Here’s a news report from the Marler Clark blog “Food Safety News“. Bill Marler, one of the partners in Marler Clark, is a lawyer specializing in food poisoning cases.
Whole Foods market in Sarasota Florida
“Whole Foods will stop selling raw milk in Florida on Sept. 30th
The Glades Ridge Dairy, one of 19 dairies in Florida licensed to sell raw milk for pet food, was recently temporarily suspended from selling its raw milk and cheese at the Alachua County Farmers Market.
The market’s Board of Directors will decide in October whether to make the ban permanent.
Maybe, just maybe, the pet milk scheme for selling raw milk as “pet food” is coming apart in the Sunshine State.
Just why now is not entirely clear. Maybe the grocery store workers have a new contract protecting them from doing all that winking and nodding that it must take to sell raw milk with pet food labels when the intended market for the product is human consumption.
Maybe the best scientific and legal advice is not to put one’s market or grocery store at risk by selling unpasteurized dairy products. Best not to accept that liability.
But not all is clear yet because not everybody is talking. Briana Madrid, who speaks for Whole Foods in Florida from offices in Ft. Lauderdale, refused to speak with Food Safety News “due to the competitive nature of the grocery industry.”
About the only competition Whole Foods has for selling raw milk in Florida is health stores and niche markets. Large national grocery store chains won’t touch the stuff.
It is illegal to sell raw milk in Florida for human consumption. Milk sold for human consumption must be pasteurized. Without pasteurization, a heating process that kills bacteria, raw milk can be ripe with potentially deadly pathogens like E. coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter.
Raw milk can be sold when labeled as “pet food” and there are no laws against drinking it. And, raw milk has a “cult-like” following of advocates who swear by its positive health benefits. These customers are willing to pay a price for raw milk that is consistent with the “whole paycheck” reputation of the pricey Whole Foods stores.
In the last year, the price for milk going to regular dairies has plummeted to as low at $1 a gallon. Raw milk can fetch as much as $15 a gallon.
Wendy Mathias, who maintains a website called Miami Real Food, has launched a campaign to persuade Whole Foods to stay in the raw milk business. Mathias wants to be able to continue to get her two-liter bottles of raw milk from the corner of a cooler that is mostly stacked with eggs.
Florida law prevents Whole Foods from displaying raw milk beside pasteurized milk.
“Please do not stop offering raw milk to your customers,” Mathias writes in an open letter to Whole Foods. “Your commitment to continue to offer this important nutrient-dense food is a market of your commitment to serving the community with the healthiest foods they can’t easily access anywhere else.”…”
Read the whole story on Food Safety News blog.
Some background on the story from David E. Gumpert’s “The Complete Patient” blog:
“The five members of the board of the Alachua County Farmers Market in Gainesville, FL, all love to drink the raw goat’s milk sold at the market by one of the farmers, Joe Pietrangelo of Glades Ridge farm.
But now that same board has banned Glades Ridge from the farmers market, at least temporarily.
The problem, Helen Emery, one of the farmers market board members, tells me, is plain old fear—fear by the board of legal problems should a consumer become ill from the milk. The board has already been told by its insurance company that if the market is sued for any reason, the insurer will pull coverage in the future, she says.
There’s been no problem at the market with the Glades Ridge milk or cheese since the farm began selling its products at the market last May. Indeed, the milk and cheese have become popular items at the market, and helpful money makers for Joe Pietrangelo.
But a farmers market customer, who also happens to be a lawyer and pathologist, planted the seeds of doubt and fear in the board when he pointed out that the market could be liable for damages if someone became ill. In Florida, it’s legal to sell raw milk only as pet food, and indeed, it is sold via retail stores like Whole Foods clearly labeled as such. The Glades Ridge stand at the farmers market similarly has labels posted on the milk and on its stand re-affirming the point.
But, says Helen Emery, “We all know people are buying it for themselves. One of our customers said everyone is drinking it.”
So the board made the decision a few days ago to temporarily suspend Glades Ridge from selling. In the meantime, the board members have been doing research about raw milk—speaking with medical people, lawyers and (uh-oh) the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “It’s a huge issue for us,” says Emery.
She even went out to the Glades Ridge farm to do an inspection. “The place is gorgeous,” she tells me. “the goats are clean, the facilities are clean.”
The problem? “It’s illegal to sell dairy products for human consumption in Florida.”
“If Joe were to get sued, we (the market) would get sued. That would force us to close, which would close out 30 other farmers. It doesn’t just affect him. It affects another 30 farmers, plus 30 additional farmers that come in on a daily basis.”…”
Get the whole story from The Complete Patient blog.
Another Florida Whole Foods market
The Bovine 
One is left wondering whether pets in Florida will experience a degradation of their health if they are forced to switch to pasteurized milk products.
Doesn’t Whole Foods care about the health of Florida’s pet population?
We may be seeing something of a domino, or copycat, effect. What started with a liability chill at one farmers market has spread to a major health food supermarket statewide — one of the downsides of a concentration of ownership of health food stores.
Yes, and we drink raw milk with Paul Newman’s Dog food. Mr. Newman was a great man. If he were alive today, he would probably have raw milk as another one of his winner foods in the market. Let’s see whole Foods block that out.
Thank you.
The Milkmen USA
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