The smell of breakfast cooking wafts out of a farm in southern Michigan, as the family quietly prepares for a day of work. A truck door slams unexpectedly. Uniformed men have arrived on the homestead. They have only one objective: to make sure milk, butter, cream and other raw dairy products are dumped into the trash. Why? The farmers still haven’t been told.
This working farm sits down a long country road near Kalamazoo. It’s picturesque. You can rent it out for events. The farm was started by two hard-working sisters with a fitting name: Ashley and Sarah Armstrong. The sisters founded the Nourish homestead to practice regenerative farming. Its co-op has offered high quality, nutritious foods and pet feed to farmers and locals since they opened last year. Until May 28, that is, when the state raided the farm, seizing thousands of dollars in products the labels for which the state had already approved, with a check for licensed pet feed labels having already been cashed by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Neighboring farmers and nearby communities who are members of the Nourish co-op farm used to buy from them directly, and some also relied on that milk to feed their animals. The raw milk also feeds the animals at Nourish, a freedom recently taken away under no cited policy or law, and without option or compromise. Every option Nourish staff presented to prevent the total loss of product was denied, and the employees were told by the state to dump the raw milk.
The farmhands work hard to produce products with no added toxins or chemicals and ensure the highest nutritional yield from the feed. But they couldn’t even feed it to the pigs.
An owner of the farm told me they did everything by the books, previously applying for labels through MDARD and checking everything through their MDARD agent. Yet after receiving their approval for pet feed labels, things quickly turned sour.
On June 13, the state started its seizure of goods at Nourish by emptying the commercial fridges full of raw kefirs, yogurts, and other dairy products. MDARD employees watched as the farmers dumped their own hard work into dumpsters. A Nourish lawyer pressed the state for answers on what policy or law they had violated, but still hasn’t received an answer.
An MDARD spokeswoman told Enjoyer, “Nourish Cooperative was found to be in violation of numerous Michigan statutes and associated regulations,” though didn’t specify which ones.
According to Nourish, MDARD agents forced a second dumping of natural milks, butters, and creams on July 3. And don’t forget dump No. 3: a final 87 gallons of raw milk thrown in a dumpster at the end of July. While it’s hard to estimate the exact profit loss, on the second dump alone they were forced to lose over 800 containers of butter.
During one of the raids, a Nourish farmer asked the MDARD representative who was overseeing the dumping, “Does this not hurt you at all? Seeing this all go in the trash?” In response, the farmers were instructed to take off product lids to ensure nothing was salvageable. The MDARD representatives on the scene said that they were not allowed to do any of the dumping, forcing Nourish farmers to destroy their own hard work.
While reasonable people may disagree on what is nourishing, not being able to decide how to use your livestock’s own milk is a loss of personal liberty, plain and simple. My grandpa grew up drinking milk from the cow he tended to on his farm, and I asked him recently if he ever got sick, “Not once” he said.
A shipping and receiving employee and part-owner at Nourish said that “the biggest worry now for them is how to be there for the many nearby farmers that relied on their milk to feed their animals.” While MDARD promotes artisan cheeses and ice cream producers, its actions behind barn doors attest to a different attitude toward dairy farmers.
On the artfully titled, “What’s the Scoop on Raw Milk in Michigan?” section of MDARD’s website, the core of the argument to ban human consumption of raw milk stems from a 2005 E. Coli outbreak in Washington State. Outbreaks like which usually stem from large-scale dairy farms, not small operations. Now E. Coli, salmonella, and listeria are no joke. Personally I’ve had E. Coli, but I’ll leave the details for another time.
When asked about these events at Nourish, MDARD stated, “Due to potential animal health concerns, pet food products, which were labeled ‘not for human consumption’ remained under seizure, including those containing raw milk. With limited exception, raw dairy products are completely prohibited from sale in the state of Michigan.”
In Michigan, cowshares are the only option for those looking to buy raw milk legally, and the tightly run operations that work to allow access throughout the state have mandated protocols and tests to ensure the safety of their product. You can buy raw milk for pet feed on Amazon in Michigan, for goodness sake.
This isn’t the first time MDARD has overstepped its bounds. In 2016, during a state inspection at Hill High Dairy in Standish, agents seized raw dairy products from the cowshare property. According to owner Joe Golimbieski, the agency had no policy infringement to cite. Luckily, one of its members, also a member of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, stepped in.
Following a slew of legal actions, the member, Mike Lobsinger, filed suit against MDARD for violating due-process rights to his own raw milk as a herdshare member. In 2016, a judge ruled that Hill High and its members were not in contempt of violating any injunction, nor had they been found guilty of any violations prior. This led to precedent that herdshare owners have rights to their own product.
I asked the owner of Hill High about the 2016 raid and if they had shared with him any law or policy that he was breaking before the seizure occurred. He said, “They never do.”
The Armstrong sisters have set out to provide healthy options that sustain the ecosystem they care for, but for now they are left twiddling their thumbs. They’ll be waiting for an answer from MDARD until the cows come home.
Devinn Dakohta is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer. Follow her on Instagram @Devinn.Dakohta and X @DevinnDakohta.
