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NCIMS Collaborates on Grade A Milk Safety

Posted on by Alan Bjerga

By Miquela Hanselman, Regulatory Affairs Manager, NMPF

The 2023 National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) was held in Indianapolis from April 3 to 7. The gathering once again highlighted the successful collaboration between the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)/Food and Drug Administration (FDA), state regulators, and dairy industry representatives in an ongoing effort to promote and protect a safe supply of Grade A milk and milk products.

Since it began in 1950, the conference serves as a model program of stakeholder cooperation. It brings together all affected parties to develop and maintain an effective and efficient system of regulating the interstate shipment of milk and milk products to ensure the safest milk supply possible.

The conference is held biannually to update the Grade A Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO). The PMO, of course, regulates the interstate shipment of milk and milk products, outlining the standards for Grade A raw milk for pasteurization, ultra-pasteurization, aseptic processing and packaging, retort processed after packaging or fermented high-acid, shelf-stable processing, and packaging. The PMO affects every dairy farmer in the United States.

Prior to the NCIMS conference, proposals are submitted to update the PMO. Those proposals are then discussed and voted on at the conference by committees, councils, and finally state delegates. From there, FDA has the choice to concur or nonconcur. The 2023 conference featured more than 400 attendees — the most in its history — after taking a four-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. FDA, state regulators, and industry representatives submitted 72 proposals for the conference. Those proposals touched on everything from water testing to the addition of kefir to determining how to handle yogurt parfaits. Below is an overview of three proposals NMPF believes are significant for dairy farmers:

Proposal 207, submitted by the National Milk Producers Federation, would require a 48-hour notice prior to on-farm inspection. Reasons for this include the risks to human health following the COVID-19 pandemic, the farm’s biosecurity, and overall personnel safety. The proposal was amended at the conference and passed through the delegates to be assigned to a standing or ad-hoc committee to review specific sections of the PMO that reference on-farm biosecurity. Summary thoughts: This is an important first step in recognizing the importance of biosecurity measures on dairy farms and will hopefully lead to further discussion of inspection notices.

Proposal 218, submitted by the Methods for Making Sanitation Ratings committee, backed eliminating the evaluation of a milking time inspection program from the calculation of enforcement ratings for dairy farms. This proposal did not make any changes or expectations of milk time inspections in Sections 5 or 6 of the PMO. The justification for the removal of the milking time inspection program was that it wasn’t being done, giving dairy farms an automatic credit of 5 points. The proposal passed as amended through the delegates to evenly redistribute the weight of those 5 points among the remaining items evaluated when calculating the enforcement rating score for dairy farms. Summary thoughts: NMPF is concerned about the unintended consequences of the reallocation.

Proposal 301, submitted by the National Milk Producers Federation, provided a definition of equivalence for the USPHS/FDA responsibility to determine whether a foreign country’s regulatory program and government oversight of that program has an equivalent effect on the safety of the regulated milk or milk product. The term “equivalence” is important for international trade; unfortunately, the PMO has long lacked a definition. This proposal passed through the delegates as amended to include a definition more like that of the World Trade Organization. Defining equivalence provides clarity for foreign countries wishing to participate in the PMO. Summary thoughts: This proposal sends an important message to FDA on the importance of transparency when analyzing equivalence for foreign countries.

Future plans

For the 40 proposals that the state delegates passed, FDA will choose to concur or not concur. From there, a new edition of the PMO will be made available. The every-other-year conference will be held in Minneapolis in 2025.

This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on April 17, 2023.

CWT Assists with 229,000 Pounds of Dairy Product Export Sales

Posted on by Khadija Gibson-White

ARLINGTON, VA – Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) member cooperatives accepted four offers of export assistance from CWT that helped them capture sales contracts for 229,000 pounds (104 MT) of cream cheese. The product is going to customers in Asia and will be delivered from April through June 2023.

