Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed

Mary Lou Wesselhoeft runs a Florida creamery that makes skim milk. All-natural skim milk, with nothing added. She has a free speech lawsuit against the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (DACS) because they forbade her from calling the product “skim milk.”

Mary Lou wants to label it as “pasteurized skim milk.” But DACS wants her to use a confusing and misleading label that labels the milk something it is not: “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.”
Why? Because DACS has decided that what you and I call skim milk—that is, whole milk with the cream skimmed off—is not actually skim milk at all unless it’s artificially injected with vitamin A. The fact is, when milk is skimmed, much of its vitamin A is removed. DACS has demanded that it not be called “skim milk” unless and until vitamin A is injected back into it. Mary Lou suggested other labels that would inform her customers the skim milk is merely pasteurized skim milk, not an artificially processed “milk product,” but DACS rejected each one.

The agency’s reasoning behind the rule is to give consumers what they expect from product labels, but let’s be honest -do you ever think about the vitamin A content of your milk? I don’t. I might think of the vitamin D content, only because milk with vitamin D added is labeled as such. Actually, I just buy whole milk. However, the result of the regulation is that they are ordering Ocheesee Creamery to effectively lie about what their milk jugs have in them. Maybe they could come up with a compromise. How about ALL skim milk be labeled as “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.” The standard skim milk we are supposedly used to can be labeled “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed and Re-Added.” The result of that will be a whole lot of Floridians switching to regular whole milk.