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Dan Popkey: Raw-milk dispute reveals covert culture

One of Idaho's most powerful businessmen has allied with an underground movement of raw-milk drinkers to take on the biggest force in Idaho agriculture - the $2.1 billion dairy industry.

Frank VanderSloot, the founder of Melaleuca Inc. - with $850 million in annual sales - tried to kill a new rule aimed at bringing scores of small raw dairies under the Idaho Department of Agriculture's regulation.

But for one vote in the House Agriculture Committee, the Idaho Falls wellness products magnate would have succeeded in overturning the rule. The story of how he almost rolled an industry that produces 1.5 billion gallons a year - with a cash value topping beef and potatoes combined - offers a window into a growing cadre of raw-milk enthusiasts who tread far from the grocery dairy cooler for nonpasteurized milk.

VanderSloot's last-minute lobbying prompted Rep. Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, to warn Deputy Agriculture Director Brian Oakey at a hearing on Monday that the department better be careful.

"When certain people out in the industry have heard about this, they say, 'Well, if the department's going to enforce this they better come with a gun, because I've got a right to milk a cow if I want to and I don't sell it,'" Andrus said. "That's a constitutional right."

The state says the rule doesn't apply to people drinking milk from their own cow and not selling it. But Oakey agrees the rule has prompted confusion and promises to reconvene the negotiated rule-making process to make improvements for the 2011 Legislature to review.

A belief that the state is in league with big dairies seeking to shut down raw milk has spread distrust among an alternative food culture that runs from hippies to lawyers and doctors.

"It's all part of wanting to live a healthier lifestyle," said Luana Hiebert, who milks five cows at Heritage Farms near Sandpoint. "It's like making white flour out of whole wheat - you eliminate a lot of the good stuff."

In 2008, Hiebert started offering "cow-shares" as a way around regulation. With a one-time $20 fee and $14 a month for boarding, she's sold more than 100 shares entitling the owner to a half-gallon of raw milk a week. Shareholders sanitize their own bottles and pick up their milk at the farm.

Hiebert is VanderSloot's sister. With her husband, Wilbur, Hiebert milks cows and raises chickens, eggs and beef on a farm owned by VanderSloot. It's the family place in Cocolalla where he grew up and milked cows to save money for college.

The Hieberts, both 69, are among hundreds of small raw-milk dairymen, according to VanderSloot. "These people buy a cow or buy a share of a cow and let someone like Luana and Wilbur milk it for them," VanderSloot said. "Why should the government interfere with that relationship? Have we come to the point where we won't let one man milk another guy's cow?"

The Department of Agriculture estimates there are between 50 and 70 raw-milk dairies, but nobody knows.

"People are running scared, afraid of being shut down," Luana Hiebert said. "Think of the Prohibition days. Everybody knew there were stills out there, but nobody knew how many. And those that did know weren't going to tell, because they're not going to get their friends in trouble."

Added Wilbur Hiebert: "But boy, I'll tell you, there's a lot more people dying of alcohol than there are dying of raw milk."

That's surely true. Only one case of raw-milk-borne illness is known in recent years in Idaho, in 2006. From 1998 to 2005, the Centers for Disease Control reports about 1,000 illnesses and two deaths nationwide.

But the state and the Idaho Dairymen's Association have become concerned someone might get really sick and put consumers off milk.

"Everyone who has cows worries about another mad cow problem, or its equivalent," said Peter Dill, who runs Saint John's Organic Farm near Emmett, one of just two Grade A certified raw-milk dairies in Idaho.

Twenty-three states ban raw milk, and interstate commerce in raw milk is prohibited by federal law.

Dill supports the new rules, which require testing of all milk sold for consumption. The rules include a "small herd" exemption for producers with three or fewer cows from the Grade A facility requirements that can cost somewhere between $50,000 and $500,000, depending on whom you ask.

Dill wanted a small herd exemption for 15 cows; the Dairymen's Association pushed for zero. Dill says he signed off because he wants to legitimize small operations and hopes the rule will be loosened as regulators learn more about raw milk.

"People need some legal cover and the full service of the Department of Agriculture," Dill said. "They don't need to be in the shadows."

The Dairymen's Association represents 580 producers with Grade A permits, who milk 530,000 cows. The industry has exploded since 1991, when there were 178,000 cows. But the number of permits has fallen from nearly 2,000.

The trend toward bigger dairies is a boon to raw producers, says Mike Reid, who runs the second licensed raw dairy, Paradise Springs Farms in Teton County. He's milking four cows and hopes to reach 30. Reid predicts raw production, now below 1 percent, will grow to 5 percent in a decade.

That's possible without making the $200,000 cash investment he made in his barn, Reid said, with hundreds of Grade A barns idled and available for rent.

"You can't produce good milk out of a huge dairy," Reid said. "Raw milk is an opportunity for smaller farmers to show off that they can produce high-quality milk. And when the consumer tastes it for the first time, it's impossible to go back."

Idaho is the nation's No. 4 dairy state. The potential of raw milk also is drawing interest from bigger producers, including Alan Reed of Idaho Falls, whose family sold raw milk from 1955 to 1980. With 260 cows, he's considering reviving raw production.

"It's going to grow," Reed said. "People want to get back to more local, all-natural types of food."

The new rules will benefit both pasteurized- and raw-milk farmers, he said. "If someone gets sick, it gives the whole industry a black eye."

© 2010 Idaho Statesman

Dan Popkey: 377-6438

Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/02/12/1077236/raw-milk-dispute-reveals-covert.html#ixzz1AyWafxmy


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Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/02/12/1077236/raw-milk-dispute-reveals-covert.html#ixzz1AyWf9GOv