Aurora Organic Dairy Reaches $7.5 Million Class Action Settlement

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Aurora Organic Dairy Reaches $7.5 Million Class Action Settlement

By Sarah Pierce

UPDATE: Details on how to file a claim for the Organic Milk Marketing Class Action Lawsuit Settlement have arrived!

Aurora Organic Dairy, the leading producer of private-brand organic milk and butter for U.S. retailers, has agreed to a $7.5 million class action lawsuit settlement to resolve a nearly five-year long legal battle with consumers alleging it made fraudulent marketing claims about its organic milk.

Consumers in 40 states filed 19 separate class action lawsuits in 2007 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed suspending or revoking Aurora’s organic milk certification after it found the company “willfully” violated 14 different federal organic regulations, including multiple cases of non-organic cows being used to produce organic milk. Aurora never lost its certification, however, and settled the dispute several months later by agreeing, among other things, to retire or remove some of its allegedly non-organic cows.

Consumers alleged in the Aurora Organic Dairy class action lawsuit that Aurora’s labeling, graphics and marketing claims, which depicted cows happily grazing in pastures or on farms, were deceptive because, in reality, “the animals were living short, stressful lives being forced to produce copious quantities of milk in the kind of filthy industrial conditions that organic consumers thought they were avoiding,” according to the Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog that first filed the USDA complaint against Aurora. 

The Aurora Organic Dairy class action lawsuit was brought on behalf of consumers in more than 30 states who felt duped into buying private-label, or store brand, organic milk at a number of retailers that Aurora served, including Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

“Organic consumers do not just buy milk, they are buying the story behind the label,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at the Cornucopia Institute.

The consumer class action lawsuit alleged the following store brands of Aurora Organic Dairy were marketed as organic when they were not: Aurora’s “High Meadow” brand, Costco’s “Kirkland” brand, Safeway’s “O Organics” brand, Target’s “Archer Farms” brand, Wal-Mart’s “Great Value” brand and Wild Oats’ store brand. At least one of the stores, Target, no longer carries Aurora milk.

However, these claims were dismissed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the district court, which confirmed that Aurora’s milk was at all times properly labeled and sold as organic, and that Aurora’s milk has been certified as organic by a USDA-accredited certifying agent since 2004. Aurora admits no wrongdoing in reaching the class action lawsuit settlement and says it only settled to avoid the expense of continuing to fight the litigation.