September/October 2005 Alternative Health
Got Raw Milk?
Small farmers and freedom of choice under threat in WA

All over the country, families like yours and mine are becoming dairy farmers. But most of us can’t have cows or goats in our backyards. We're buying shares in herds of dairy animals and are contracting with small family farmers to board and tend them, keep them milked and make our milk available to us. A growing number of these "shareholder dairies" are flourishing in Washington State. The shareholder dairy model helps consumers obtain the freshest, most nutritious milk and dairy products possible while it helps support small and micro-scale neighborhood dairies and family farms.

Because the milk is not being "sold" (it is being acquired by consumers who have become producers of their own dairy foods), some state governments, like Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana and others, do not require shareholder dairies to engage in expensive licensing programs. Licensing in these states is reserved for dairy products that are presented for sale to the general public. With a shareholder dairy, farmers are not selling the milk; they’re contracting their dairying skills to the owners of a dairy herd. A reasonable level of cleanliness and care is all that is necessary for small-scale and micro-scale shareholder dairies to produce safe, healthful products for their shareholders.

Unfortunately, the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture has chosen to view unlicensed shareholder dairies as illegal. WSDA only has regulatory authority over milk that is sold and the agency claims that shareholder dairies are selling the milk. WSDA has embarked on a campaign to close down unlicensed shareholder dairies based on an erroneously broad interpretation of the term "sale".

A group of dairy farmers and their shareholders as well as interested citizens have formed the Raw Dairy Choice Campaign. Our mission is to change Washington State policy so that only dairies that sell milk to the general public are to be licensed and regulated. We maintain that the shareholder dairy model involves ownership of the herd, and consequently the milk, by the shareholders - You can't buy what you already own. Unregulated shareholder dairies should be allowed to flourish if that is what our consumers-turned-producers choose for their milk supply. The Raw Dairy Choice Campaign is being assisted by the nationally renowned Weston A. Price Foundation which champions the cause of shareholder dairies around the country and works to restore nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism (www.westonaprice.org).

Changing state policy and defending shareholder dairies that are under fire will require concerted citizen action, strategic political organizing and targeted legal proceedings. We need public support to secure a future for the shareholder dairy in Washington State. For more information and action you can take, visit the RDC website: www.thefutureisorganic.net/dairy/RawDairyChoice.htm.

Contact Chrys Ostrander, Raw Dairy Choice Campaign, 33495 Mill Canyon Rd., Davenport, WA 99122.