Client project leaflet
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Cows are increasingly confined indoors on dairy farms, receiving little opportunity to graze outside. The Free Range Dairy Network aims to change this by certifying dairies where cows enjoy freedom to graze in fields for at least six months each year. The standards are designed to be achievable on farms while giving cows a natural lifestyle. Certified dairies provide milk from cows that can graze on grass in summer and eat conserved grass in winter.
Client project leaflet
- 2. The Milk Despite the widespread uses of images of cows in fields, labels on milk tell you very little about the farms your milk comes from and the life that the cows actually have.Traditional british dairy farms are disappearing from the land- scape at an alarming rate, to be replaced by larger, more intensive operations where cows are sometimes confined indoors all year round. We have consulted with farmers to pro- duce a simple set of standards that are acheivable on farms, to give cows the kind of life you would want them to have. The free range dairy network licenses the pasture promise logo to dairy companies and farmers to provide you with a simple assurance that the milk comes from cows that enjoy the freedom to graze in fields for at least six months of the year. The cows are not fed a 100% grass diet but, like or- ganic farms there is a requirement for a minumum of 60% of the diet to be made up of forage. During the summer months the cows graze lush green grass and in winter the diet is founded on grass conserved as silage and hay.There is increasing evidence to show that milk from grass is lower in saturated fat and higher in healthy fats like Conjugated Linoleic Acid and Omega 3. ‘Free range is all about freedom’
- 3. The Cows It is estimated that around 300,000 of dairy cows in the U.K never go out- side and more and more herds have only limited access to grazing. But cows work hard for us, getting up early every day to produce milk and we think they deserve something in return.We consider grazing to be a fundamental natural expression for dairy cows and want to secure them the freedom to roam in fields in the spring and summer months. Grass is a cheap, nutritious food for dairy cows and they turn it into healthy milk with high levels of omega 3 and other healthy fats. Keeping cows in- doors all year round is an expensive business, which means cows are under greater pressure to deliver high milk yields.We promote a farming system that is not reliant on the relentless pursuit of high yields and gives cows something more akin to the life that nature intended. People already tell us they want to be able to choose milk from cows in fields and we know that freedom for cows and other farm animals is important to them.We want to win a fair deal for farmers, cows and consumers. But right now, milk labels do not tell you how much time cows spend outdoors.You will see widespread use of imaes and cows in fields, supermarkets and on dairy packaging.This creates a per- ception that all cows live the kind of life you would expect. ‘Free range dairy is working with farmers to maximise the amount of time cows spend outside grazing each year’