lisbeth Goddik, a 
professor of food science and the Extension dairy processing specialist at 
Oregon State University.

Lochmead's animal-friendly practices are paying dividends by attracting 
health-conscious consumers, she said. "I think they've definitely 
niche-marketed their product," she said.

Federal law forbids dairy farmers from feeding their cows the by-products of 
other cows, but they are allowed to feed them them other animals, such as 
pigs and chickens.

Yet that doesn't happen at Lochmead. Buzz Gibson, the brother who manages 
dairy operations, offers a simple reason for feeding his cows a vegetarian 
diet. "Cows are herbivores," he said.

Rather than buying pre-mixed feed for their cows, the Gibsons grow their own 
silage and buy other grains separately and mix their own feed so they know 
what their cows are eating.

They bring in a nutritionist to analyze the feed and make sure it has the 
right balance of carbohydrates and proteins.

In 1993, when Monsanto began marketing recombinant bovine growth hormone - 
known as rbGH or rbST - to boost milk production by 10 percent to 15 
percent, the Gibsons decided their cows didn't need it.

"We get plenty of milk," Buzz Gibson said. "We don't believe in stressing 
the cows."

And Jock Gibson said they figured customers could do without it as well.

"We sell milk directly to customers," he said. "We know damn well and good 
they don't want it."





Copyright 2004 The Register-Guard


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........Also, here's an idiotic letter from today's Olympian..........


Environmentalists are out of line

I was out sledding in temperatures in the teens while reflecting on the 
terrible dangers of global warming. It's greatly amusing that the 
indoctrinated eco-nuts accept the conventional pseudo-science as factual.

I was also recently bemused by their radical opposition to thinning the 
forests to prevent forest fires while a great part of California was going 
up in flames because of uncontrolled brush, dead, diseased and sucker trees.

And how about this one: Let's not try to help our oil-deficit problem in oil 
production by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Have you 
seen the pictures of this armpit of the north?)

This is a virtually uninhabitable no man's land that no one ever visits or 
would ever want to visit. Forget the fact that the critters in Alaska have 
been breeding like rabbits, since they can now warm themselves by the 
pipeline.

We were warned that drilling there would destroy the environment and kill 
animals by the millions, when the reverse has actually been true.

No, Chicken Little. The sky is not falling, and the so-called global warming 
will eventually be laughed at by future generations the way we chuckle at 
the pathetic fanatics who persecuted those who insisted that the world was 
actually -- round.

Bill Cross, Lacey

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