Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
MADISON
Various farmers, consumer groups and individuals have taken sides on the Legislature’s efforts to make the sale of raw milk legal in Wisconsin.
In comments to the policy board for the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, some consumers said they believe there are health benefits for them and their families from drinking unpasteurized milk. Others said they wanted to support local small farmers by buying directly from the farm.
Lawmakers are beginning the legislative process on two companion bills that would allow legal sale of raw milk – Senate Bill 434 and Assembly Bill 628 – and a hearing has been scheduled for that measure. (See related story.)
For the state’s largest farm group it is a question of protecting the reputation of all the state’s dairy products. Wisconsin Farm Bureau members had not had a policy on raw milk sales until this past December’s annual meeting, according to spokesman Casey Langan. At that time members had a lengthy discussion on the subject and passed a resolution supporting the current prohibitions on the sale of unpasteurized milk directly to consumers.
“There was a lot of discussion but the overall theme was that all dairy products would suffer in case there was any kind of outbreak related to raw milk,” he said. “Our delegate body felt that dairy producers across the state would get a black eye if people got sick from drinking raw milk.”
That theme was sounded by other farm organizations – that the prohibitions that are in place today protect the reputation of all the state’s dairy products.
One new coalition is opposing the legislative measure on different grounds. The Wisconsin Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (WICFA), headed by Clifford Cordell, told Wisconsin State Farmer that his group’s goal is to promote and preserve unregulated direct farmer-to-consumer trade that will make locally grown and home-produced products more available to consumers.
“We believe this kind of relationship will help to revive the financial health of rural Wisconsinites as well as promote healthier diets and bring back a sense of community to our urban neighbors,” he said.
His group, said Cordell, is in favor of raw milk sales in Wisconsin and throughout the U.S., but they don’t want to see some of Wisconsin’s larger raw milk producers and desperate raw milk consumers “sell out the rest of us.” The members of his group want to see the possibility that a farmer could milk just a few cows and sell milk to his neighbors so the family budget could come out in the black at the end of the month.
“Why should the farmer be saddled with the decision of whether or not to buy expensive sanitation equipment to clean a few milk containers each day where there is just enough money to keep the farm afloat?” he said.
The bills’ requirement that a sanitary container for the product that has been prepared in a sanitary manner and the container is filled in a sanitary manner would, in effect require a mechanical bottle filler and capper, he believes. That’s because Wisconsin Chapter 80 provides for no hand capping allowed as open-air processing and packaging is not considered sanitary in the dairy industry, he said.
The group’s position paper, opposing SB 434 and AB 628, notes that the new provisions would be in addition to current statutes and they expect that anyone selling raw milk after the bills passed would be prosecuted if they did not have a raw milk permit. They also noted that the raw milk bill would require sellers of unpasteurized milk to have a Grade A permit – thereby preventing the sale of perfectly good milk by persons not having a Grade A market.
The group feels that the new measure would perhaps benefit a few farmers who could build a milking facility, processing plant and retail store on the urban fringe where they might be able to support such a grandiose enterprise. In WICFA’s view, such farms would likely be required to do everything but pasteurize, under the intended legislation.
The group also commented that in 1957, when the current statute to restrict raw milk sales on farms was passed, there were very likely more people drinking raw milk from family herds than there are consumers interested in raw milk today. “The average quality of milk today is much better when considering the bacteria and somatic cell count,” the paper noted.
They also noted that Wisconsin-born dairy cows have been free of tuberculosis for many years; the passing of tuberculosis from cattle to humans through milk was one of the driving forces for pasteurization.
The WICFA paper also notes that the only place to buy milk from cows tested free of Johne’s disease is at the farm.
Cordell, who went to college at a major land grand university where he studied dairy science, is president of WICFA.
“In our country, the beacon of freedom to the rest of the world, we should have the option to drink raw milk and to be able to procure it without keeping and maintaining a family cow. The men and women who were responsible for our country’s existence were raw milk drinkers,” he said.
More information on the group is available at www.wicfa.org.
