The Complete Patient

One thing I’ve learned in nine months of writing about raw milk is that the story I think I’m chasing down isn’t necessarily the real story.

As just one example, last November I saw a small-town Ohio newspaper item about a Kentucky farmer who was fined a few hundred dollars for selling raw milk in Ohio. Seemed pretty straightforward...until I called the farmer, Gary Oaks, and learned that he had been abused and traumatized in a raw milk sting in Cincinnati the previous spring (a story I wrote up in a BusinessWeek.com column).

Then today I read in a small New York community paper that Breese Hollow Dairy in upstate New York had been fined $300 for having contaminated raw milk. I decided to call the farm's owner, Chuck Phippen.

We wound up talking for nearly an hour, and it turns out there is much more to the $300 fine than just $300.

Phippen explained how even though New York is generally thought to be sympathetic toward raw milk, in reality the state inspects his farm, requires him to keep a list of customers that it then monitors, and tests his milk three times a month. This isn't benign stuff, though. The state is “constantly hassling us”; sometimes agents even sit in his driveway and question or otherwise intimidate customers, he says.

Most recently, in early April, state agricultural inspectors said they found listeria bacteria in his milk—the first time he had had any issues in the two years he’s had a state permit to sell raw milk (one of 15 farms in the state that has such a permit) and in eleven years of selling milk before getting the permit. Coincidentally, they found evidence of contamination in the milk of several other raw milk farmers Phippen knows.

The state forced Phippen to issue one of those press releases that announces the finding—kind of like a modern version of a scarlet letter—and also forced him to discontinue selling milk for several weeks, until a re-test could confirm his milk was okay. The press release was, of course, picked up on the front page of a local paper. (Because the paper charges a fee for article access, I’ve linked to a summary.)

“I was fined $300,” says Phippen. “I have to sell a lot of milk—166 gallons—to make $300 to pay that fine.” He has 50 cows, and sells 40 to 50 gallons a week of raw milk direct from the farm at $5 a gallon, under state rules. (He sells additional milk to a processor as organic milk for pasteurization.)

Phippen theorizes that the state is giving him and other raw milk farmers trouble because demand for raw milk is growing. He is limited in what he can sell because consumers are put off from traveling the many miles most must drive to reach his outpost. He says he knows consumers who pay Organic Pastures $18 a gallon, plus shipping, to have their milk (labeled as pet food) sent to New York from the California dairy.

Phippen would like to see some kind of cooperative arrangement that allows his milk to be transported to groups of consumers who actively seek out raw milk. Along with many other farmers, Phippen says, “We aren’t advocating selling raw milk everywhere. But the choice should be there.”