Companiesandme

I see sustainability as getting back to our roots, to a simpler time when people mattered most; the land was treated with care; superior products were how you made a name for yourself; and doing the right thing in business, although sometimes more difficult, was just the way business was done. And we realize that we must always look ahead to the next challenge and see how we can turn that into an opportunity.

We consider rBST one of our biggest opportunities of the 90s. We were approached by Monsanto in 1994 to use the new artificial growth hormone rBST. Monsanto told us that we’d see huge benefits in our profits margins as a result of increased milk production, but we questioned whether people who buy Clover would want artificial hormones in their milk. We decided to be the company that took a stand against rBST, offering an alternative that we thought was the right choice for the families who buy Clover milk. You may or may not know it, but we actually were the first to label our milk as "rBST-free" which Monstanto was happy to help us realize, as it did other dairy producers, wasn't quite correct, since it's the milk that comes from cows who aren't treated with rBST. 

Around that time, we instituted a new program called North Coast Excellence Certified, designed to raise the standard for the quality of our milk, and the practices of the family farms that produce it. The details include quality, measured by coliform counts, standard plate counts and somatic cell counts, no rBST, as well as progressive family farming and sustainable agriculture practices. And the program has become a national benchmark for achieving the highest quality milk products. By taking a stand, looking for the opportunity to focus on cleaner, healthier milk while much of the industry was considering shortcuts, we continued to differentiate our milk and the differences in quality were recognized.

As a company that depends on three things--people, the environment, and our cows--we can't afford to stop working to carefully consider our impact on any of them. Cows should always be free from unnecessary distress, fear, pain, injury, discomfort, hunger, or thirst, so we worked with the America Humane Association to certify and ensure that ours were. We were the first dairy in the United States to be American Humane Certified for the treatment of our cows. It often makes business sense to use more efficient technologies, like solar panels, Freon instead of ammonia coolers and freezers, cold plate technology instead of burning diesel to keep milk cold while its transported, hybrids for our sales fleet, or a more efficient waste water treatment facility to save (a lot of) water. But we're always looking for new ways to operate more efficiently, so if you have ideas for us, please share them. Of course, we can't do everything, but we're listening and are genuinely committed to doing things the right way, as I believe we always have.

Continuing to look for opportunities to operate more sustainably is important because it allows us to run Clover in concert with our farmers who want their land and cows to produce for many, many years. If a farmer takes good care of his land, his land will take good care of him and his family. 

When you think of sustainability what does it mean to you?