Every time I look for news about raw milk, it seems as if I come across something about Stump Acres, a large raw-milk dairy in southeastern Pennsylvania. There have been several news stories, a Food and Drug Administration release, and one or more releases from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture about the dairy over the past eight months.

The message behind these news items about bans on raw milk sales is that Stump Acres has a chronic problem with salmonella in its milk, which has made some of its customers ill. With 136 milking cows, it was the country’s second-largest raw milk dairy, behind Organic Pastures, says Glndora Stump, the 70-year-old owner. (She has reduced the herd to 90 cows since the problems started last March, though that may still qualify it as second-largest.)

As in other cases, once you start probing some, you discover that things aren’t as clear as they originally sounded. I spoke last evening with Glendora Stump, the 70-year-old owner of Stump Acres, along with the mother of several children who became sick last March from salmonella, and the best I can say is that the situation is murky.

The first thing that sticks out is that Stump Acres has been providing raw milk for forty years to hundreds of customers who come to the farm and pick it up. Even though Pennsylvania allows retail sales, Stump Acres prefers to sell all its milk directly to individuals so the milk can be delivered as fresh as possible. There was one previous incident involving pathogens before this year, says Glendora—two years ago, campylobacter was found in one of her cows in a state inspection, but no one became ill. For more background, there is a 2004 story about her in a cattle publication.

Glendora says that while most customers are from her local area, she has significant numbers who drive several hours to her farm from Maryland and Virginia, where raw milk is illegal. “I have one customer who drives five hours from Maryland to get enough milk for her family for three weeks.”

The state first found salmonella in the dairy’s milk last February, again in late March, June, and late July. When the state banned sales in June, the dairy resorted to giving its milk away. The state then revoked her dairy license in late July to halt the give-aways, supposedly after several customers developed gastrointestinal problems.

While some dozens of people who drank raw milk did become ill, it isn’t clear how many of the salmonella outbreaks were associated with the dairy and how many might have been from other causes.

Glendora feels the state has come down hard on her because she told state inspectors last February that she has customers from Virginia and Maryland. “Just because I said those two states, the department of health got the FDA involved,” she says.

She is also convinced that some or all of the cases of salmonella are being wrongfully blamed on her. She says the state has blamed her for at least two dozen cases of salmonella, and a few she has been able to explore with customers leads her to believe at least some aren’t the result of raw milk. She feels that one child actually became ill from some fast-food fried chicken.

Another situation involves Antonette Fort, a York, Pennsylvania, nursing student and mother of five children ages seven to thirteen, who had been buying Stump Acres’ milk for several years without problems. Antonette told me she purchased four gallons of milk late last March, and a day later, her seven-year-old daughter, Julia, became ill with diarrhea. Antonette called Glendora, who sent someone to pick up the remaining three-and-a-half gallons of milk, which she sent out to a private lab. Test results (copies of which Glendora sent me): negative for salmonella. But the state in its own tests of other milk from the dairy says it found salmonella.

Antonette says that over the next two weeks, four of her five children became ill to varying degrees, as did Antonette. Only Julia was tested for salmonella, and her test was positive. The only child who didn’t become ill was eleven-year-old Joseph. It turns out he drank raw milk, but didn’t drink another item the others all consumed: water from a nearby spring that Antonette (and other area residents) regularly uses for drinking water. She says state health inspectors interviewed her, but never inquired about the raw milk, and she says she doesn’t know what, if anything, they found.

In her mind, “It’s a mystery.” But in the meantime, she says, “I haven’t gone to the spring and I haven’t bought any more raw milk” since last March.

Still, most other customers seem not to have been scared off. Glendora says most continued buying from her after each ban was ended, and she expects the same thing to happen when she gets a new license expected any day. One other thing going on in Pennsylvania is state senate hearings on raw milk problems in the state over the past ten months or so, which I hope to report on shortly.

As to what might be behind salmonella from Stump Acres’ milk, one of the news articles linked to in the first paragraph quotes Glendora’s son as saying it may have been one or two sick cows. The dairy has reduced its herd in the last few months. One thing that is clear is that in the existing political climate, there isn’t much room for error by raw milk producers.