The Dairy Police

When this story first came out it gave me a certain amount of blackhearted amusement. I was a bit surprised to see it make national news. The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the state of Wisconsin’s crackdown on Irish butter:

We all know how unpopular President Trump has made himself in Mexico (see nearby). But Wisconsin state regulators seem determined to outdo him by making themselves as unpopular in Ireland by banning state grocery stores from selling one of the Emerald Isle’s most popular (and tasty) products: Kerrygold butter.

Never mind that Wisconsinites have been buying Kerrygold for years with no problems. Or that it remains legal in the 49 other states. Badger State bureaucrats, trying to protect the state dairy industry, are suddenly enforcing a 1970 law that requires all butter sold in the state to go through a complicated evaluation by a state panel. This is the same state that once banned margarine because it was a competitive threat to local dairies.

Kerrygold is a premium butter made from the milk of free-roaming, grass-fed cows. But as a result of the ban, Kerrygold-loving Wisconsinites have been forced to make butter runs across the state border, bringing back suitcases stuffed with the import. In Ireland, meanwhile, the ban is leading to headlines such as this in the Irish Mirror: “Shopkeepers in Wisconsin could face JAIL if they sell Kerrygold butter.”

Let me put that into a little perspective for you. Dairy farming and related businesses account for about 25% of Wisconsin’s economy, 10% of the jobs in the state, and a substantial chunk of labor income. Nearly 50% of the state’s land is devoted to dairy-farming.

Needless to say dairy farmers and particularly the dairy industry wield a lot of clout with the state legislature in Wisconsin. A couple of years back I took a cheesemaking class. The teacher of the class was a long-time professional cheesemaker and noted rather sadly that in Wisconsin (where the class was taught) it was easier to buy cocaine than it was to buy raw milk—preferred for cheesemaking. He claimed that there were industry narcs routinely driving up and down rural Wisconsin roads looking for people selling small quantities of raw milk for cheesemaking to turn them in to the state authorities.