Often a state doesn’t have to change its laws to increase access to raw milk and other nutrient-dense foods; all it needs to do is interpret the law differently. That is currently the case in Wisconsin. There are two exemptions in Wisconsin law to the general prohibition on the sale of raw milk; a favorable interpretation of the exemptions by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) would better enable dairy farmers to make a living while expanding consumer freedom of choice. The timing couldn’t be better.

The decline in the number of Wisconsin dairy farms continues unabated. On January 1, 2018, there were 8,801 licensed dairy farms in the state; as of August 1, 2020, just two years later, that number had declined to 7,049. Higher pay prices in the past year or so have not been enough to enable many farmers to remain in business due to debt racked up when pay prices bottomed out in the five years prior.

Since the Covid crisis hit in March, demand for raw milk and other foods direct from the farm has increased for licensed and unlicensed dairies. The increase in demand is coming during a time when raw milk’s track record for safety continues to improve. A 2018 study found that the rate of unpasteurized milk-associated outbreaks in the U.S. has been declining since 2010, despite increasing legal distribution. Controlling for growth in population and consumption, the outbreak rate has effectively decreased by 74 percent since 2005. The study looked at outbreaks from 2005 to 2016; the number of outbreaks attributed to raw milk consumption has continued to decline since then.

In 2008, DATCP issued the regulation providing the two exemptions. One of the exemptions is for licensed producers and allows individuals who have a bona fide ownership interest in a legal entity (other than an individual or a married couple) holding a milk producer license to obtain raw milk. DATCP has never specifically defined what constitutes a “bona fide ownership interest.” Prior to the regulation, DATCP approved a half dozen or so Grade A dairies where consumers could obtain raw milk in the dairy by purchasing a non-voting share for a nominal fee in the dairy holding the milk producer license.

As far as is known, there have not been any dairies to this point that have operated under the exemption; there is one dairy currently trying to get under the exemption by having a consumer cooperative hold the milk producer license. Under Wisconsin law, each member of the cooperative would have an ownership interest in any property belonging to the cooperative (e.g., the milk producer license). The cooperative model is a way to raise a substantial amount of money to qualify the investment in the license as a bona fide ownership interest.

The second exemption under which both licensed and unlicensed dairies could sell raw milk would be the on-farm incidental sale of raw milk, an exemption the state legislature created over 60 years ago. The 2008 regulation states that “a sale is not incidental if it is made in the regular course of business, or is preceded by any advertisement, offer or solicitation in the regular course of business, or is preceded by any advertising, offer or solicitation made to the general public through any communications media.” The statute creating the incidental sales exemption, however, had no prohibition on advertising.

DATCP has never defined what the “regular course of business” is, but now is a good time to interpret the term in a way that is favorable to the state’s struggling dairies. Any sale of raw milk by licensed dairies that mainly produce raw milk for pasteurization should be incidental; DATCP could take a more liberal approach as well in determining what an “incidental sale” is by an unlicensed dairy. What exactly is the regular course of business in the economy that has materialized during the Covid crisis?

DATCP interim Secretary Randy Romanski has made an effort to help livestock producers by attempting to increase access to slaughterhouses and to markets; he has an opportunity to help dairy farmers by adopting an interpretation of the raw milk exemptions that is more favorable to the farmers’ interests. With the increased demand for raw milk during Covid, the improved safety track record for raw milk in recent years and the continued loss of dairy farms in the state, the time is now.

This article was first published in the Fall 2020 issue of Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

About the Author

[include content_id=663]

The post Wisconsin–Now Is the Time to Expand Raw Milk Access appeared first on Real Milk.

Wisconsin organic dairy farmer Chaz Self is a face of the crisis confronting milk producers across the country. Self’s cooperative recently dropped him as a member, leaving him scrambling to find another buyer for the milk his farm, Grassway Organics, produces. Self could be making up for some of the lost sales by selling raw milk; Wisconsin law allows the sale of raw milk on an “incidental basis.” The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) could be helping farmers like Self by using its enforcement discretion to let him sell raw milk. DATCP, however, recently served the farmer with a summary special order threatening the loss of his Grade A Milk Permit if he sold any raw milk for human consumption.

