Consumer advocates and sustainable food activists are worried this will end up "blurring the line" between organic and natural foods even further than it currently is in the minds of American mothers, sure that they should feed their children fewer chemical derivatives and pesticides, but often too harried to spend time reading up on individual ingredients -- or even reading ingredients lists at all. Using the trusted Horizon brand and label, and the happy-green-feeling word "natural," Dean Foods could be on to something profitable.

Says Monica Eng of the Chicago Tribune, "some observers" (in other words, other big food companies) "suspect companies will be watching Dean's new venture to see if they can shed cumbersome and expensive organic standards." Who wants to pay extra for organic certification and the organic sweeteners that must be in short supply, if the industry can just spend less conforming to standards that have, for the most part, been already adopted by marketers of children's and "healthy" food? Avoiding growth hormones and staying away from artificial colors is great; but it's already a part of the repertoire of many food brands. Confusing consumers between the distinction between a regulated term and an unregulated, but equally feel-food, substitute is good business, if in the word "good" all you are critiquing is the ability to generate profits over the next several quarters.

In the long term, the health of consumers and farmland will not prove to be as resilient as has the American consumers' blissfully blind trust of food companies and the ever-cheaper, handily-subsidized food products they have served up to the American public.