Nevertheless, a strong foodie culture has grown up in recent years, composed of consumers who believe against most official advice and numerous outbreaks and recalls of raw milk across the country that they can drink raw milk without experiencing allergic reactions such as bloating and other digestive discomforts.
Others find special virtue in its small farm producers, in contrast to what they refer to as “factory farms.” Still others laud it for its power to cure ailments ranging from arthritis to cancer, claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are anecdotal and not based on science. And, most raw-milk consumers say that it just plain tastes better.
There have been efforts to market raw milk across the country, but especially on the West Coast, and the State of Washington now finds itself involved in a sort of policy experiment without easy answers.
In 2006, the State of Washington had a serious E. coli outbreak that sickened 18 people who drank raw milk from a herd-share dairy—so called because of a “legal loophole” based on customer herd ownership rather than not the dairy. After that health problem, the industry realized it had to rebuild confidence in the industry.
Dan Wood, executive director of the Washington State Dairy Federation, said the choice then was either to criminalize raw milk or invest in the necessary extra testing to make it safer. “That’s why we supported Grade A requirements,” Wood said. “People need to have confidence in the entire industry.
The state decided to allow any dairy to produce and sell raw milk but with tough sanitation standards. That is, raw milk producers could be licensed as Grade A dairies, as long as they met all the necessary requirements, which include inspections and testing. A lot of expensive testing.
Therein lies the rub. Grade A dairies pay an annual $250 license fee, recently raised from $50.
The Washington lab folks say that this is not nearly enough in the case of raw-milk dairies to pay for licenses compared to the costs they incur. This comes in “loud and clear in a recent report the state ag department prepared for the Washington Legislature,” Food Safety News (FSN) says in a Jan. 12 article on raw milk’s growth and cost to the state.
For raw milk, the sample costs and the annual cost for the microbiology laboratory to test samples from raw milk dairies, the total cost comes to $252,000 per year. Breaking that down on a per dairy basis, it costs the department $6,462 to test raw-milk product samples, FSN says.
Then, there are the expenses that occur when a foodborne pathogen is found, and recalls and follow up work is required, possibly including an outbreak investigation, a recall of the contaminated products and other response activities. This additional work involves the ag department’s Food Safety Program and the microbiology laboratory. In the past eight years, the microbiological lab has found illness-causing microorganisms in raw milk 15 times.
Fifty-three illnesses associated with raw milk were reported in that same time period.
The department’s report says that if each raw-milk dairy were to pay all the costs required for licensing, the price would be $12,378 plus the $250 licensing fee. As it stands, the state is paying about 98% of those costs.
That is more that these dairies can pay, officials contend, because the raw-milk dairies are so small. And, the governor is said to be considering raising his budget to cover only part of the cost.
As for the budget fight to pay for more raw-milk testing, the dairy industry argues that it is very important that raw milk continue to be as safe as possible. Still, the state clearly wants to avoid increasing Grade A costs high enough to create a new black market for raw milk and the disease dangers that could mean.
So, it will be interesting to see the policy choices the State makes in the near future. Clearly, the state subsidy for Grade A raw milk is very high—much above traditional milk and the politics of that difference will be interesting, and likely bitter. On the other hand, the politics in progressive Washington probably will not allow consideration of efforts to make the raw milk folks pay their own way, or allow it to return “under the radar” as it once was. This clearly will be yet another fight producers should watch carefully as it proceeds, Washington Insider believes.