The farmer is currently dumping hundreds of gallons of high quality raw milk. Self’s case provides a great look at the unprecedented emergency dairy farmers are facing and how selling raw milk is a potential way to help keep thousands of them in business.

Self maintains a herd of around 100 cows on a 400-acre farm where he lives with his wife Megan and their three young children. His Jersey herd is 100% A2. The Selfs sell poultry, eggs, pork and beef to their customers on the farm and at farmers markets.

Last year Self appeared in the Netflix documentary, Rotten, a series of episodes uncovering fraud and corruption in the industrial food system. Self appeared in the episode “Milk Money” which discussed the production and sale of raw milk. Self never stated that he sold raw milk but the narrator of the episode implied that he did. Shortly after the episode aired, DATCP started investigating Self; the investigation wound up with the department issuing an order allowing him to keep his Grade A permit on the condition that he stop selling raw milk. This was an unjustified move, given that DATCP based its decision solely on what the narrator said he was doing; there was no other evidence mentioned in the order about Self selling raw milk.

To compound matters, on April 1 Self’s cooperative, Westby Creamery, terminated his membership; on April 18 DATCP sent Self a “notice of deadline to change assigned dairy plant”, stating the farmer has until April 30 to find a processor to pick up his milk. If he fails to do so, DATCP will revoke his Grade A permit; with the current state of the dairy industry, that is not an easy task.

The American dairy sector has been in a decades-long decline that is currently accelerating. In 1992 there were 131,535 licensed dairies in the U.S., at the end of 2017 there were 40,219.¹ The number of dairies closing shop has increased substantially since the beginning of the year. In 1992 the average herd size for farms was 74 cows; by 2017 it had risen to 234², showing the consolidation in the dairy industry and the exit of small farms from the commodity milk system.

Wisconsin went from about 29,000 dairy farms in 1995 to a little over 9,000 at the end of last year.¹ Two particular recent developments have accelerated the decline of conventional and organic dairies in Wisconsin. First, more conventional milk is being shipped into Wisconsin from other states. In 2017 more than 100 trailer loads of milk per day³ was coming into Wisconsin from states such as Michigan, Indiana and Ohio; frequently this milk was being sold more cheaply than the price sellers of conventional fluid milk would normally get.

Secondly, this year certified organic CAFO dairies in Texas have increased shipments of milk to Wisconsin. According to a USA Today March 24 story by a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer, six certified organic dairy farms in Texas produced about 23% more milk than all of Wisconsin’s 453 organic dairy farms combined in 2016.⁴ The greater supply of organic milk has led to more quotas for producers and co-ops cutting back on members; in addition to Self, Westby Creamery recently terminated the contracts of seven other members.

The commodity milk system is becoming more untenable than ever for small farms. Recent prices around the country for conventional milk have been as low as $1.11 per gallon; while there are some organic producers that are still doing well, prices overall have declined substantially for organic milk. Farmers wanting to sell cows are finding little or no market. Oversupply and lower pay prices mean a race to the bottom for commodity milk.

One way for producers to escape or survive the commodity milk system is to sell raw milk for direct consumption; prices farmers can get for raw milk sales to the consumer are much higher than what they can receive for either conventional or organic milk intended for pasteurization. In Wisconsin the law is there for dairies to sell raw milk and improve their bottom line; the problem has been DATCP and its interpretation of what an “incidental sale” is.

The legislature passed the incidental sale law in 1957. The original intent of the law was that any sale of raw milk for human consumption was an incidental sale. At the time the law went into effect, there were over 100,000 dairies selling raw milk intended for pasteurization in the state ⁵; for all of them, sales of raw milk for direct human consumption were likely a very small percentage of total sales.

At one time DATCP interpreted the incidental sales law as meaning only one sale of raw milk per customer ever. In 2008 the department changed that, issuing a regulation that stated, “a sale is not incidental if it is made in the regular course of business, or is preceded by any advertising, or solicitation made to the general public through any communications media.” There is nothing in the statute legalizing incidental sales that prohibits advertising or solicitation.

