Few things are as exasperating — and unfair, unwise, wasteful, and potentially dangerous — as agricultural laws and rules designed to help farmers by denying useful information to consumers. A prime example of the genre is the Montana Department of Livestock’s old rule establishing a sell-by date for pasteurized milk, which in part reads:
(2) No grade A pasteurized milk may be put in any container marked with a sell-by date which is more than 12 days after pasteurization of the milk for sale in Montana.
Sell-by rules, and “expiration dates” (when the milk goes bad), differ from state-to-state (which doesn’t make sense to me), so wholesalers, such as Darigold, serving more than one state like to place both the sell-by and expiration dates on the mild carton, a practice known as dual-marking. I find that helpful. I don’t buy much milk, but when I do I buy Darigold’s two-percent ultra-pasteurized milk in cartons stamped with the expiration date. In late July, for example, I purchased a couple of quarts with expiration dates in early September. In fact, I won’t buy milk that’s not ultra-pasteurized, and that’s sold in a carton without an expiration date.
Darigold is owned by California based Core-Mark International, which, with the blessing of the Montana Department of Livestock, has sold dual-marked milk in Montana since 2002. In 2008, however, the MDOL, with the backing of the Montana Milk Producers Association and a big Montana dairy, Meadow Gold, decided to withdraw that blessing. Core-Mark sued, continuing to dual-mark while the case was litigated.
On 9 August, Core-Mark lost in Montana district court in Helena, with District Judge Mike Menahan
…saying there was conflicting information on whether expiration dates or Montana’s sell-by dates was fairer to consumers and producers.
He said the Montana Department of Livestock was in the best position to decide the rule, and that since the board didn’t act illegally or arbitrarily in confirming the 33-year-old rule last year, its decision should not be overturned. State pleased that milk sell-by rule upheld in California company’s challenge, by Mike Dennison.
Core-Mark is appealing to Montana’s supreme court, so it can continue to dual-mark its milk until the appeal is decided.
MDOL executive director Christain MacKay was delighted. According to Dennison’s story, MacKay argued that the decision, in Dennison’s words, “puts more power and knowledge in the hands of consumers.”
Yeah, right. Removing the expiration date from the milk carton puts more knowledge in the hands of consumers. Pucker your lips and try to keep a straight face. MacKay can make that Orwellian argument until the cows come home, and even then no fair-minded person would believe him.
If the MDOL and the Montana milk producers egging it on prevail, and milk sold in Montana can no longer sport an expiration date on the carton, I’m simply going to stop buying milk in Montana. Dual-marking and expiration dates make sense, as does ultra-pasteurization. Montana’s milk labeling rule is designed to provide an economic advantage for Montana’s milk producers. The idea that consumers are helped by MDOL’s depriving them of an expiration date on the cartons of milk sold in Montana is absurd.
Instead of wasting time and money continuing to try to enforce a stupid rule, the MDOL should change the rule to allow dual-marking and expiration dates. And Congress should set a single standard for all interstate commerce in milk.