RAW MILK REGULATIONS RESTRICT SMALL VIRGINIA FARMERS

Small dairy farmers in Virginia find their efforts restricted by milk regulations. According to
state regulations, farmers can sell only pasteurized milk, not raw milk, to the final consumer.
We have people all the time who will drive by and see our animals and stop and ask for
[milk], said Joanna Moyer, a Castlewood, Virginia farmer. We say, We have refrigerators full
of milk, but we cant sell it to you.
Moyer said Virginia used to have
a three-cow exemption that allowed
farmers who milked fewer than three
cows to sell milk to a consumer without
state regulation. Moyer went to
Richmond in 2015 to find out what
happened to the exemption and lobby for
it to be added again. If you look through
the book, theres a certain year where
that exemption was in there, and then the
next year it wasnt, Moyer said. We
dont have any record of what happened,
which is strange. The 2015 raw milk bill
which Moyer supported was tabled
without discussion. Moyer said the bill
received opposition from both the Farm
Bureau and doctors who spoke about the
health hazards of raw milk. The funny
Joanna Moyer cares for her goats at the family
thing is, a lot of [the doctors] grew up
farm in Castlewood, Virginia
drinking raw milk, Moyer said. A
similar three-cow exemption bill was
tabled in 2016.
The Food and Drug Administration warns against drinking raw milk because
unpasteurized milk can contain disease-causing pathogens including E. coli, Salmonella and
Listeria. According to the FDA, pasteurization kills bacteria by heating milk to high temperatures
but does not alter its nutritional value.
Brad Salyers produced raw milk in Oregon until E. coli O157:H7 contaminated his milk
in April 2012 and one of his children developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a kidney
condition. E. coli O157:H7, discovered in 1982, is more virulent than other forms of the bacteria
and can exist in manure and elsewhere on farms.
Moyer recommends watching or asking about a farmers milking procedures before
buying milk. She brushes each goat and washes and dries their udders before milking them. After
milking, Moyer filters her milk and sanitizes her milk bowl before its next use. Some small
farmers might be willing to pasteurize their milk in order to sell it, but she explains that the
smallest commercial-grade pasteurizer costs $20,000. Even if she had the money for a
pasteurizer, it would be worthless without a separate milk-processing room that meets Grade A

milk requirements. Moyer keeps a larger goatherd to gain income from selling goats, though
selling milk would be more economical.
Joel Salatin owns Polyface farm in Virginias Shenandoah Valley and says that current
regulations harm small farmers. Most of the time, this higher pricing has nothing to do with
production, he said. It has
to do with these non-scalable,
capricious regulations that
keep us from being able to be
efficient.
Moyer says there is a
difference between raw and
pasteurized milk. If you set
out a container of raw milk
on the counter and leave it, it
will sour pleasantly, but it
wont rot, she said. A 2006
study from the Journal of
Allergy and Clinical
Immunology found that
consuming unpasteurized
milk was associated with a
Joanna Moyers herd from spring 2015.
significant decrease in
eczema and allergy
symptoms.
Just as rare beef and cigarettes are sold with health hazard warning labels, raw milk
supporters argue that consumers should be allowed to choose to consume labeled raw milk.
Moyer observed, People get sick from pasteurized dairy, too. For now, Moyer continues to
feed the pig and chickens her extra milk.