DATCP’s interpretation of “not in the regular course of business” has been unfavorable to raw milk producers and consumers. It’s time for that to change; America’s Dairy Land is in an emergency situation. Dairies are going out of business every day in the state. DATCP can help Wisconsin dairy farms by either adopting a more liberal interpretation of what constitutes “not in the regular course of business” or by waiving enforcement against dairies selling raw milk direct to consumers in the regular course of business. For precedent on the latter step, DATCP only needs to look at the bordering state of Michigan.

Michigan law prohibits the sale or distribution of raw milk for human consumption; nevertheless in 2013 the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) adopted a written policy in which it would not take action against dairy farms distributing raw milk through herdshare agreements. MDARD set parameters that had to be in place, such as a written contract between the farmer and consumer for it to waive enforcement; DATCP could take a similar tact in Wisconsin.

DATCP is charged with promoting Wisconsin agriculture; one way it can do that with the current dairy crisis is to change its enforcement or interpretation of the law to one that benefits raw milk producers and consumers. Producers like Chaz Self have the quality raw milk and the potential demand to succeed. DATCP shouldn’t be preventing Self from selling raw milk. DATCP has an opportunity to help dairy farms stay in business. Ultimately, it would be great to pass a bill taking the word “incidental” out of the Wisconsin raw milk statute; but with the accelerated decline dairy is going through, there is no time to waste. The department should either adopt a new interpretation of the raw milk law or exercise its enforcement discretion now.

—————————–
[1] Dennis Halladay, “Here it comes: less than 40,000 dairies”, Hoard’s Dairyman, March 19, 2018. Last viewed 4/25/2018 at https://hoards.com/article-22818-here-it-comes-less-than-40000-dairies.html

[2] Corey Geiger, “Dairy farm numbers hover near 40,000”, Hoard’s Dairyman, February 26, 2018. Last viewed 4/25/18 at
https://hoards.com/article-22687-dairy-farm-numbers-hover-near-40000.html

[3] Pete Hardin, “March Dairy Meetings Somber in Wisconsin…”, Milkweed, Issue No. 465, April 2018; p. 5. [Wisconsin Farmers Union, “How Does It Work, and Would it Work Here?”, Dairy Supply Mgmt. in Canada, meeting 15 March 2018 at Dodger Bowl Banquet Center, Dodgerville, WI, recorded by www.wiseye.org; last viewed 4/25/2018 at http://www.wiseye.org/Video-Archive/Event-Detail/evhdid/12277]

[4] Rick Barrett, “Wisconsin’s small organic dairies squeezed by Texas mega-farms”, USA Today, March 24, 2018. Last viewed 4/25/2018 at https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/03/24/wisconsins-small-organic-dairies-squeezed-texas-mega-farms/455330002/

[5] U.S. Department of Commerce, “County Table 10 – Dairy products and poultry and poultry products sold from farms: Censuses of 1959 and 1954”, U.S. Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 14: Wisconsin (Chapter B – Statistics for Counties), p. 163. Last viewed 4/25/2018 at http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/AgCensusImages/1959/01/14/866/Table-10.pdf

Photo courtesy of Grassway Organics LLC facebook page

The post High Stakes for Raw Milk in Wisconsin appeared first on Real Milk.

Previous attempts to change raw milk legislation were drafted in 2013 and 2014; both bills failed to make it to a vote on the state legislature floor. Wisconsin, “the heart of American’s dairy land,” is seemingly one of the most difficult states to pass raw milk-friendly regulations due to its Big Dairy presence and reputation.

Read more about the controversy and the proposed bill here.

To learn more about raw milk and other nutrient dense foods, visit westonaprice.org

The post Raw Milk Bill Officially Introduced in Wisconsin appeared first on Real Milk.

Former Governor Jim Doyle previously rejected a similar bill when it came across his desk in 2010, due to last-minute lobbying to convince him of the risk that raw milk-related illnesses could pose to Wisconsin’s reputation. Current Governor Scott Walker’s office said they will consider a similar bill if it reaches his desk but that it must include safeguards to protect individuals’ health and the reputation of the dairy industry.

Support the Campaign for Real Milk, join the Weston A. Price Foundation, today!

The post Raw Milk Heats Up in Wisconsin appeared first on Real Milk.

