When Is Skim Milk Not Skim Milk?

Well, when it's skim milk, at least as far as Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Adam Putnam and Florida law are concerned.

The Ocheesee Creamery, run by Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft, wants to market their skim milk as skim milk. They make it pretty much the way the name describes. They take whole milk and skim the cream off it. The cream contains most of the fat found in milk, which is why people trying to lower their fat intake choose it. Dairies often do this not just to create skim milk, but also to process the cream for sale as well, either as cream or churned into butter.

Skimming the cream also reduces the amount of vitamin A in the milk, since it's a compound found mostly in the cream and not in the rest of the milk. Florida law requires people who want to market skim milk as skim milk to inject vitamin A back into the milk after the skimming process has removed it. The Wesselhoefts say their customers don't want any additives in their skim milk, and so they don't put anything into it. Fine, says Florida, but you can't label that as skim milk. You have to label it “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk product, natural Milk Vitamins Removed.”

In other words, according to an actual state law and some soulless automata fueled by real taxpayer dollars, genuine skim milk that comes straight outta Bessie and gets the cream skimmed off has to be labeled as imitation skim milk.

A couple of years ago, some bureaucratic homunculus ordered the Wesselhoefts to stop selling their skim milk unless they changed the label to the above phrase. Since the majority of their customers are folks who are looking for natural foods, they figured they wouldn't sell too many bottles that way. Although the Ocheesee Creamery still skims the cream in order to sell it, they now have to pour the milk left behind down the drain. Last year, they decided to sue on First Amendment grounds, saying that the United States Constitution gives them the right to call skim milk by the name skim milk.

During oral presentations in court, the state agency's lawyer said that skim milk has to have vitamins re-inserted because people expect their whole milk and skim milk to have the same nutritional value. That seems a weak argument, as Floridians probably expect their state agencies to be run by people whose neurons can fire without jumper cables and they are presently being disappointed there as well. The judge in the case also appeared skeptical of the value of that position.

The lawyer said that the genuine skim milk was "literally imitating" the skim milk with the re-added vitamins, which is proof right there that there are some words you don't need to understand in order to be a lawyer.

P.S. -- If the suit is successful, I hereby allow the Ocheesee Creamery to use "Straight Outta Bessie" in their marketing free of charge.