Raw Milk on Sale — and Selling — in North Dakota

North Dakota is the latest state to legalize the sale of raw milk to consumers and the earliest adopters are discovering a new, more personal side of business.

BISMARCK, N.D. — What can be a tricky business of raw milk is now open in North Dakota, and the state’s earliest adopters say there’s already a market for it.

A law passed during the 2023 North Dakota Legislature removed the prohibition of the sale of raw milk directly to a consumer. Farms may now sell raw milk directly to consumers for personal consumption but cannot sell raw milk to a wholesaler or retail store for mass consumption or across state lines.

John Avard and his wife, Shannon, started selling raw A2/A2 Jersey milk and cream from a purebred cow in their herd when the new law went into effect on Aug. 1. He said they’re already seeing business as one of the first batch of North Dakota farms to market their raw milk for sale.

“We’re getting a very good response,” Avard said on Aug. 22.

He credits that to people disliking being told by the government what they can and can’t consume, especially when it comes from a natural place.

“I don’t think it’s limited to raw milk,” he said. “It’s anything that can be produced. A lot of people are wanting products that are as natural as possible, without all the added preservatives and stuff that really, essentially, is not needed.”

Avard followed the lawmaking process from its inception, which began with a bill sponsored by Rep. Dawson Holle, R-Mandan, whose family dairy farm is just south of where Avard grew up.

Avard and his wife attended a raw milk producer seminar held at the North Dakota State Fair last month where Holle and LeAnn Harner of North Dakota Food Freedom were speakers. North Dakota Food Freedom lobbied and ultimately convinced the State Legislature in 2017 to pass the Cottage Food Act, which opened the door to further expansion of “food freedom” in the state.

“It was a lot more informative, and a way to get together with other producers on what they were looking at doing in their setup, and some that had been doing herd-shares already and what has worked,” he said.

North Dakota Food Freedom offers helpful guidance to both sellers and buyers of raw milk.

Avard said from when the initial bill started to when it was brought to the legislature, reached final draft stage and became a law, it “changed drastically.”

Nowhere in the three-line wording of the new law does it refer to it only being fluid raw milk that can be sold, but Avard said he believes that’s the interpretation of the North Dakota Department of Agriculture.

“They’re looking at trying to interpret that as we can’t make butter, we can’t skim cream and we can’t sell cream separate from the milk, which is not the case,” Avard said.

That should be an issue for the courts, he said, and the department is overstepping boundaries after missing its opportunity to regulate raw milk through permits and inspections, which he thinks was by design.

“They had the choice to be a part of this, because in the initial bill, any raw milk producer would have had to get a permit, and there would have been some sort of inspection done,” he said of the ag department. “And through all the committee meetings and everything, all that stuff got taken out, because essentially, selling raw milk to a consumer is no different than a herd-share other than a piece of paper.”

A herd-share program involves a customer essentially “owning” a portion of the milk production from a herd. And raw milk customers still may prefer to buy through a herd-share program, which was the only way to do so under the former law, because they aren’t looking for a weekly amount of raw milk or don’t have enough flexibility in their schedules, Avard said.

Toby and Heidi Tormaschy have been milking cows north of Richardton, North Dakota, since 2008, and their milk is processed into specialty cheeses in Pollock, South Dakota. Both of them grew up on dairy farms, and Heidi was once a North Dakota Dairy Princess. The family was recently awarded the Commissioner’s Award of Dairy Excellence and recognized for consistently having high-quality milk and outstanding inspection records.

With the legalization of raw milk sales on Aug. 1, the couple decided to make a sister dairy to their original herd and call it 4 Maids A-Milking, because they have four daughters.

“Now we sell raw milk off the farm through that herd,” Heidi Tormaschy said of the cows which belong to their daughters. “We both think that it’s a good thing to offer a product to consumers if they want to have a more natural product directly from the farm.”

She said it feels like that kind of market is really catching on.

“We thought it would be a unique opportunity for our farm to kind of take advantage of that,” Tormaschy said.

Selling raw milk has gone “really well” in the first three weeks, she said, despite the many differences from selling pasteurized milk.

“It’s different in the fact that we work a lot closer with the consumers this way,” she said. “It’s been neat to work with them that way in providing education and a closer example of what dairy life really looks like.”

When raw milk buyers come to the farm they can see exactly where their milk is coming from, Tormaschy said.

“Whereas when the milk just leaves on the milk truck, to be turned into cheese, there’s not that connection there,” she said.

After following the legalization of raw milk for years, when the North Dakota bill was first introduced, Tormaschy said she was hesitant it was a good idea because as a longtime dairy farmer, she knew how tricky of a product it could be for consumers.

“It can be a very safe, healthy, nutritious product, but if handled incorrectly, it can also be really dangerous,” she said. “And so at first, I didn’t know if it was quite a good idea to make that kind of thing available to the public.”

She eventually decided it’s their duty as dairy farmers to sell products for which they can include the proper educational information.

“When it leaves the farm, I make sure to tell them this is a raw product. This is unpasteurized, it is not a homogenized, and it came right out of the cow this morning in some cases,” she said. “Have a discussion with them about what exactly this product is, and how to safely handle it.”

Tormaschy said she’s been drinking raw milk her entire life, and her family supplied themselves “right out of the tank.” And she feels comfortable sending a product out to consumers with families of their own, knowing it’s the same product in her own refrigerator.

“I drank it pregnant, nursing, and I give it to our kids,” she said. “I would never sell a product that I would not feel comfortable feeding my own family. And in this case, we very much feed it to our own family. We go through about a gallon a day.”

Source : Inforum