Amish farmer says milk law opposes beliefs



By JOE MILICIA, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 28, 9:25 AM ET



MOUNT HOPE, Ohio - Arlie Stutzman was busted in a rare sting when an undercover agent bought raw milk from the Amish dairy farmer in an unlabeled container.

Now, Stutzman is fighting the law that forbids the sale of raw milk, saying he believes it violates his religious beliefs because it prohibits him from sharing the milk he produces with others.

"While I can and I have food, I'll share it," said Stutzman, who is due in Holmes County Common Pleas Court on Friday to tell a judge his views. "Do unto others what you would have others do unto you."

Last September, a man came to Stutzman's weathered, two-story farmhouse, located in a pastoral region in northeast Ohio that has the world's largest Amish settlement. The man asked for milk.

Stutzman was leery, but agreed to fill up the man's plastic container from a 250-gallon stainless steel tank in the milkhouse

After the creamy white, unpasteurized milk flowed into the container, the man, an undercover agent from the Ohio Department of agriculture, gave Stutzman two dollars and left.

The department revoked Stutzman's license in February. In April, he got a new license, which allows him to sell to cheese houses and dairies, but received a warning not to sell raw milk to consumers again.

"You can't just give milk away to someone other then yourself. It's a violation of the law," said LeeAnne Mizer, spokeswoman for the department.

Organizations from the U.S. Food and Drug administration to the American Dairy Association have said that raw milk contains health risks because it has not been heated to kill bacteria, such as E.Coli.

Regulators want Judge Thomas D. White to formally order Stutzman to comply with dairy laws. Stutzman said he is fighting the request on principle, saying he should be able to share his milk.

Stutzman's Amish faith places an emphasis on the community. To preserve their lifestyle, the Amish avoid the use of electricity and automobile ownership, which would allow the outside world to enter unabated into their culture.

The Amish typically do not get involved in politics, unless laws impede their ability to make a living or follow their religious beliefs. Stutzman said he is getting some community support.

"It shows he's not going to be intimidated and he's going to do what he thinks is the right thing," said his attorney, Gary Cox.

State officials said they sent the agent to his farm because they received a tip from an anonymous neighbor about raw milk sales.

Stutzman, however, said he believes he was targeted because his cows are partly owned by a group of 150 families in what is known as a herd share agreement. Members pay him a fee for the cows and are entitled to a portion of the milk.

Sales of raw milk are illegal in Ohio and 24 other states. But herd share agreements take advantage of a loophole because the group is buying the cows, not the milk.

Groups such as the Weston A. Price Foundation, which is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to people's diets, advocate the consumption of raw milk, saying pasteurization diminishes vitamin content and kills beneficial bacteria.

For Stutzman, the herd share agreement gives him an outlet for his extra milk. He also enjoys sharing his product with others who would otherwise not have access to it.

"We know people are deprived of this real food," he said.

___

U.S. Food and Drug Administration: http://www.fda.gov/ Weston A. Price Foundation: http://www.realmilk.com/

Jerry Swope for The New York Times

June was an exceptionally wet month in Vermont, which is home to 1,200 dairy farms.

Published: July 2, 2006

FAIRFIELD, Vt. — Cows in Vermont, and there are a bunch, can usually count on a few things.

On the Magnan family farm in Fairfield, Holsteins are milked. The Magnans said they had been recouping only about $11.50 of the $15 it cost them to produce 100 pounds of milk.
Quaint-seeking tourists snap their pictures. Trinket shops sell their likenesses on needlepoint pillows and welcome mats. And there is plenty of prime food to eat because in spring and summer, dairy farmers literally make lots of hay while the sun shines.

But the sun has not been shining this year. Not for much of May and June, anyway. And record rainfall, combined with dismally low milk prices and rising fuel prices, has Vermont's dairy farming industry in a crisis.

"It's what I call the trifecta: It's low milk prices, bad weather and the cost of staying in business," said Gerry Audet, 54, of Orwell, Vt.

Mr. Audet, a dairy farmer for 37 years on a farm his family has run since 1936, gave up a few weeks ago and sold his cows. His is one of at least 46 dairy farms, out of 1,200 in the state, that have folded in recent months, a higher than usual number, farm economists say. "I'm running a hundred-cow dairy here," Mr. Audet said, "and it's just gotten to the point where I can't stay in business."

Statewide, the situation for dairy farms, which make up 85 percent of Vermont's agriculture, has gotten so tough that on Monday, the federal Department of Agriculture declared the entire state a disaster zone, making cheap emergency loans available to farmers.

