SHERRY BUNTING
Published in Farmshine (November 16, 2007 issue)
YORK, Pa. – The milk labeling issue has been simmering in Pennsylvania, and now it’s come to a full rolling boil. Controversial headlines moved quickly from local to national this week, calling attention to the reaction of Rutter’s Dairy, based here in York, to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s ban on “absence labeling” of milk sold in the Commonwealth.
An op-ed article written by company president Todd Rutter was published in the Harrisburg Patriot News on Nov. 9 and also in the York Daily Record on Nov. 11. In the article, Rutter writes: “The state’s untenable position has only emboldened Rutter’s in this regard, prompting us to plan a series of very public activities designed to educate the community and our customers about artificial growth hormones and our strong stance against their use in our milk production, not to mention our right to say so on our labels.
“In the next couple of weeks, we will be running full-page newspaper ads, handing out more than 100,000 information cards through Rutter’s Farm Stores, posting content at http://www.rutters.com, and, on Nov. 13, hand-delivering letters to every member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Of course, we’re also pursuing all legal avenues available to us to protect our right to provide consumer information.”
An editorial in the York Daily Record (also on Nov. 11), took things one step farther as it focused on a word Rutter used in the op-ed piece: “steroids.”
The title of the separate York Daily Record editorial was: “Got Steroids?” The editor’s commentary began with these chilling words:
“Steroids in athletes? Bad, cheating, dangerous, illegal. Steroids in milk cows? No problem. Shoot’em up, milk’em out, bottle it and ship it to a supermarket near you. As a sports fan, you might have at least some passing interest in whether your favorite ballplayer is juiced. As a milk drinker? Well, it’s none of your damned business whether your dairy cows were shot full of artificial growth hormones. Milk is milk is milk. Shut up and drink it before you leave the dinner table, young man.”
After these articles ran in York and Harrisburg, the New York Times, Associated Press, and USA Today picked up the news feed and by Monday (Nov. 12), the local issue had gone national.
In a wide-ranging phone interview Wednesday, company president Todd Rutter told Farmshine he did not choose the word “steroid” as a deliberate tactic and he acknowledged that maybe in retrospect it should have been edited out of the submission to the press, however, Rutter was resolute on the company’s intent to fight the new PDA labeling standards.
“It causes me great heartache to see our company accused of misleading consumers when we followed every regulation and policy and then had it approved and then a short time later the same department turns around and lists us as having a misleading label… that is my central issue for the debate right now,” he said.
Rutter acknowledged the company’s efforts are focused on raising public awareness. He and other company representatives visited every legislator at the Capitol on Tuesday (Nov. 13).
He also said he hoped to find common ground after what he called a “very productive” meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Dennis C Wolff and key staff members this week.
“This issue is not good for Pennsylvania as a whole,” said Rutter. “We’re a leader in food safety, we should be continuing to be progressive, not regressive.”
When asked why the word choice of “steroid” in his op-ed article to the regional newspapers, Rutter said, “what we did was, we researched hormones, a type of hormone is a steroid. I don’t pretend to be a chemical engineer. Our whole mission is that we’re promoting the right to tell people some products are different in how they are produced.”
For dairy farmers like Tom Krall of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the labels and the media stories are tough pills to swallow. He’s not alone among dairy farmers who are tired of seeing milk labels claiming “antibiotic free,” “pesticide free,” and “no artificial hormones” which imply other milk that is not so labeled is unsafe or inferior.
“They say things that just aren’t true, and consumers don’t know what is going on. At the same time the farmer is held hostage,” said Krall during a telephone interview Tuesday after he returned from a seminar in Chicago, Illinois, attended by 20 dairy farmers from across the country seeking to improve their communication and public speaking skills.
During the two-day training, these dairy farmers also had the opportunity to watch a panel of nine milk-purchasing consumers work through these murky milk-labeling issues.
“The consumer panel was very revealing,” said Krall about the process that he and the other dairy farmers watched unfold from behind the glass. All nine consumers were women from the nearby Chicago suburbs, eight were mothers of young children, and one was an organic milk drinker. By the end of the panel process, the group indicated they felt Illinois should do as Pennsylvania has done with regard to milk labeling.
Before they got to that point, the moderator exposed them gradually to labels containing emotional “absence labeling” claims. As this process unfolded, Krall reports the panelists became more and more disturbed and uneasy.
“At first they were willing to pay 25 cents more for a gallon of milk with such label claims, then the moderator had them up to 50 cents and then all the way up to $1 more they would pay,” Krall explained. “The moderator then informed the panel of the science behind the claims and you could visibly see the sigh of relief coming over them,” Krall related. “One of the consumers said, ‘I know exactly why they are saying these things… to suck me in…, and another panelist said ‘I’m glad I’m buying the cheaper stuff.”
“To me it seems there is this huge wall and it’s a thin wall built on lies,” said Krall. “All it would take is for farmers to start pushing on one side and consumers to start pulling on the other side, and the wall will come down. It needs to come down.”
It has been three weeks since the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) set forth its standards on “absence labeling,” notifying 16 dairies to change their labels after January 1, 2008.
“We’re continuing to look at this issue. We sent out the standards document to those dairies and we still stand by that,” said Chris Ryder, PDA press secretary during a phone interview on Wednesday. He noted that the department has received some calls from the legislature inquiring about the issue.
“We’ve been responding to their questions and look forward to working with them,” he said. “Rutter’s Dairy has also been in contact with us, and there is a dialogue there. We have also heard positive responses from producers and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau has supported the Department’s action.”