CWT-assisted member cooperative year-to-date export sales total 13.0 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 550,000 pounds of butter (82% milkfat), 2,000 pounds of anhydrous milkfat, 17.9 million pounds of whole milk powder and 2.7 million pounds of cream cheese. The products are going to 18 countries in five regions. These sales are the equivalent of 284.3 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.

Assisting CWT members through the Export Assistance program positively affects all U.S. dairy farmers and cooperatives by fostering the competitiveness of US dairy products in the global marketplace and helping member cooperatives gain and maintain world market share for U.S dairy products. As a result, the program has helped significantly expand the total demand for U.S. dairy products and the demand for U.S. farm milk that produces those products.

The amounts of dairy products and related milk volumes reflect current contracts for delivery, not completed export volumes. CWT pays export assistance to the bidders only when export and delivery of the product is verified by required documentation.

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The Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) Export Assistance program is funded by voluntary contributions from dairy cooperatives and individual dairy farmers. The money raised by their investment is being used to strengthen and stabilize the dairy farmers’ milk prices and margins.

CWT Assists with Over 1 Million Pounds of Dairy Product Export Sales

Posted on by Khadija Gibson-White

ARLINGTON, VA – Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) member cooperatives accepted eight offers of export assistance from CWT that helped them capture sales contracts for 908,000 pounds (412 MT) of American-type cheese, 2,000 pounds (1 MT) of anhydrous milkfat and 132,000 pounds (60 MT) of whole milk powder. The product is going to customers in Asia, the Caribbean and Oceania, and will be delivered from April through October 2023.

CWT-assisted member cooperative year-to-date export sales total 13.5 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 550,000 pounds of butter (82% milkfat), 2,000 pounds of anhydrous milkfat, 17.9 million pounds of whole milk powder and 2.5 million pounds of cream cheese. The products are going to 18 countries in five regions. These sales are the equivalent of 287.7 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.

Assisting CWT members through the Export Assistance program positively affects all U.S. dairy farmers and cooperatives by fostering the competitiveness of US dairy products in the global marketplace and helping member cooperatives gain and maintain world market share for U.S dairy products. As a result, the program has helped significantly expand the total demand for U.S. dairy products and the demand for U.S. farm milk that produces those products.

The amounts of dairy products and related milk volumes reflect current contracts for delivery, not completed export volumes. CWT pays export assistance to the bidders only when export and delivery of the product is verified by required documentation.

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The Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) Export Assistance program is funded by voluntary contributions from dairy cooperatives and individual dairy farmers. The money raised by their investment is being used to strengthen and stabilize the dairy farmers’ milk prices and margins.

Need Peanut “Butter”? Got “Milk” of Magnesia? We’re Fine with That

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

Of all the misinformation the plant-based sector has aimed at dairy over the decades, one of the most aggravating has been the idea that because dairy farmers want nut-juice manufacturers to stop pretending their products are equal to theirs, they must somehow also oppose terms like peanut butter, Cream of Wheat, and other common products that have dairy-associated words in them.

They do this to both to obscure our real point – that their mimicking of dairy’s properties and use of dairy terms to sell nutritionally inferior imitations creates a real public health issue – and to try to make our arguments seem silly. But the problem is, that’s never been our position – it’s just another “plant”-ed lie. We’ve even specifically rebutted the point, in the Citizen Petition we sent FDA in 2019. So once more, with feeling, here’s the difference between our position on terms like “peanut butter” vs. plant-based dairy alternatives.

It all comes down to:

21 U.S. Code § 343 – Misbranded food

Plant-based fake-dairy products are misbranded. According to FDA regulations, a food shall be deemed to be misbranded … “If it purports to be or is represented as a food for which a definition and standard of identity has been prescribed by regulations.”

The italicized part is the important part. (That’s why we italicized it.) The main principle behind the concept of misbranding is “don’t pretend to be something you’re not,” and that’s the difference between plant-based imitators and common foods that have long used dairy terms without pretending to be in the same food category.

Cream of Wheat is a wholesome breakfast food, but no one’s urging you to pour it in your coffee. Coconut-milk-in-a-carton is problematic (we’ll explain why), but coconut-milk-in-a-can isn’t being sold as a beverage.

