Raw milk use on the increase in Pennsylvania

NEW SALEM, Pa. (AP) -- Glendora Stump keeps watch over the small store as customers file in with empty glass and plastic bottles.
It's around 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, and her husband Joseph is busy milking the family's herd of Holsteins in the milking parlor at their York New Salem farm.
The customers all know to set their bottles down on the stainless steel counter and wait for Glendora Stump to open the valve on the pipeline. They walk away with fresh containers of the creamy white milk that has become so controversial that some states have banned its sale, insisting it's unsafe for human consumption.
Yet natural food subscribers and those longing for a taste of their childhood seek it out at the nearly 40 farms licensed in Pennsylvania to sell the raw milk, which has not been homogenized or pasteurized and is pretty much straight out of the udder.
It's legal in Pennsylvania, where even the state's secretary of agriculture once held a raw milk permit at his farm, as this is one of 28 states that allow the sale for human consumption. A few other states permit sales as long as the milk is only fed to animals.
Ahead because they're behind
"In Pennsylvania we're ahead because we're behind," said Brian Snyder, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, a nonprofit group from the State College area.
The state's old-fashioned leanings and large Amish population, which drinks only raw milk, has kept the state from tinkering with its raw milk licensing, which began in the 1930s, he said.
Raw milk licensing has allowed Pennsylvania to capture a market that doesn't exist in states such as Michigan, which have banned raw milk sales.
Michigan's department of agriculture has said it banned raw milk sales because unpasteurized milk can serve as a vehicle for pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella. They point to cases of elementary school field trips to dairy farms where some kids became ill after being given raw milk and cookies as a treat.
But Pennsylvania has stood by its licensing procedures, saying that milk sold from licensed dairies is safe. It requires the milk to be tested for bacteria, growth inhibitors and antibiotics twice a month and annual inspections of the facilities and annual testing of the herd's health.
Sanitized before and after
All the milking equipment at the Stumps is automatically sanitized before each milking and immediately after.
The Stumps don't breed their stock with cattle from the outside, so it's a "closed herd." Also, they grow all the feed for their cows on their 1,600 acres of farmland.
"They know the milk they're getting here is from the cows that live here," Glendora Stump said of her customers.
Now more than ever, Snyder said, that's what customers are looking for.
But it's the growing organic and natural foods movement that has led to rising raw milk sales statewide, Snyder said.
Natural foods advocates say that pasteurization kills the beneficial bacteria in the milk along with the bad as well as enzymes that aid digestion. Often, Stump said, people who are lactose intolerant are able to drink raw milk.
And, they say homogenization -- the process of breaking down the fat molecules to keep the cream from rising to the top -- destroys the beneficial fats that are found in raw milk.
Interest captivated
"When people read about it and they find out what really takes place in the commercial dairy industry, that will captivate their interest," said Willa Lefever, who manages Sonnewald Natural Foods near Stoverstown, which started selling raw milk from a Millersburg farmer four months ago. "And when they taste it they forget all about that, and then they're captivated by the flavor."
Angela Treherne drives from Stewartstown three days a week to pick up the Stumps' milk for her family. She's an organic gardener who raises her own chickens on organic feed, and after doing some reading figured raw milk was another healthy habit for her three kids.
But, she also is a believer in the taste.
"You don't get that aftertaste with this milk as you do with the stuff at the regular store," she said.
For those still worried about the fat content, Stump just tells customers to skim off half the cream, and they have 2 percent milk, skim it all off and they have nonfat milk.
But most just shake the bottle, she said, distributing the cream before they drink it because they yearn for that rich taste.
Why they started
The Stumps got into raw milk sales nearly four decades ago because government-capped milk prices were low, and they wanted to be able to set their own. They sell their raw milk for $2.70 a gallon, compared to $3.22 for a gallon of homogenized, pasteurized milk.
Snyder gets calls regularly from dairy operators interested in entering into the raw milk business as a way to improve profits and stay on their farms.
"It's in part a niche marketing strategy," he said. "It's also a reflection in a trend in society for consumers to be looking at byproducts that they feel will enhance their health in some way and to be able to know what farm the animals are coming from."
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