Interstate Milk Shipper's List. Menu Oregon. Agency Main Content. Dairy license A dairy license is required for the following activities:. Producing milk on a Grade A dairy farm Marketing milk for producers as a milk marketing agent or handler Transporting milk in a milk tanker or transferring milk to a transfer or receiving station Processing milk to manufacture any fluid milk or dairy products, including the wholesale manufacture of frozen dairy desserts as defined in 21CFR Part Dairy operator license A dairy operator license is required for the following operators:.
Individuals who collect raw milk samples to be used for regulatory purposes Individuals responsible for the pasteurization of milk or dairy products. What kind of dairy operators have an exception from licensing?
A person owning no more than three dairy cows no more than two producing that have calved at least once or A person owning no more than nine sheep that have lactated at least once or A person owning no more than nine goats that have lactated at least once. The fluid milk from these animals may be sold for human or other consumption only if the milk is sold directly to the consumer at the premises where produced. Milking a few cows is challenging, monotonous work and very hard on family life.
In order to be profitable you must do most of the milking yourself and this takes place at breakfast time and dinner time. Since the typical small farm is a deeply committed family endeavor the obvious choice the farmer makes is to sell the cows to save his family. This leaves dozens of families without their raw milk.
Paying this amount would still be a drop in the bucket compared to our health care expenses before we discovered raw milk. Again, dozens of families are left without their raw milk supplier, and the producer has no money and still very little knowledge to purchase another healthy cow.
When people contact me for micro-dairy consulting, the first question I ask is why they are doing it. If money is the number one reason, I respond by saying then they should not get into it. If you are concerned with profit first and foremost, then when the going gets tough and it will and money is tight, you will make decisions that affect the quality of the raw milk. Cutting corners in a raw milk dairy always equates to lower quality milk: the obvious cuts are in vet care, proper minerals or supplements, pathogen testing, proper sanitation, chemicals in the correct dilutions, good quality feed for the cow and proper equipment.
When I decided to get milk cows, I spent a solid six months reading everything I could get my hands on and researching micro dairy production. I visited about six dairies, both micro dairies and conventional, and gleaned a lot of information from the farmers. I especially learned what they wished they had done differently in their barn set up so that as we were building our milking parlor we would have the benefit of their experience.
I studied and researched proper cleaning and chilling techniques for the milk. I talked with my vet about how to test the milk to see whether it was free of pathogens. I thought everybody researched the micro dairy operation this way before they went out and bought their first cow.
Yet who am I to judge, or so I thought. The raw milk community is small and very interconnected. Since we had a reputation in the community for milk that lasted two to three weeks, they decided to make the switch even though our milk was more expensive.
Individuals were often having to drive to the other dairy twice a week to get their milk because it would not last. They determined they would save the money in the long run because even though our milk cost more money, they would only have to make one trip per week. I heard the same complaints over and over, often about the same few farms. My first response was always to request they please inform the farmer of their complaint, as I would always want to know whether someone received some of our milk that was less than stellar.
The people who actually communicated their complaints were typically met with defensiveness. In the spring of I received a call early one Monday morning. It was a doctor who was desperate to get raw milk and wondered if I could help him.
He said his local farm had shut down that morning. This went on to be a very heartbreaking story of illness, and it was played out in the media for months. Apparently eighteen recovered completely but two young children are still suffering from serious illness. Apparently the farm was a muddy mess, with several species of animals mixed together, and not even any hot water for washing containers and equipment.
Our dinner conversations for the next few weeks revolved around the subject of some sort of support for raw milk producers in Oregon. It was all up to each individual to research on their own and learn the hard way, making expensive or dangerous mistakes. We get producers from all over our state and nearby states attending or calling to inquire about how we set this up. Obviously there is a huge need and desire for this in Oregon and across the country.
At our most recent training, we introduced the idea of common standards among raw milk producers and fifty producers present at the training supported this concept. With freedom comes responsibility. If raw milk producers want to maintain their freedom to produce and sell raw milk, then they must produce it responsibly. Opponents of this idea,in my experience, are often avid consumers and supporters of raw milk, but are not producers themselves. They often feel they are protecting producers by defending their right to produce raw milk with no common standards.
I find this to be a very narrow perspective and my experience shows why. In areas where raw milk is unregulated, it is of a very inconsistent quality. Listed farmers have shown evidence of farm and product safety, have in place a Risk Analysis and Management Plan RAMP and operate in an open and transparent manner. The Oregon Raw Milk Producers Association has collaborated with Tim Wightman, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation, to draft some basic or common practices for micro dairy producers in our state.
Producers have been supportive and eager to adopt these procedures in their barns. It is a road map to success in raw milk production, because in order to meet each standard the farmer must acquire some education or knowledge in that specific area, which in turn creates the opportunity for improvement of their product.
Good raw milk production begins with the purchase of healthy cows. The cows you purchase should be certified Johnes-free; goats should be certified free of caseious lymphandentis CL and caprine arthritis encephalitis CAE. The animals cows or goats should be certified free of Staph aureus, E. Your most likely source for healthy cows is a dairy farmer using pastured methods and following the ORMPA standards, and not a cow from a confinement herd or a sale barn.
While you might think of Oregon as a place with beautiful lush pastures, this is not the case for most of our micro dairies. Most have very little land, few of them practice managed grazing where cows are moved every day to new pasture , and most seriously, in the Pacific Northwest, we are plagued with mud during the rainy season.
Even though our climate is mild, we cannot keep our cows on pasture during this period; they need warm, dry shelter. Most micro dairy people in Oregon think their cows are on pasture during good weather. They have a paddock or pasture, and the cows are on the whole pasture rather than rotated in smaller paddocks—rotating cows takes time and money. So this big pasture is not managed properly, the grass is of poor quality, and the cows hang out in one area near the water or feed bins, typically in their own manure.
They might as well be confined. This is the reality and the norm. In Oregon, cows need to be in confinement during the three muddy months of the year, if the pastures are managed properly. Since the majority of dairies do not manage their pastures, the cows should be in confinement for an even longer period.
The grass is tall and lush when the cows go on it. Obviously raw milk consumers should seek out farms that do rotational grazing or at least encourage it in the farmer they get milk from. Most importantly, the cows should be managed so that they are kept clean and dry at all times.
Here are the guidelines we came up with to ensure that cows remain healthy in the typical Oregon micro dairy. Most of our micro dairy farmers think they do not need the services of a vet, but twice annual visits from the vet are an important investment. Under state law, raw milk can only be sold on the farm. Producers are allowed to have up to three cows, nine sheep and nine goats.
Anderson has two Brown Swiss cows. Anderson said she decided to sue after a state inspector visited her farm in , complaining about a raw milk price list on her website. The inspector told Anderson that constituted advertising. Anderson took it down but later received a cease-and-desist order from the department, she said, telling her to stop selling raw milk cheese.
She doesn't produce cheese. The case was picked up by the Institute for Justice , a public interest law firm headquartered in Virginia. The group has also filed two other lawsuits -- one against Florida's ban on front yard vegetable gardens and another against Minnesota's restrictions on small food producers -- as part of a nationwide "food freedom initiative.
The lead attorney in the case, Michael Bindas, said in a statement, "Christine is part of a nationwide movement of small-scale food producers and consumers who are tired of the government dictating what foods they can grow, sell and eat. Proponents of raw milk tend to be passionate about the product but health officials widely advise against it because of the risk of contamination.
In April , nearly 20 people were sickened in Oregon by unpasteurized milk produced at Foundation Farm near Wilsonville. Oregon Public Health officials confirmed that the milk was contaminated with E.
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