Nut butters are spreads, but they don’t substitute for butter in baking — and if you decide to slather body butter on your toast because you thought it’s dairy flavored with … then you’re just an awful human being, and you deserve to vomit. By the same token, Milk of Magnesia isn’t pushing to worm its way into the federal school lunch program, even if the occasional school lunch may make some students wish that were so.

The common thread is that none of these items are trying to masquerade as dairy products. They aren’t promoting marketplace confusion, and they aren’t implying nutrient content they don’t provide.

Contrast that with the plant-based imposters. They’re sold in gallon jugs, cartons and tubs. Even though most don’t require refrigeration because they’re not fresh, they try to fool consumers by paying grocery stores to put their products in the dairy case. They add artificial colorings to make them look like the dairy products they mimic, and they market themselves as being able to do whatever true dairy milk, butter, cheese, or yogurt can do – with the implication that if they can do the same things, they must be equivalent, which in nutrition, they clearly are not.

That’s misleading, as consumer research shows. That’s misbranding, as the FDA defines the term. And that’s what we oppose, as we continue our fight for labeling transparency.

This charade’s been going on for decades. As then-WhiteWave CEO Steven Demos said in 2001 of how soy beverage came to be a dairy imitator: “We also had to figure out how to get this product category to market. Dairy milk is a staple food that we consider a fundamental part of the scenery in a supermarket. Why not position fresh soymilk to be as close as possible?”

That attitude is all about market position – but not market integrity. But integrity has never been the plant-based sector’s strong suit. We’re hoping that our campaign to add comments to FDA’s draft guidance on plant-based beverage labeling will encourage the agency to start enforcing its own rules, just as we’re supporting the DAIRY PRIDE Act as a congressional solution.

We’d encourage you to use the materials we provide as you compose your letter to FDA. Write it while you’re enjoying a peanut butter sandwich and cooking a coconut-milk-based curry. Maybe treat yourself to some chocolates for dessert (the cocoa butter in them must be 100 percent pure to meet FDA’s chocolate standard of identity, by the way).

Dairy is fine with that. We know who we are — and we know where the confusion always comes from. It’s time for it to end.

Application Deadline Approaching for National Dairy Leadership Scholarship

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Program’s April 14 application deadline for academic year 2023-2024 is quickly approaching.

Each year, NMPF awards scholarships to outstanding students enrolled in master’s or doctoral programs actively pursuing dairy-related fields of research of immediate interest to NMPF member cooperatives and the U.S. dairy industry.

Graduate students pursuing research of direct benefit to milk marketing cooperatives and dairy producers are encouraged to submit an application. Applicants do not need to be NMPF members to qualify). Scholarship recipients will be invited to present their research via webinar this summer. Top applicants are eligible to be awarded the Hintz Memorial Scholarship, created in 2005 in honor of the late Cass-Clay Creamery Board Chairman Murray Hintz, who was instrumental in establishing NMPF’s scholarship program.

Recommended fields of study include but are not limited to Agriculture Communications and Journalism, Animal Health, Animal and/or Human Nutrition, Bovine Genetics, Dairy Products Processing, Dairy Science, Economics, Environmental Science, Food Science, Food Safety, Herd Management, and Marketing and Price Analysis.

For an application or more information, please visit the NMPF websiteNMPF website or email scholarship@nmpf.org.

The scholarship program is funded through the National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Fund. If you would like to support the scholarship fund, please consider a donation here.

NMPF Brings Together YC Coordinators for Inaugural Training

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

NMPF hosted its first-ever training of Young Cooperators (YC) Program coordinators March 21-22, bringing together staff from nine member cooperatives to share ideas and experiences, build community and brainstorm ways to boost the impact of beginning farmer programs at the cooperative and national levels.

The two-day hybrid meeting, hosted by Land O’Lakes Inc. at its Arden Hills, MN headquarters, also included representatives from USDA, Dairy Girl Network and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.

