Feds Sting Amish Farmer Selling Raw Milk Locally; Cite Interstate Commerce Violation

Byline: Stephen Dinan, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

It's a battle that's been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it's also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

It is the FDA's position that raw milk should never be consumed, said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal …

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Publication information: Article title: Feds Sting Amish Farmer Selling Raw Milk Locally; Cite Interstate Commerce Violation. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: April 29, 2011. Page number: A01. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

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