And Gov. Jim Douglas convened an emergency "dairy summit" on Thursday, announcing that the state would give farmers $8.6 million in cash assistance because the situation was so dire that federal help was not enough. "I refuse to let the agricultural industry of Vermont slip away," Mr. Douglas, a Republican, said at the summit.

In an interview, the governor said: "A number of farmers have lost over half their crops, and we estimate about $53 million or $54 million in reported losses. It's part of our culture, our way of life. They are the stewards of the land, and they maintain the working landscape that's so important to our natural beauty and our tourism. I believe this is a particularly critical time for them, and that's why we need to do everything we can to help them."

Virtually every dairy farmer has been affected.

"It's just been so wet that we couldn't do anything," said Henry Magnan, who milks 550 Holsteins with his four sons in Fairfield, where rain has twice flooded his street (Chester Arthur Road, after the president who spent his infancy here) and made it impassable.

For weeks, the fields have been so wet that the Magnans, members of a dairy cooperative that supplies the milk for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, could not plant corn to feed their cows. Some 85 acres of hay they had also counted on became so moldy, rotten-smelling and infiltrated by mushrooms that the Magnans had to chop it up and let it molder on the ground. Tractors trying to work their land are getting mired in mud.

All this will mean mounting costs to buy feed they would have grown, said one son, Mark Magnan. And assuming they get a crop of hay and corn later in the summer, the quality will be poorer, which will cause cows to produce less milk to sell and require farmers to buy protein to supplement the poor feed.

Add to that the price of fuel, which increases the cost of operating tractors, transporting milk to market, trucking in supplies and even using fertilizer made from natural gas. With milk prices low, the Magnans said they had been recouping only about $11.50 of the $15 it cost them to produce 100 pounds of milk.

"Most dairy farmers weren't exactly rolling in cash when these problems started," said Matt Harvey, who milks 140 cows in Florence. "A lot of us are living off of our reserves or at least tapping into them."

The number of dairy farmers has been declining in Vermont and elsewhere for years, with small family farms selling to larger ones and young people opting out of agriculture. But Robert L. Parsons, an economist at the University of Vermont, said the current situation seemed particularly difficult, with more farms folding this year than before.

Although there has been no decline in the number of cows or the amount of milk produced, Professor Parsons said a decline in dairy farmers had hit the state hard.

"Vermont is the most dairy-dependent state in the country," he said. "People say the top five agricultural products in Vermont are dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy and dairy. This image of the independent small farmers grazing their cows on the hillside, is that a disappearing picture? Many of the people are afraid that it is."

Farmers trying to keep their business afloat have taken a variety of steps. Some have shifted to producing organic milk, which draws a higher price but also requires an investment of time, money and land that not every farmer can afford.

A few are going the route of the Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, which has found a way to wring greater value out of a commodity it produces in abundance: manure.

The farm extracts methane gas from the manure and sends the methane through a generator, which makes electricity. The Central Vermont Public Service Company sells the electricity to customers for 4 cents per kilowatt hour more than regular electric power (which sells for 11.4 cents per kilowatt hour for residential customers), and the farm pockets the 4 cents. So far, about 3,000 customers have signed up.

Marie Audet, part of the family running Blue Spruce, said there was another benefit: removing the methane also removes that classic manure smell, so "the separated manure solids can be used as bedding for the cows instead of sawdust."

Governor Douglas said one of his wife's brothers, Robert Foster, had augmented his dairy income by selling potting soil made from manure. "He calls it Moo Doo," the governor said, "and it's sold up and down the East Coast."

But many farmers are struggling to make the economics work. Harvey Smith, a state representative, sold the cows on his farm in New Haven, Vt., a few months ago.

Chris Fay, who milks 200 Jersey cows in Maidstone in northeastern Vermont, where fields have been swimming in rain, said he was taking austerity measures: cutting fertilizer use and giving up some power in his tractor by "shifting up a gear so you don't burn as much fuel."

Mr. Fay, 26, who farms with his father, said, "We try never to talk about it too much, but at some point in time we got to figure out whether it's feasible or not" to stay in business.

Steve Kerr, Vermont's agriculture secretary, who has been lobbying Congress for more aid, said: "We're very, very, very worried about this. Dairy farmers, they don't give up easily. But you can only take so many shots to the torso before you're done."

IMHO the rainy weather was perhaps the last straw for many farmers. The price of fuel and other items like the strangle hold the large corporations have over the small farmers hurts the most.

Don't mention fuel prices, I was pennies short of £60 today for a tank full of petrol in the car!

My trucks tank holds 35 gallons and we are paying $ .75 cents per litter or $ 2.80 per gallon, how much is your cost per litter?

£0.95 ish, about $1.75 a litre, for a 63 litre tank, filled from almost empty.