The training was filled with robust discussion on a variety of topics including relationship building and recruitment, communications and outreach, sponsorships, event planning and facilitating feedback and measuring success.

Supporting effective and robust cooperative-level programs by providing training and assistance to staff serving as points of contact for beginning dairy farmers is a core objective of NMPF’s National YC Program, first established in 1950.

EPA Misses Mark with New PFAS Drinking Water Limits

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

New EPA drinking water limits issued March 14 are raising concerns at NMPF that they may be arbitrarily restrictive and not based on the best science available.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new limits, known as Maximum Contaminant Limits (MCLs), cover six PFAS chemicals, which environmental advocates say increase health risks. EPA set the limit for PFOA and PFOS, the focus of much of EPA’s attention on the issue, at 4 parts-per-trillion (PPT) individually. It’s using health hazard index to set limits for 4 other PFAS chemicals.

The limits are below international standards, including those set by the World Health Organization. As well as all state-imposed limits for PFAS ( per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in drinking water. Unlike the previous EPA Health Hazard Advisory, which originally set the advisable limit at 70ppt, these new proposed limits are enforceable regulations. The proposed limits will not apply to private well water.

The new limits, if finalized, will require thousands of drinking water utilities to spend significant amount of money to upgrade their water filtration systems to remove all detectable PFAS. Water in many areas of the country is already very expensive, and it will get even more expensive with this regulation. In addition to raising drinking water costs, the change also will increase food costs, as the food processing industry uses significant amounts of water to make food and to clean and sanitize food facilities.

NMPF also is concerned that the low limits on drinking water will impact potential limits in food, either in a regulation or in public perception. Thus far, FDA has declined to set a food limit and generally does not feel that trace levels of PFAS in human food are a human health concern, with rare exceptions.

While everyone should have an ample supply of clean water, the fact is many drinking water systems are contaminated with a variety of chemicals and it is economically impossible to get public drinking water to be 100% contaminant free. NMPF has cautioned EPA to be careful and follow the science on the regulation of all things PFAS for years.

The comment period is open until April 24. NMPF will once again file comments to EPA advising it to follow the science and be consistent with the global approach to regulating PFAS chemicals.

NMPF Strengthening Ties with USTR

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

A series of March meetings between NMPF staff and new U.S. Chief Agricultural Negotiator Doug McKalip is strengthening ties with the critical agency for U.S dairy exports, with NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern and others sharing industry priorities.

Officially confirmed by the Senate late last year, Amb. McKalip is U.S. agriculture’s top advocate at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and a critical ally to America’s dairy industry.  Mulhern sat down with Amb. McKalip over dinner to talk over dairy trade challenges and opportunities on March 1.

Two days later, Trade Policy Manager Tony Rice joined the U.S. Agricultural Coalition for World Trade Organization (WTO) Reform in a meeting with Ambassador McKalip to discuss dairy priorities in the context of the WTO’s Ministerial Conference taking place early next year. Finally, those conversations were followed by an in-depth, policy-focused dialogue with NMPF trade policy leaders Jaime Castaneda and Shawna Morris on March 9.

NMPF also worked with congressional allies to support their preparations for questioning U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai during trade oversight hearings held by the Senate Finance Committee on March 23 and the House Ways and Means Committee on March 24, pressing Amb. Tai to pursue market-liberalizing opportunities for U.S. agriculture and removal of nontariff barriers to dairy exports, including the EU’s aggressive campaign to monopolize common cheese names.

DMC Margin Posts Another Sizeable Drop in February

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program will pay $3.31/cwt for $9.50/cwt coverage in February, based on a margin of $6.19/cwt that month. This was $4.70/cwt less than the margin last November. A milk price drop of $1.50/cwt from a month earlier and a $0.25/cwt rise in the DMC feed cost formula combined to lower the February margin by $1.75/cwt from its level in January.

