Government Forces Natural Skim Milk Sellers to Label Their Milk "Imitation"

It isn't real unless you add to it what government demands you add, says Florida Ag Department

Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as….skim milk? Government must act!

Government: we can't live without it, it is operating at peak efficiency without a penny to cut, and it's just the name we give for forcing tradesman to lie about their product.

A story out of Florida, reported by Chicago Tribune, involving those legal paladins of market freedom, the Institute for Justice and a case that has reached a judge after being filed last year, as reported here by Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

The Ocheesee Creamery in the Florida Panhandle produces all-natural skim milk from grass-fed cows with absolutely nothing added, yet the state says they have to call it "imitation."

And while they argue about it, the dairy is dumping hundreds of gallons of skim milk down the drain each week.

Creamery owners Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft were in federal court Wednesday as part of their nearly three-year-old battle with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, which argues that skim milk isn't skim milk unless vitamins are added to it.

But that goes against the all-natural philosophy at the creamery….

"Our customers want an all-natural product. If we call it imitation, they will not buy our product," Mary Lou Wesselhoeft said after the court hearing. "To me it's degrading and a slap in the face because it's pure, unadulterated skim milk."….

The Institute for Justice is suing the state on behalf of the couple.

From the report, the judge in the case seems, rightfully, skeptical of the government's officious and idiotic claims, and its demand, currently being enforced, that creamery just waste the milk rather than sell it without the "imitation" lie on the label.

When I was on the campaign trail with Ron Paul researching my 2012 book Ron Paul's Revolution, it often bemused outside observers how het up Paulites could get out of the right to drink and sell raw milk. These sorts of bringing to bear government force on the choices we can make in selling and consuming food seem minor or laughable to certain elites.

They aren't. They go to the heart of what it means to be free…or what it means to suffer from a state out of control in its reach, its grasp, and its cost.

Seriously, what kind of human in what kind of system could get up in the morning and go to work and enforce a law like this, harming someone's innocent and harmless livelihood, wasting a useful food, in order to make someone say something that's not true? And then take it to court and spend our money defending this outragous use of government time, money, and force?

The topic involved—it's just milk!—makes it seem less evil than it is. But it is evil.

Damon Root on the dairy lobby's bad influence on American law.