Scott Soares, Massachusetts agriculture commissioner, left, after the hearing Monday. One after another–farmers, moms, dads, lawyers, buying club owners, a state rep, and a blind woman, some 50 in all–they testified this morning before the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, Scott Soares. More likely would have spoken out, except the hearing room filled up with about 125 people, and another 60 or more couldn’t get in.

After threatening in a late-Friday press release that people wouldn’t be able to testify on his agency’s crackdown on raw milk buying clubs, Soares relented in the bright sunshine of a new day. He allowed the testimony, and in doing so, he opened a flood gate of emotional appeals, lasting three-and-a-half hours.

Though his Friday afternoon release pointed to the “passion and concern on all sides of the raw milk debate,” the message by 48 of the 49 who testified was pretty much the same: lay off the buying clubs (with the 49th person being neutral on buying clubs). Guess all those passionate anti-raw-milk people didn’t feel passionate enough to take some time off from work and express their passion.

“Without the buying clubs, we will not survive,” said Pam Robinson, owner of a 280-acre raw dairy farm in central Massachusetts.

Harvey Schwartz, a lawyer and member of a Boston-area buying club, said buying clubs were just one expression of the principal-agent relationship. “An agent can be designated to pick up my Oxycontin, and stop off and buy a bottle of vodka, and while at it, a carton of cigarettes,” he said. “Under Massachusetts law, I can authorize the agent to buy me the cow. Yet your agency’s position is the agent can’t buy me a gallon of raw milk.”

I testified about the economic development impact of the crackdown, arguing that small enterprises like the buying clubs and raw dairy farms will shed valuable jobs, during a time of economic hardship. Mark McAfee, of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., seconded that notion. “I’ve hired five people in the last 90 days,” he testified about his dairy, which continues to expand from growing demand for raw dairy products.

Rebecca, a single mom living in Boston, credited raw milk with helping relieve her two-year-old’s digestive problems and frequent ear infections. “I would never have access to raw milk without the buying clubs.”

A blind woman, Alice Dampmen Humel, sat with her seeing-eye dog, and said she depends on a buying club. “I can’t get out to get my milk.”

Alice Dampmen Humel, a blind woman, with her dog, testifies about how eliminating raw milk buying clubs would deprive her of her only way to obtain the milk. In drawing the hearing to a close, Soares congratulated himself for being there. It’s not usual, he said, “that the commissioner comes to a regulatory hearing.” Lucky us.

He was even colder when I approached him immediately afterwards and asked him what he thought of the emotional testimony. “It’s what I expected.” He added that the biggest revelation to him was that “there are a lot of people out there supplying milk that aren’t licensed operators.” In other words, they don’t have a Milk Dealer license he insists is necessary to qualify to pick up milk for someone else.

So how do you get such a license? Well, there’s never been a buying club licensed as a Milk Dealer, he noted, so it’s not clear how one would even go about getting such a license. In other words, the four buying clubs that have received cease-and-desist orders can’t solve the problem by applying for Milk Dealer licenses.

Sounds something like a Catch-22 to me. Soares said his department has decided “to address the (raw milk) issue more broadly over the next thirty days,” and the Milk Dealer issue will be part of the consideration.

That should mean more hearings. But is this man listening?

I guess you could say the circus continues, yet at this particular show, there weren’t a lot of people laughing.

(For more on the pre-hearing festivities at the Boston Common, including Max Kane of Wisconsin chugging some very fresh raw milk, here’s a local television report.)