Milk regulations that don't make sense

Sunday, March 8, 2015

When is skim milk not skim milk? When it's in Florida, apparently. The Institute for Justice is helping a northern Florida creamery take the government to court over a regulation preventing them from calling their milk "skim," Dairy Herd Management reports.

Two years ago, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) told Mary Lou and Paul Wesselhoeft, owners of the Ocheesee Creamery, that – because they did not insert vitamin A back into their skimmed milk – they could not call it skim milk. Instead they could only call it "Non-Grade A milk product, natural vitamins removed." This regulation made sense when the government was concerned about potential blindness due to lack of vitamin A. But this law is not only now unnecessary, it is ineffective. In a phone interview with Dairy Herd Management, Mary Lou Wesselhoeft said, "The FDA (Florida Department of Agriculture) even admits that fortification in skim milk is useless after 24 hours if light gets into the container." Page 351 of the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance says that "in fluid skim or low fat milk, added vitamin A deteriorates gradually during normal storage of the milk at 4.4 C (40 F) in the dark but is destroyed rapidly when the milk is exposed to sunlight in transparent glass bottles or translucent plastic containers," such as the glass bottles used at Ocheesee Farm.

Justin Pearson, the Wesselhoefts' lawyer, told Dairy Herd Management that he had, "never had the government force someone to mislead their own customers before." BF