“If you go back and look at the standards document, the idea here is that to make a claim on a label and to have the consumer make a decision based on that label, the claim should at least be verifiable,” Ryder explained. “This did not start out as an rbST issue, but that has been what’s portrayed in the media. Antibiotic claims, pesticide claims, these are flat-out false because all milk is tested for these things. With rbST, the label may say it, but consumers have no way of knowing. It’s not verifiable. There’s no test.”
Legislative assistants for Senator Mike Brubaker (R-Lancaster County), chair of the agriculture and rural affairs committee and Senator Mike Waugh (R-York County), vice chair of the agriculture and rural affairs committee, indicate a level of interest from constituents in the days following the York media blitz and the distribution of consumer awareness cards at the Rutter’s Farm Stores.
Sen. Waugh’s office indicated they have received a number of emails about the issue, mainly automated click-and-send email letters posted at the Rutter’s Dairy website, along with a handful of personally composed emails.
According to his legislative assistant Erin Marsicano, Sen. Waugh met with Sen. Brubaker and Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff late Wednesday. Waugh is said to be requesting Senate hearings on this issue, although the outcome of this request was not available by press-time.
The bottom line here is the consumer viewpoint and finding the best way to clear up the confusion surrounding the issue of label claims.
No one understands this better than Mary Bach, a long-time consumer advocate from the Pittsburgh area, who was one of several consumer advocates invited by Secretary Wolff to participate in the label review advisory committee.
“These feel-good, emotional statements use buzz words that are just really misleading because they create fear in the consumer and create a safe versus unsafe dynamic in the marketplace,” Bach told Farmshine during a telephone interview Wednesday.
“For the young mother who sees these words and thinks, ‘I want to give my child the very, very best,’ there’s an element of fear and uncertainty,” she said. “This can also cause a bit of a stigma situation for low-income consumers. Very often there is a premium associated with these words, and that milk product may in fact be priced higher than the other milk.”
Bach serves as the chair of the AARP consumer issues task force, but her association as a lead volunteer on the “absence labeling” advisory committee was simply to tap her experience as a long-time consumer advocate. She has been outspoken on a wide variety of consumer issues for about 30 years and is also involved in the state’s advisory board for weights and measurements, which makes her quite familiar with food labels of all kinds in the marketplace.
“The Secretary invited me to sit on the advisory board, and I accepted with a great degree of delight,” she said. “I think the fact that there are no standards here for any of these claims and there is no test available for the “no hormone claim,” means people are being put in a position to buy on emotion versus actual fact. When we buy on emotion, we then are willing to make assumptions about a product that may in fact be false.”
Bach is not shy about her convictions. She was interviewed for 45 minutes by a national reporter, whose article: “Consumers won’t know what they are missing,” ran on Sunday, Nov. 11, on the op-ed page of the New York Times.
“He asked me about my background and specifically what I thought, and he didn’t use anything from that interview at all because he didn’t like what I had to say,” Bach confirmed. “At the beginning of our interview the reporter told me he thought the Secretary’s position was ‘preposterous.’ He already had a slant and was quick to dismiss me.”
The bottom line, said Bach, is that “there is simply no one who can demonstrate that the absence of rbST in the production of milk is beneficial directly to the health of someone, or that the inclusion of rbST as a tool in the production of milk is detrimental to someone. Absence labeling is a marketing tactic that is misleading to the consumer, so it comes down to a basic consumer protection issue,” the consumer advocate said.
She sees dairy farmers as being absolutely reliable and trustworthy. “I am constantly in awe of the American food situation,” said Bach. “We have absolutely fabulous growth production, manufacturing production, and offerings to consumers, and I see we take this for granted.”
Rutter confirmed that he has heard from other dairies and some of them are working on plans similar to his. “I have heard from more people than I ever knew existed in the past two weeks,” he said. “IDFA and the Pennsylvania Association of Milk Dealers are working in a collaborative effort on this. We are members of both associations.”
Rutter also confirmed that the price of their milk offered at their farm stores has not increased in relation to the “no artificial hormones” claim.
Why did they start the new label along with billboards and full-page advertising on October 1? “We just really felt that we were providing information to consumers that they desired and requested,” said Rutter. “We do not debate the science… the four words on the label are simply aimed at raising awareness of the potential of the issue, and let the consumer research it and make up their own minds. Raising awareness is what you do anytime you put something on a label.”
Back to last Sunday’s York Daily Record editorial: “Got Steroids.” Near the end, the editor concludes… “it’s (concern) not just from organic granola crunchers and free-range chicken farmers who lie awake nights worrying about frankenfoods – genetically modified crops and such. It’s regular suburban soccer moms who just don’t like the idea of giving their kids milk from cows pumped full of steroids. They should have a right to know how their milk was produced.
Interesting. I phoned a friend in York who actually is a soccer mom. She is a pre-school teacher and mother of four elementary-aged children (two of them play soccer). I wanted to know the scuttlebutt. “What’s going on down there?” I asked.
“No one’s really talking about this,” my friend confirmed. “It’s a non-issue. I picked up a jug of milk from Rutter’s on my way home from work, and never even realized it. I don’t really look at the labels, until I heard about this on the TV last night. With four kids drinking milk here, I’m more interested in the price. When it’s $3.88 a gallon now and it used to be $2.79, that’s what I want to know about. Is the price going to keep going up?”