By David Gumpert

October 29, 2014: Do a Google search under “Wisconsin raw milk illnesses, football team,” and up pop 10 headings from media outlets and product liability lawyers, all proclaiming pretty much the same thing: “Raw Milk Blamed for Illnesses…”

It all seems pretty cut and dried. Some wacko parents had the nerve to bring raw milk to a potluck dinner for the Durand High School football team on September 18. At least 22 kids got sick from campylobacter. The only food they all had in common was raw milk. The campylobacter found in 17 of the kids was the same strain as campylobacter found in several cows at the farm from which the milk was produced. Left twisting in the wind of the reports: More “proof” that raw milk is a ticking time bomb, unsafe under any circumstances.

More to the Story

Not surprisingly, this being Wisconsin, there is more to the story than public health and agriculture officials or the media or the lawyers have let on. I had occasion to speak at length with the parents who supplied the milk, and they tell a story that is much less cut and dried than those official accounts on Google. They asked me to not reveal their identity, since there are still regulatory and legal matters pending.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that the football team members who got sick almost certainly became ill from food they ate at a potluck team dinner on Thursday, September 18. The team dinners are a weekly event during the football season, with several parents supplying food for each dinner on a rotating basis through the season.

The parents who supplied the milk (whom I’ll refer to as “The Farm Family”) own a dairy farm in the area. They have a son on the football team and have helped at these dinners before, supplying a variety of foods, including raw milk, on at least a half dozen previous occasions, with no one ever getting sick. Here are key points of their story:

The dairy farm run by The Farm Family is a commercial dairy. The parents and their children are the only ones who consume raw milk on a regular basis. In other words, this isn’t a raw milk dairy, or even a partial raw milk dairy. The Farm Family supplied the raw milk to the team because that’s just the way things still work in many rural areas—dairy families not only consume their dairy’s own milk raw, but make raw milk available to friends and neighbors for special occasions. Not that that is the wisest way to entertain—it’s been well documented that pre-pasteurized milk is risky stuff, with more salmonella and listeria than the industry would like consumers thinking about.

If The Farm Family’s raw milk is to blame for the illnesses (and the family has doubts about that), to label this situation a case of “raw milk illnesses” is inaccurate. At worst, it is a case in which pre-pasteurized milk, not raw milk intended for consumption raw, caused illnesses.

Not the Only Food

The various media reports have indicated that the only food the team members had in common was raw milk. But that is inaccurate. The team members also consumed chicken alfredo with noodles. And The Farm Family mom who brought the raw milk didn’t like what she saw as she helped other moms who prepared the chicken. Not only didn’t she like what she saw, but she told them of her concerns—for example, that the cream-based alfredo sauce, which was brought in cold, wasn’t heated fully before serving. More ominous, the mom who brought the chicken pieces (apparently commercial breasts in plastic bags) complained that she had had difficulty cooking the chicken fully—she had problems with her oven heating properly, and had attempted to complete the cooking on an outdoor grill. Whether the cooking was completed properly is uncertain, but what The Farm Family mom is certain about is that the team arrived about 20 minutes early for the dinner, ravenously hungry as teenage boys often are, and the moms in charge ignored The Farm Family mother’s concerns and served the chicken before it was fully heated.

When The Farm Family mom recounted her concerns later to a nurse at the high school, she was told that the chicken was fully cooked, but the nurse didn’t explain how she knew that.

American commercial chicken, as we know, is nearly all contaminated with campylobacter or salmonella, as well as other bad bugs, when it leaves factory farms, according to a Consumer Reports survey earlier this year. The only way to counter the pathogens is, you guessed it, to cook the chicken completely through.

The team was also served commercially prepared pasteurized chocolate milk that a parent brought in. Because there wasn’t enough of that to serve everyone, the raw milk from The Farm Family was mixed with chocolate syrup in the same plastic jugs as the commercial chocolate milk. When pasteurized milk gets contaminated, it is often after the fact, via flavorings.

Was it the Water?

The next night, when the team was supposed to play its football game at a neighboring high school, it rained, and the team took shelter in the strange high school. When team members started drinking water from faucets, they were warned by members of the other team not to drink the water, that it was bad. There is no word that the water was tested.

