Last Friday, when a spokesperson for the California Department of Food and Agriculture told me the agency had lifted its quarantine of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. raw milk, I took that to mean the dairy was back in business. So did Mark McAfee, the co-owner, who published a notice to that effect on the dairy’s web site. I also added an update about the lifting of the quarantine in the comment section of my BusinessWeek.com column that recounted the entire episode, in which the dairy’s products were accused of sickening four children, but then essentially exonerated when no evidence of E.coli bacteria could be found in the milk products or around the farm.
Unfortunately, the spokesperson neglected to mention a small detail, one which was included in a press release eventually posted by the department late Friday evening. It turns out the Fresno County Department of Community Health, which oversees farm operations in the dairy’s county, hasn’t cleared Organic Pastures to go back to market with its unhomogenized and unpasteurized milk. The dairy apparently has a problem with something called “high somatic cell counts,” which the California Department of Food and Agriculture says in its press release is “not a human health issue, but affect(s) product shelf life and taste.”
Mark McAfee, owner of the dairy, says the county is using old-fashioned measuring techniques involving counting cells under a microscope; automated techniques used by a dairy association show his counts well within acceptable standards. He finds it more than curious that the same samples can show such different counts. A county spokesperson agrees that there are different measuring approaches, "but ours is the only one acceptable." In the meantime, he’s limited to selling mainly butter and cheese, which creates a major business problem, since raw milk comprises 70% of his business.
The story gets even more curious. Suddenly late yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon, Organic Pastures made some progress with county officials. A few hours after I telephoned, an official of the Fresno County Department of Community Health returned my call with news that a sample of Organic Pastures milk had just passed the somatic cell count test. That’s good, but not quite good enough.
The Dairy needs to pass TWO tests to be allowed to sell its milk again, so a second sample will be tested tomorrow, Friday, at the county’s labs. If this sample passes, then Organic Pastures will be free to sell its milk again…unless there’s another detail I’m not being told about.
As you might expect, McAfee is chomping at his proverbial bit. “Something is operating here on a much grander scale” than somatic cell counts to keep him off the market. He contends that the county agency doesn’t normally even become involved in such testing. What’s happening is “a full-on assault on raw milk.” The good news about his favorable test, he says, only came after he threatened legal action with the county agency.
I’ll be following events on Friday.
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