Raw milk sellers and consumers tell board of the importance of unpasteurized milk to them
Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
MADISON
Small family farmers who sell raw milk directly off their farms and some of the consumers who buy it said they object to the crackdown on raw milk sales by the Food Safety Division of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP).
Some of the consumers said consuming raw milk has been a healthy choice for them and their families. Others said they just like to be able to support a local farmer and know where their food is coming from.
Jim Matson, chief legal counsel at DATCP, said interstate sales of raw milk, disease outbreaks traced to raw milk and advertising and promotion from some sellers of raw milk had forced the agency to take more vigorous regulatory action on sales of raw milk but he denied there had been a new interpretation of the rules governing such sales.
Carrying babies and signs that said “Stop the War on Family Farms” and “Crying Over Spilled Milk” and “Raw Milk – Make it Legal” consumers testified during the public appearance portion at the meeting of the department’s citizen policy board Nov. 11 in Madison.
Jim Marlowe, who came from Chicago to testify, said he has never seen raw dairy products hurt anyone when they come from healthy, properly fed animals. He told board members of a case of a struggling infant who couldn’t digest any of the processed formulas and failed to thrive until the child was given raw sheep’s milk. “If that had not been available, this infant might not have made it,” he said.
Pasteurized dairy products do have some value, Marlowe said, but are a troublemaking food group. He urged the board to use its influence to make raw dairy products more available.
Brian Wickert, Viroqua, said he’s been drinking raw milk for 13 years and doesn’t want to make anyone sick. He said he is interested in working with the Food Safety Division to develop protocols that would allow sales of raw milk. He said that ultimatums to quit selling raw milk have come down from the agency in short order, meaning that for small family farmers 35 percent to 70 percent of their income is gone.
“I’m absolutely interested in food safety,” he said. “Selling raw milk helps small- and medium-sized farms stay in business.”
Vince Hundt, a dairy farmer with a 36-cow Jersey herd near Coon Valley, said he takes the health of his family and his customers very seriously. Choosing to drink raw milk shouldn’t be illegal, he said, when people are free to make other choices like “smoking cigarettes or jumping out of an airplane or getting a face lift.”
“It’s the responsibility of this and every state agency to treat citizens as adults,” Hundt said. Selling raw milk is a way to keep alive the small red barn dairy farm operated by the nuclear family, he said.
“It’s one of the only ways the classic little farm can survive. We don’t need aid, loans, quotas or gifts. We just need to be left alone,” he said.
What he called a very threatening letter from the agency told him to cease selling raw milk under a cow-share program he’s had in place. Hundt, and many others at the meeting told ag board members that the selling of raw milk is legal in 28 states, most recently in Vermont where it was legalized two weeks ago.
Hundt said selling raw milk to willing consumers yields him an income of 60 cents per pound of milk, compared to income of 20 cents per pound if he were to sell it in an organic market and 12 cents to 13 cents a pound if he were to sell it in commercial channels.
Bill Anderson of Madison, said he is pursuing a cheese maker’s license in Wisconsin and is interested in making farmstead and artisan cheeses. Vermont, he said, has made huge strides in high-end cheese and most of them are raw milk cheese.
“The current attack on raw milk undermines future prospects for cheese makers and for the entire dairy infrastructure,” Anderson said. “It’s not just about raw milk. It’s about the future of family farms in Wisconsin.”
Michelle Gillespie, Chicago, said raw milk helped her solve a problem of never being able to gain weight. Since finding a source of raw milk, she said she has been able to gain 15 pounds and has never had any adverse health effect from it.
Max Kane, one of the farmers who is under a legal order from the Food Safety Division related to the sale of raw milk, urged board members to reconsider this enforcement. He told them he is working to convince lawmakers that the sale of raw milk should be legal and feels he’s making headway with that effort.
Beside putting immediate duress on the small farmers who sell raw milk, Kane said he thoroughly believes that we have the right to say what goes into our bodies.