No Signs

Now, having run through all this, it is worth noting that public health inspectors tested milk from The Farm Family immediately after illnesses were reported early the following week, and found no signs of campylobacter. Six days later, inspectors from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection came and took manure samples, and say they found the same strain of campylobacter (technically, #0233) that had turned up in 17 of the sick team members in the manure of 10 of the dairy’s 63 cows. Now, that is a strong piece of laboratory linkage, though The Farm Family wonders how any manure got into the milk in the first place, and even if some did, that it would be enough to sicken that many people.

Only Tested the Milk

Since the investigators assumed they had gotten their man, so to speak, they apparently didn’t test the chicken, sauce, pasteurized milk, or the water in question. (I couldn’t get through to anyone with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services today for further comment; if I do get further information, I will provide an update.)

So, worst-case scenario, in addition to the distress of too many kids getting a bad case of stomach woes, we have a case very similar to another one in Wisconsin, in 2011. Those illnesses, at a school birthday party, from milk intended for pasteurization, got added to the total of “raw milk illnesses” tabulated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which gathers this data only for it and its pals over at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to discredit real raw milk (as opposed to determining trends and ways to counter problems)…..as will these illnesses, no doubt.

The Farm Family will likely be excused by regulators. I don’t have a problem with that— these are decent conscientious farmers just doing what rural Americans have been doing for many years. But the reason they will be excused has nothing to do with their attitude or intent. It has to do with that fact that the fairyland that is The Dairyland is fine with members of its cartel serving pre-pasteurized milk, even if people get sick. But the industry, of course, goes apoplectic about any farmers having the right to distribute safe raw milk, no matter how safe. This is the industry that got Wisconsin regulators to spend six years trying unsuccessfully to put Vernon Hershberger in jail because he had the gall to defy them and play outside the cartel, selling food directly to people desperate for nutritionally dense food.

For America’s Dairyland, the Durand High School football team illnesses will be another play of the old game, heads I win, tails you lose.

For over one hundred other examples of unfair blame placed on raw milk, see “Raw Milk: What the Scientific Literature Really Says,” http://www.realmilk.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ResponsetoMarlerListofStudies.pdf. Very often raw milk takes the rap for illnesses caused by other foods.

[include content_id=700]

This article appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Sidebar

In the Press: Woman Says Raw Milk May Not Have Made Durand Football Team Ill

By Joe Knight, Leader-Telegram staff, December 13, 2014

The raw milk served at a team dinner for the Durand High School football team may not have been the source of the bug that later made people sick, said Diana Reed, whose farm provided the milk. “Some people got sick who did not drink the milk,” she said Saturday.

A total of 38 people associated with the team, including many football players, were sickened from the outbreak tied to the September 18 dinner, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Twenty-six of the illnesses were laboratory confirmed to stem from Campylobacter jejuni, a bacterium that causes severe gastrointestinal problems.

The bacteria can be found in contaminated milk, but also in undercooked meat and poultry.

After interviewing people who attended the dinner, state health officials in late October concluded the common link to people who became ill was that they had drunk the unpasteurized milk. State health officials also tested manure of the cows at the Reed ranch and concluded some of the cows contained the strain of campylobacter that sickened the students.

On Friday, state health officials identified the Reed farm as the source of the milk following an open records inquiry by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

But Reed said there could have been other sources of the bug.

“I discussed it with the epidemiologist in Madison. He gave me some statistics—56 people ate chicken, 38 got sick; 43 people chose to drink milk and 33 got sick,” she said. “They interviewed everyone who was there.”

That leaves five people who did not drink milk, but who still had campylobacter.

She said their bulk tank was tested six days after the outbreak and state officials did not find any contaminating bacteria.

State officials also took manure samples from the intestines of the cows in their herd and found campylobacter, but it is not unusual to find the bacteria in Wisconsin cows, she said.

“You will find it in every cow herd in Wisconsin. It can be 4 to 100 percent on a farm,” she said.

“They are claiming the DNA footprint was the same. . . That particular strain of the Campylobacter jejuni is not only found in cows, it is also found in chicken,” she said.

The important step is to make sure the cow’s udder is clean before beginning milking, Reed said. “We do everything at the dairy farm to keep our milk clean. After all, we drink it,” she said.

