Wisconsin appoints raw milk working group
Wisconsin Ag Secretary Rod Nilsestuen is appointing a a raw milk working group to consider legal and regulatory perspectives pertaining to the sale of unpasteurized milk directly to consumers, and consider what conditions would be required to protect public health. The Secretary says while there has been a growing call to allow such sales, public health must be protected.
Retired University of Wisconsin Associate Dean and ag economist Richard Barrows will chair the group. The committee also includes: large, mid-size and small dairy farmers, both organic and conventional; large and small cheese makers and dairy processors; dairy veterinarians; consumers; and food safety and public health professionals. Nilsestuen has charged the group to:
- Review the department’s statutory mission
- Examine current laws regulating dairy farms, milk and other dairy products, retail food sales, dairy product labeling, and the prohibition on selling raw milk to consumers
- Examine the current system of enforcing dairy regulations and consider public health needs
- Evaluate other states’ raw milk regulations
- Analyze ways that Wisconsin might allow sale of raw milk
The group will make recommendations to the State Legislature.
Members of the committee include:
- Dick Barrows, Chair University or Wisconsin-Madison
- Elizabeth Kohl, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection,
- Joe Weis, Foremost Farms
- Melissa Hughes, Organic Valley
- Vince Hundt, Farmer
- Jeff Davis, MD, Wisconsin Department of Health Services
- Mike Gingrich, Uplands Cheese
- Mark Zinniker, Farmer
- Willy Lehner, Bleu Mont Cheese
- Patty Edelburg, Farmer
- Shelly Mayer, Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin
- James Baerwolf, Sassy Cow Creamery
- Joe and Melinda Plasterer, Consumers
- Dale Grosskurth, Marathon County Public Health
- Steve Steinhoff, DATCP, Division of Food Safety (retired)
- Scott Rankin, Ph.D. UW-Madison, Department of Food Science
- Pam Ruegg, DVM UW-Madison, Department of Dairy Science
- Brad Legreid, Wisconsin Dairy Products Association
- Kevin Krentz, Farmer
- Ted Galloway, Galloway Co.
Latest:
My family has been buying shares in cows from individual farmers in order to obtain the same milk that their families drink for several years. But we just got a call from our current source saying that their milk house is padlocked and we won’t be able to share in her milk any longer. I just heard about another case in Wisconsin where a farmer had been locked out of their milk house as well.
Now, it seems we will need to get ourselves our own cow since they just padlocked the milk house of the farmer where we were sharing in the expense of caring for a cow. The question is, what will we do with all of our extra milk after buying a cow? Maybe if our cow mmmmoooooves from one family’s back yard to the next on a rotation, we can all take turns milking her. Gee, it sounds an awful lot like what we were doing, only without the health practices that a professional farmer knows so much about. Of course, this way they can’t lock up our milk can…
I am lactose intolerant and can only drink raw milk without painful side effects. When my raw milk farm sadly closed their doors last month (after years of struggling with the state), I was furious. I cannot tolerate pasteurized milk and am now forced to go dairy-free against my will.
This article gave me a glimmer of hope. I hope that the working group can see that for some of us raw milk is more than a health choice – it is our only dairy option.
it’s VERY difficult to get information as to when these meetings are or where they’re being held, IF AT ALL.. why the big hush-hush? it’s all over facebook, but nothing in brownfield, surprise surprise…