Raw Milk Updates, Summer 2023

IOWA: Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a bill allowing farmers to sell raw milk from the farm. SF 315 passed after years of opposition. The bill also allows the sale of raw cheese, yogurt, ice cream and other raw dairy products, but limits raw milk farmers to a maximum of ten cows.

Several major farm organizations, including the Iowa State Dairy Association and Iowa Dairy Foods Association, registered to lobby against the bill. Proponents included Americans for Prosperity, a conservative-leaning national libertarian group that helped organize the Tea Party movement.

“The passage of SF 315 is a victory for families and agriculture across our great state and reaffirms that the government has no right to dictate what Iowans choose to drink,” Tyler J. Raygor, deputy state director of Americans For Prosperity-Iowa, said in a statement following the Senate’s vote. “With this legislation, Iowans will have the freedom to choose what to feed their family while enabling innovation in the fresh milk industry.”

The new law has requirements for storing and selling raw milk and preventing sales if the cows, goats or sheep recently received antibiotics. It also outlines testing for bacteria and requires the records be made available to consumers and state officials.

A big thank you to dairy farmer Esther Arkfield who has lobbied patiently for allowing raw milk sales in Iowa.

With the bill’s passage, there remain only four states where farmers cannot provide raw milk in any manner: Louisiana, Hawaii, Nevada and Rhode Island.

We are also working to liberalize regulations in a number of states, particularly New York, where regulations allow only raw milk sales from the farm. New York raw milk farmers are prevented from delivering to the huge market of New York City, or from selling at farmers markets.

This article was first published in the Summer 2023 issue of Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.