Reed said her family has always drunk raw milk, and for seven years she has brought beef, which they also raise, and unpasteurized milk to team dinners.

“I just tried to offer them the best that we had,” she said.

“We’ve had four boys in football in Durand through the last eight years. I’ve lived and breathed Durand football,” she said. “This was the last thing I would ever want to be involved in—making a football team sick,” she said.

Reed said they will continue to ship their milk to a cheese factory, and they will continue to drink raw milk as a family, but it will only be used by her family.

The post Durand High School Football Team Illness: A New Act in Raw Milk’s Morality Play appeared first on Real Milk.

“Some people got sick who didn’t drink the milk,” says Diana Reed, whose farm supplied the milk.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, a total of 38 people fell ill following the team dinner and 26 of those illnesses stemmed from the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni. This same strain of bacteria was found in some of the manure of the cows at Reed’s farm.

However, Reed points out that Campylobacter is commonly found in all cows in Wisconsin and no Campylobacter was found in the farm’s bulk tank, which was tested 6 days after the outbreak.

Furthermore, this particular strain of Campylobacter is also found in chicken, which was also served at the team dinner. At the dinner, 56 people ate chicken and 38 got sick; 43 people drank the milk and 33 got sick. This leaves 5 people who did not drink the milk but still had Campylobacter.

“We’ve had four boys in football in Durand through the last eight years. I’ve lived and breathed Durand football. This was the last thing I would ever want to be involved in – making a football team sick,” says Reed.

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit based in Washington, D.C. Fan the Campaign for Real Milk on Facebook.

The post Raw Milk Might Not Have Been Cause of Durand Football Team Falling Sick appeared first on Real Milk.

The Fourth District Court of Appeals also denied hearing the case this summer. The Supreme Justices did not provide a reason for why they denied the appeal.

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit based in Washington, D.C. Fan the Campaign for Real Milk on Facebook.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Hershberger’s Appeal appeared first on Real Milk.

On the FoodFreedomUSA site Ziniker plaintiff Gayle Loiselle explains, “The Wisconsin appellate court refused to rule on the question before them on the constitutionality of food rights, and instead deflected the issue to license violations. The plaintiffs in all three cases, and thousands more seeking fresh food directly from the farm claim they do have a fundamental constitutional right to choose with they eat, and to choose where that food comes from. They also say it’s a constitutional right to conduct business directly between farmers and citizens without government interference, and without a middleman, such as food processors or distributors.”

Wisconsin currently prohibits the retail sale of raw milk and none of the previous rulings on the three cases resulted “…in the court offering any opinion on whether there is a right to purchase and drink unpasteurized milk in Wisconsin.” Raw milk advocates are hoping the State Supreme Court’s rulings will set precedence for this.

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit based in Washington, D.C. Fan the Campaign for Real Milk on Facebook. 

The post Food Freedom Cases Appeal to Wisconsin Supreme Court appeared first on Real Milk.

“Food safety officials have been unpredictable, at best, in their recent treatment of soft, raw-milk cheeses, and until our industry is given clear and consistent guidance, we are forced to stop making these cheeses,” said co-owner Andy Hatch.

He added that he hoped the halt in production would be temporary, but loyal customers have already taken to Twitter to express their outrage: @cheesegeek wrote, “The premature death of Rush Creek Reserve is the canary in the coal mine for all American raw milk cheeses.”

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit based in Washington, D.C. To learn more about raw milk and other nutrient dense foods, attend one of the upcoming Wise Traditions conferences.

The post Popular Wisconsin Raw Cheese Producer Stops Production appeared first on Real Milk.

Referring to the pathogens found in raw milk, which many believe can be dangerous, Walker told the dairy association that he would not approve any bill that put children at risk. The dairy association has asked the governor to veto the bill, which would make it legal for dairy farmers to sell raw milk and raw milk products directly to consumers on the farm.

The Wisconsin Legislature will resume on January 14, 2014, at which point the raw milk bill will be eligible for floor action.

Read more here.

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation. Donate to help fund research into the benefits of nutrient dense foods.  http://www.westonaprice.org/lab

The post Wisconsin Governor Unlikely to Sign Raw Milk Bill in January 2014 appeared first on Real Milk.