The Investigative Farmer

(page 2 of 2)

The news wound up prominently featured in two local papers, prompting questions from neighbors and friends, since Beech Hill Farms had never before been in trouble with agriculture authorities.

"It was embarrassing and humiliating," says Sharts.

There was also the tangible penalty of a $300 fine, and the threat of a much larger fine for a second offense—at least $600, and possibly many times that (based on $600 per gallon or half gallon of contaminated product)—significant financial risk for an operation "that is barely break-even."

Adding insult to injury, Beech Hill Farms wound up on Minnesota law firm's blog, which advised: "If you are diagnosed with a Listeria infection (listeriosis), you should contact a lawyer at Pritzker Ruohonen immediately by calling toll-free…If you retain us, we will help you get the tests you need to link your listeriosis to Beech Hill Farms milk."

Testing the Inspection Process

Compounding Sharts' distress, the state refused in mid-April, when her farm's raw milk passed all state tests and was deemed safe to sell again to consumers, to post a new press release on its site announcing the change. Instead, the old release remains on the state's site indefinitely. "It's important for [the release] to stay on our site," says a spokesperson for the department. "What if someone has the [contaminated] milk in their freezer?"

What bothers Sharts more than anything else about the entire affair, though, is what she believes are questionable test readings by the state's laboratory, as well as careless testing methods by inspectors—that make her seriously doubt whether the milk was ever infected by the listeria bacterium.

She has demanded a meeting with Agriculture & Markets Dept. Commissioner Patrick Hooker, on behalf of herself and three other farmers whose raw milk has been identified over the last eight months as carrying pathogens. Given the severity of the assault on her farm's reputation, and the state's hard line in continuing to publicize her alleged transgression, Sharts would like to convince Hooker to reopen her case.

Her concerns include careless inspection procedures, which Sharts says include inspectors unnecessarily opening her bulk tank (exposing the milk to contamination) and failing to properly clean their boots and hands. When the inspectors came Apr. 13 to re-inspect her dairy, she decided to secretly video them from a camera in the milk house installed for security purposes. In one segment, an inspector can be seen opening the bulk tank and looking in, and in a second segment, an inspector is shown rolling up her pants after having been in the barnyard with chickens and other animals, thus possibly contaminating her hands, says Sharts.

The state spokesperson says the inspectors "follow standard Food & Drug Administration protocol for sampling and testing milk." That includes being allowed visually to inspect milk by lifting the tops of bulk tanks. But protocol may not include rolling up pants legs after coming into the milk house since, according to the spokesperson, "Gloves are not routinely worn when taking samples, instead hands are thoroughly washed."

Sharts also produces printouts showing wide discrepancies in test results on routine nonpathogen bacteria measurements between the state's lab and the lab of the company that purchases her farm's milk for pasteurization. She argues these discrepancies are the result of the state lab using outmoded manual measurement techniques, as opposed to the electronic measurement performed by her purchaser. The state says its manual measurement techniques are still acceptable.

Perhaps most tellingly, says Sharts, none of the individuals who consumed her supposedly contaminated milk became ill. Indeed, no one has become ill from any of the three other cases of contaminated raw milk discovered by the state since last December, the state spokesperson says—since results typically aren't publicized for at least a week after samples are taken, it can be assumed that at least some of the milk sold has been consumed.

Raw Milk Dairies Face "Scare Tactics"

According to Peter Kennedy, a lawyer who monitors legal issues of raw milk dairies for the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization that encourages raw milk consumption for its health benefits, New York's accusations against Sharts and other farmers over the last eight months represent "scare tactics" and coincide with a renewed FDA campaign against raw milk, launched Mar. 1 in the form of a press release.

Sharts was so disgusted by what happened that she returned her raw milk permit to the state in late April because "I didn't want to play Russian roulette with the food lab" and risk another listeria finding with a potentially much heftier fine.

But now she's reconsidering. It turns out demand for raw milk is so strong, and perhaps faith in the government's testing procedures so weak, that she has received half a dozen inquiries in just the last few weeks from consumers who saw the press release about listeria in her milk on the New York agriculture department site. "I'm a fighter," she says.

David Gumpert is a journalist who blogs reports regularly about the business of health and has written a number of books about small business and entrepreneurship, including Burn Your Business Plan! He writes his What Entrepreneurs Need to Know columnevery other week.