Four months after the sting operation against Richard Hebron and the Family Farms Cooperative in Michigan over distribution of raw milk, co-op members are experiencing the first legal reverberation from the case.
It comes in the form of a “warning letter” from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to David Hochstetler, the Amish farmer in Indiana who provides the Family Farms Cooperative with its raw milk. The letter, which he just received in the last few days (and hasn’t been posted on the FDA’s site), states that Hochstetler “distributes unpasteurized raw milk and cream in interstate commerce, in finished form for human consumption,” in violation of a federal regulation that “prohibits the delivery into interstate commerce of milk and milk products in final package form for direct human consumption unless they have been pasteurized. The milk and cream you produce in Indiana and distribute to Cooperatives in Michigan and Illinois for further distribution to their Co-op members, is in final package form for direct human consumption.”
The letter claims that the absence of labeling showing the name of the distributor and the bottle contents is a further violation of federal law.
The letter orders Hochstetler to provide the FDA with “the specific steps you have taken to correct the noted violations, including an explanation of each step being taken to prevent the recurrence of similar violations.” The letter offers no provision for appeal, except to say, “If corrective actions cannot be completed within 15 working days, state the reason for the delay and the time within which corrections will be completed.”
Responses are ordered to be directed to Judith Jankowski, an FDA compliance officer in the FDA’s Detroit office, 313-393-8125.
Co-op members have argued all along that the distribution of raw milk from Indiana to Michigan doesn’t constitute interstate commerce, since nothing is being sold; the members are merely receiving milk from cows they own. Steve Bemis, an Ann Arbor lawyer and member of the Family Farms Cooperative, is encouraging members and other supporters to contact Michigan Sen. Carl Levin and request he follow up with FDA to obtain answers to questions he posed shortly after the sting operation. “My position is that the private cow-share agreement that I (and hundreds of others) have with FFC does not constitute a sale of raw milk either intra-state or inter-state, and we and our cows should be left alone by the FDA and MDA,” he states in a letter he has forwarded to the senator.
This entire area seems to be fertile legal territory. It’s understood that the FDA has never gone beyond the issuance of warning letters in its battle to contain the distribution of raw milk. And we have yet to hear from Michigan county prosecutors in this case.
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