Importance of USDA Certification
All agricultural products labeled "organic" in the U.S. have been verified by an accredited certification agency as meeting or exceeding United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards for organic production.
When we began our search for a source of whey, we didn’t want to add the cost of the organic certification process without any tangible benefits. However, after digging deeper into the sources of uncertified whey suppliers, which claimed not to contain any harmful ingredients (such as r-BGH and IGF-1) we found that they lacked consistency in meeting all of the four important requirements that we had set as the minimum of any The Organic Whey™ product:
- Whey must come from cows that have not been treated with bovine growth hormone (BGH) to increase milk production. This was due to our concern that hormones in milk could raise the risk of hormone-related cancers, or lead to higher levels of an insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) linked with cancer.
- Cows are not treated with antibiotics. If a cow in an organic herd does need to be treated with antibiotics, she is not returned to the herd for a period of 12 months.
- A third requirement was that cows’ feed is grown without synthetic pesticides, whether the feed is grass or grain. Some of the pesticides used in the production of feed are known carcinogens.
- A fourth requirement for organic milk is that cows must have access to pasture.
