The New York hearing over the legality of the Meadowsweet Dairy and its distribution of raw milk products to owners of its limited liability company seems to have been a knock-down affair, with no punches pulled.

We won’t know for at least a month the outcome of the hearing held by the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets, but the situation could begin to clarify itself on Tuesday, when the case goes before a state court in Waterloo, NY, on a request by Meadowsweet to halt the state’s harassment of the dairy. There, a decision could come the same day.

Getting a decision favorable to the dairy out of the hearing officer in charge last week will be tough, since that individual is hired by the department and can thus be assumed to be tilting toward the agency. But Barbara Smith, an owner of the dairy, thought she was listening.  

First off, the session went on for two days, which means that lots of arguments were brought out into the open by Gary Cox, the lawyer for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which represents the limited liability company and its owners, Barbara and Steve Smith.

Second, the hearing officer seemed to be listening, in the opinion of Barbara.

Here are some excerpts from her report on the hearing:

“The hearing was long and exhausting for all of us. It lasted 7 hours on Thursday and then an additional 4 hours on Friday! Gary Cox, our  lawyer, threw himself into the proceedings body and soul and gave a very passionate and moving opening statement and closing argument. He was aggressive and sharp and we ended up with a really good record to take.

“Basically this hearing was Ag&Mkts asking the hearing officer to order us to cease and desist from what we are doing and to comply with their permitting because we are violating their regs by ‘selling’ raw milk, by operating a milk plant without a license,  and that our farm is unsanitary.

“Gary took the hearing officer point by point through ALL the Ag and Markets laws and definitions and showed her (and the  department) all the flubs and inconsistencies in their laws, which in fact point to the fact that we are not a milk plant, not ‘selling’ milk, and that the sanitary conditions on the farm today are the same we have had all the 12 years we had a license under their jurisdiction into the hearings in Waterloo…”

“(Gary)  got the Director of Milk Control to admit that his ‘policies’ on raw milk licensing are not actually written down but are carried out consistently state wide, which according to Gary can be considered  ‘illegal rulemaking.’ And he established that we have never had complaints about our milk from anyone, so the sanitary conditions argument is weak.

“The State, on the other hand, ended with very few balloons unpopped. Their closing argument amounted to: The Department has been operating this way since the 1930’s and so should continue to do so. Their policy on raw milk sales is clear (no matter what the laws say – he told the hearing officer she must read the regs ‘expansively’)…The LLC is a sham and just a cover (no evidence offered). And so there!

“Toward the end of the proceeding, the hearing officer was definitely listening to our testimony with interest, and even rolled her eyes when I said the Department had pretended all summer to not understand that we did not want to be licensed so they had an excuse to continue with inspections.”

The Ithaca Journal published a brief account of the session as well.   

It seems as if Gary used the proceedings to poke all kinds of holes in New York’s efforts to prevent a herdsharing type of arrangement. On Tuesday in Waterloo, we should begin to get an indication of whether the argument rings true with a judge. It is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at 48 West Williams St. in Waterloo.