It’s not often that family-scale farmers can go toe-to-toe with a
$12 billion agribusiness and come out victors. But organic soybean
producers, and a modestly scaled but powerful ally, The Cornucopia
Institute, are claiming victory over Dean Foods in the organic
marketplace.

Dean Foods, the manufacturer of Silk, the top-selling soymilk drink,
was first “outed” in Cornucopia’s May 2009 report, Behind the Bean: The
Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry,
for switching its soybean sourcing from American farms to cheaper
organic beans from China. Later in 2009, Cornucopia revealed that Dean
Foods had then largely abandoned organic soybeans altogether,
stealthily changing the soybeans in their core Silk product line from
organic to less expensive conventionally grown soybeans that the
company was calling “natural.”

The shift away from organic outraged many loyal consumers and
alienated retailers across the country that were not informed of the
change and continued to inaccurately merchandise Silk products as
“organic.”

Now leading natural/organic foods retailer Whole Foods Market has decided to shift its soymilk offerings back towards organic.

Saying that its relationship with Dean Foods had “chilled,” Whole Foods
indicated it was bringing in a new branded organic soymilk partner,
Earth Balance. The national retailer also told the Denver Post, in an
August 27 story, that it wanted Earth Balance’s soymilk products to
contain only domestically grown soybeans carrying the organic label.

“Dean Foods has been roundly criticized for taking the organic out
of Silk, and now the marketplace and consumers are passing their
judgment,” said Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s senior farm policy analyst.
“They took what once was a pioneering 100% organic brand, before they
acquired the company in 2003, and cheapened the product at the expense
of American farmers and consumers. Now they are paying a price for
their naked profiteering,” Kastel added.