Opinion: Farm Forward’s Investigation Into Alexandre Farms and the Greenwashing of Large-scale Dairy

Industrial-scale dairy wants you to believe that they can turn cows’ milk green. As US milk consumption continues its decades-long drop, industrial dairy is increasingly desperate to hold on to environmentally-minded consumers who aren’t buying what it is selling. When you see a carton of milk at the grocery store with claims like “regenerative” or “carbon neutral,” you should feel as alarmed as you’d be by someone trying to sell you a literal glass of green milk.

Many labels that guarantee humane treatment of farm animals (e.g., “humanely raised”), do anything but and are largely meaningless. Only recently did the USDA announce that it might regulate some of these labels after a push from advocates (we aren’t holding our breath). If this is the case of animal welfare labeling, consumers are right to be concerned that it is likely true of “green” labeling as well, particularly for the dairy industry, which is one of the most environmentally intensive industries on Earth. 

Farm Forward recently published a major investigative report detailing systematic animal suffering and consumer fraud at Alexandre Family Farm—a leading large-scale organic dairy company with “well over 9,000 head of cattle,” according to co-owner Blake Alexandre—whose products are covered in certification labels. The details of this investigation and the facts about large-scale dairy production should call into question the idea that the industry can be compatible with a more sustainable and humane food system. 

Farm Forward’s investigation and deceptive labeling

One of the key findings of Farm Forward’s investigation into Alexandre was this: Certifications such as Regenerative Organic Certified and Certified Humane were, sadly, insufficient to stop widespread abuse of cows and apparent environmental violations of land and water. This means that the primary function of labels—to give consumers assurances that a given product meets their values—frequently fails. In other words, humane labels aren’t there to help the consumer find better products. They’re tools for the meat and dairy industry to market their products. It’s unlikely, for example, that when a consumer sees one of these labels on Alexandre milk products in a Whole Foods Market, they imagine a field of dead cows being used as compost, or decaying cow corpses dangling into waterways, likely violating state water quality laws. Yet that’s exactly what Farm Forward’s investigation found. 

And then there’s the halo effect. Other companies that use Alexandre as a supplier, whether for ice cream, cheese, or even toddler formula, have used marketing based off of Alexandre’s humanewashing and greenwashing, and reaped the benefits. For a long time, Alexandre—and companies that have Alexandre as a supplier—have touted the Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label, a certification with genuinely high standards for cow treatment. However, Farm Forward learned from its investigation that only a relatively small number of Alexandre cows (fewer than 300 of the more than 5,000 to 9,000 cows raised by Alexandre, or roughly three to six percent) actually qualify under the label. Yet, companies bathe in the good image of Alexandre all the same, touting Alexandre’s ROC certification whether or not the actual milk used in their products came from ROC cows (as of writing, Alexandre’s ROC certification was suspended after a February 2024 audit, pending conclusion of the investigation).

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Green Guides require that marketers “ensure that all reasonable interpretations of their claims are truthful, not misleading, and supported by a reasonable basis” and that environmental marketing claims “not overstate, directly or by implication, an environmental attribute or benefit.” The FTC itself states that “…sometimes what companies think their green claims mean and what consumers really understand are two different things.” A consumer buying milk adorned with labels such as ROC and “Certified Humane” ought to have confidence that those products were actually made from properly treated cows by a company following environmental guidelines and ordinances, and free from the systematic abuse documented in the investigation. 

Large-scale dairy is incompatible with net zero

In order to understand deceptive labeling, however, we have to go back to the beginning: Why do massive dairy companies feel a need to plaster their products with misleading labels that may violate FTC guidelines? There’s a simple answer: They know the reputation of industrial dairy is faltering and are desperate to remedy the problem with claims that their industry can both expand and save us from climate disaster. And if the recent industrial dairy ad campaigns are any indication, it would seem that they are quite desperate. 

On an ultra-small scale, a sincere commitment to regenerative agriculture is compatible with reducing many of the harms of industrial animal agriculture, including harms to the climate. However, Alexandre and so many other companies that want to rehabilitate dairy farms are not small-scale; they may have thousands of animals under their care. And recent research into the ability of large-scale “regenerative” cow operations to offset as much greenhouse gas emissions as they produce is quite clear: It won’t work. The authors conclude that soil-based carbon sequestration “has a limited role to mitigate climate warming caused by the ruminant sector.” According to the study, offsetting the methane associated with global ruminant farming annually—a massive 135 gigatons—with soil-based sequestration is biophysically impossible. 

And yet, for decades, the broader dairy industry has been pushing smaller farmers out of business, the very farm operations that can represent a legitimate attempt at a regenerative system. 

Playing dairy roulette 

Farm Forward’s investigation didn’t just reveal that one particular company eschewed these standards, but also that the entire dairy system is flawed. Several certifications failed to see animal abuse happening right under their noses. USDA Organic requires that producers that treat an organic cow with antibiotics must remove that cow from the organic program. In doing so, the USDA inadvertently creates a financial disincentive for producers to treat suffering cows with the proper care, since non-organic milk and meat is sold at a far lower price point (see the report’s appendix); and many companies have benefited from the halo effect of Alexandre’s deceptions. What makes this all especially sad is that there are labels—Regenerative Organic Certified and Animal Welfare Approved among them—that genuinely have high standards relative to many other labeling schemes on the market. They can represent a small piece of the path toward a more sustainable and humane food system. But in the context of dairy production, the findings of the investigation have led Farm Forward to think that guaranteeing proper care of thousands of dairy cows just isn’t possible, given the unique challenges of dairy at scale and given the bad incentives. 

Alexandre’s failures are just one example of the dairy industry failing to live up to its promises. It tells us it can save the planet while treating cows humanely, while raking in unprecedented profits with its mega-dairies. How many more instances of animal abuse and climate devastation do we need to see before we stop believing that the industry that creates these harms also somehow holds the key to fixing them?

When a consumer buys milk from the grocery store—milk that they cannot guarantee came from an ultra small-scale operation with high standards of care—they are playing a game of dairy roulette. And in a world of such extreme levels of consumer deception, it becomes an easy choice to try oat milk. 

Farm Forward is a team of strategists, campaigners, and thought leaders guiding the movement to change the way our world eats and farms. Its mission is to change the way our world eats and farms end factory farming by changing farming, changing policy, and changing the stories we tell about animal agriculture. Learn more at https://www.farmforward.com/

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