Available forecasts currently indicate that the monthly DMC margins are close to bottoming out for the year, at around $6.00/cwt in a month or two, followed by a slow rise that will not likely top $9.50/cwt until the fourth quarter. This year will return many times the cost of this very affordable means of managing margin risk.

DAIRY PRIDE Momentum Builds

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

House introduction of the DAIRY PRIDE Act on March 8 intensified mobilization among dairy and its allies as FDA’s proposed guidance on the proper labeling of plant-based beverages brings new momentum for NMPF’s efforts at ensuring marketplace integrity.

The Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk, and Cheese To Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act” aka DAIRY PRIDE, requires FDA to enforce its standards of identity and would supersede the inadequate solution it offered in February, in which plant-based beverages could call themselves “milk” as long as they clearly state their nutritional differences with real dairy.

A bipartisan group of six House members introduced DAIRY PRIDE, led by Reps. John Joyce, R-PA, and Ann Kuster, D-NH. NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern applauded the members – who also included Reps. Mike Simpson, R-ID, Joe Courtney, D-CT, Derrick Van Orden, R-WI, and Angie Craig, D-MN. Now that FDA has made clear it won’t enforce dairy standards of identity of its own volution, “DAIRY PRIDE is necessary for FDA to fulfill its own responsibilities,” Mulhern said.

House introduction followed February’s Senate DAIRY PRIDE introduction led by Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-WI; Jim Risch, R-ID; Peter Welch, D-VT and Susan Collins, R-ME. Baldwin explained during her guest spot on NMPF’s “Dairy Defined” podcast that the DAIRY PRIDE could pass Congress this year via one of several vehicles, including the farm bill due this year.

“Many of the folks that I’m joining forces with are going to have significant input as we draft a new farm bill, which is something that I expect to get completed this calendar year. So that’s certainly one area that we can look towards,” she said. “We also have funding bills for the Food and Drug Administration, and that would certainly be another opportunity to look at this type of legislation.”

Meanwhile, NMPF is leading grass-roots advocacy on labeling, with a call-to-action organized around the FDA guidance. FDA is accepting comments on its draft guidance until April 24. To participate in NMPF’s call to action, click here.

U.S. Cheese Producers Win Major Victory with Gruyere Ruling

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

U.S. cheese producers won a significant victory March 3 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that “gruyere” is a common name for a variety of cheese, and not a designation of geographic origin.

The win came after intense efforts by the NMPF trade policy team, working with the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) and the Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN) to secure the key legal victory against French and Swiss groups seeking to appropriate the name “gruyere” in the U.S. market. The ruling means that U.S. gruyere producers can continue to market and sell gruyere in the United States. It also sets an excellent precedent that helps ensure common food names will be protected domestically against EU efforts to erect nontariff trade barriers by appropriating them for their exclusive use.

Capturing the momentum from the Court of Appeals’ ruling, the trade policy team, who also staff CCFN, will continue to work alongside USDEC to secure firm and clear commitments assuring the future use of common cheese names at risk of EU confiscation. CCFN release a video in March explaining the organization’s work and challenges; learn more about CCFN’s work by watching it here.

FARM Animal Care 5.0 Advances at Board Meeting

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

In addition to endorsing a path forward on Federal Milk Marketing Order modernization, NMPF’s Board of Directors also voted to approve a package of updates to Version 5 of the FARM Program’s Animal Care standards.

The board on March 9 endorsed the overall package developed by the FARM program’s committee structure, including its Animal Care Task Force and the NMPF Animal Health and Well-Being Committee. It withdrew for further consideration one program proposal updating provisions to include additional guidance on broken tail scoring. The board will revisit that proposal, which would update the scoring approach for the existing version 4 benchmark about broken tails in lactating cows, at NMPF’s June Board meeting.

The goal of FARM and NMPF, which administers the program, is to implement the overall Version 5 Animal Care standards July 1, 2024. An industry-wide Town Hall about the Animal Care standards will be held April 6. Registration for the Town Hall is here.

The FARM Program also shared progress updates for its Environmental Stewardship and Workforce Development program areas at the March meeting.