Mary Hayes, a teacher, feels so strongly about drinking raw milk that she told board members she would get a cow and “milk Bessie myself if I could.” For her, drinking raw milk fresh from the farm is a way to connect with farmers. “I know my farmers and they are extremely conscientious folks. I’ve met their kids. I want to drive out to the farm and ‘see the girls’ – their Jersey cows. That feels really good to me,” she told board members.
“I don’t’ understand why it’s no longer a legal option for me. It means that much to me that we talked about milking our own cow,” she said. Twenty-eight states have provided a legal way for consumers to purchase this kind of milk, she said.
Dave Varney, a LaFarge farmer, said the elimination of raw milk sales prohibition would be a way to spur on agriculture in the state. “How about reducing the size of government and getting out of this transaction?” he said. “The government doesn’t need to be everyone’s baby sitter.”
Scott Trautman, a Stoughton dairyman who was recently prohibited by the agency from selling his milk, grew emotional as he talked to the board about the things he has learned from the farm and his cows.
A former Internet entrepreneur, Trautman said he loves Wisconsin, loves farming and understands that family farmers have a hard time making a living. He said he’s a “dreamer” who thinks there can be a new golden age of dairy in Wisconsin, but added he doesn’t believe the food safety division is using its responsibility wisely. And he said he also hears the call of Vermont.
Though they are now forced to dump their milk, he said they are making it because they have a diversified farm with sales of pork and beef.
Jean Schneider of DeForest told board members she is a raw milk drinker and it helped her recover from a serious digestive disorder. She buys her milk directly from farmers and she said she’d like to continue to do that. “If I want to eat worms is someone going to regulate that?” she said.
Michelle Voss of Madison said she is an everyday consumer of raw milk. “It has struck a chord in me and it is so personal it won’t go away,” she said.
Not an activist, Voss said the idea of supporting a small family farm is very important to her. “I have a relationship with them. Their animals are well-cared for. They see the sunshine and feel the earth under their feet every day,” she said. “I choose to support the local economy and I want pure, unprocessed food for my family.”
Randall Meidenbauer of Sussex said he supports a community-supported agriculture farm and has been doing so for 15 years. Buying raw milk from a local farm has also been important to him and he asked the board why it was now suddenly illegal.
The farm where the milk was coming from was very clean and tidy, he said, but the milkhouse there was the “cleanest building on the entire farm.”
Emily Matthews, a registered nurse who works in an emergency room, said she also has degrees in biology and chemistry and is a raw milk drinker. “I am not a hillbilly. We are lucky. We have our own cow and you can’t get us,” she told board members.
Some of the prebiotic and probiotic characteristics that are in human breast milk are also found in unpasteurized cow’s milk, she said,
She criticized as an epidemiological crime the fact that DATCP linked an outbreak of campylobacter in September 2009 to the consumption of raw milk, but did not trace it to raw milk.
Della Hansman of LaCrosse said that for her buying raw milk is about supporting family farmers. “I put the money into the farmer’s hand, say hi to his kids and pet the cows on the nose,” she said.
Hansman suggested the department hold off on enforcement actions until a new law is passed to allow its sale. “People who buy raw milk do their homework. They go out of their way to buy it,” she said.
Melinda Starkweather of Madison said her children were severely lactose intolerant and the family tried rice milk, soy milk and finally tried raw cow’s milk. “Our pediatrician was at the point of ‘give it a try,’” she said and the children have thrived in the last six years since the family went to raw milk.
“It seems to me that raw milk has been set apart. How is it that we can buy raw fish?” Starkweather said. “I find this very confusing. Laws should be logical and evenly applied.”
Joe Plasterer, Madison, said raw milk farmers are contributing to the economy in an economic depression and said the agency is squashing that innovation. He said, My family wants the choice to have the right to eat what we choose. Raw milk should be legal everywhere in the United States, but mostly in Wisconsin,” he said.
A proposal is working its way through the state legislature to allow raw milk sales. But Plasterer worries that the farmers who are prohibited from selling raw milk will be ruined before that happens.
