“Dad! The…inspectors are here”

More than 140 dairy farms threatened with loss of milk market

by Charlie Calley
June 1984

TWICE yearly agents of the Connecticut Dairy Division are dispatched to all parts of New England to inspect farms that ship milk into the Nutmeg State. And so strictly do Connecticut’s 12 state dairy inspectors interpret the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, and so thoroughly do they police the region’s dairy barns, that their reputation preceeds them.

Even in the furthest reaches of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire no warning sends chills down the spine of a New England farmer like the words: “Dad! The Connecticut inspectors are here!”

“We’re not trying to be the bad guys,” says Paul Gottshelf, Connectlcut’s chief dairy inspector, about his agency’s reputation for strictness. “What we’re trying to do is protect the long-term interests of New England dairy farming.”

But, more than 140 New England dairy farmers who stand their cows on wood-floored stables aren’t quite sure they agree with Gottshelf’s idea of what is in the best interests of New England dairy farming. These farmers are prevented from shipping their milk into Connecticut because Connecticut, unlike the other New England states, bans milk from farms where the cows are milked on wooden floors.

The l40-odd farms, concentrated in Maine and Vermont with a few in New Hampshire, are members of the Agri-Mark milk marketing cooperative. For years, Agri-Mark and its predecessors have gone to great pains to keep wood-floor milk out of the Nutmeg State, but economic problems are making that harder and harder to continue. So, this Spring, Agri-Mark has been alerting its wooden floor members that at some indefinite time in the future, probably within two to three years, they will have to entertain a visit from the Connecticut inspectors. “We’ve been selling this (wooden floor) milk on local markets wherever possible,” said David Gill, Agri-Mark’s manager of Member Relations. “But it’s becoming harder all the time to segregate this milk. It puts a tremendous burden on our transportation system.”

“Tough far some farmers”

Gill says Agri-Mark has alerted its members who milk on wood floors that they will have to make the necessary changes to milk, their cows on cement. “There’s no definite time frame for the change,” he said. “No one is going to be shut off. It will be tough for some farmers to change to cement, but we don’t see any alternative.”

It is difficult to determine the exact number of Agri-Mark farms to be impacted by the new situation because even cement floored barns could be rejected by Connecticut if they have wood gutter crossovers or wood floored feed alleys. However, Agri-Mark has sent letters to 143 farms.

Many of the farms to be effected have the big post and beam barns built 100 to 200 years ago. They were designed for the cows to stand on a heavy plank floor on the barn’s middle level, with hay storage on the level above, and manure shoveled out through the cellar below.

“What’s wrong with a wood floor? It’s unsanitary,” said Paul Gottshelf. “It absorbs moisture, and bacteria and odors. Did you ever go into a food processing plant and see a wood floor? Well, that’s what a barn is: It’s a food processing plant.”

Gottshelf said farmers could continue to house their cows in wood floored stables and comply with the regulation by adding on a cement floored milking parlor to milk them in. Other alternatives might be to build a new cement floored barn, perhaps a free stall barn, or, in the case of the older multi-story barns, to pour a floor in the basement and move the cows down there. No solution will be cheap or easy, especially at a time of shrinking farm profits.

One of the farmers who has been alerted by Agri-Mark is Wayne Patenaude of East St. Johnsbury, Vt., who is a leader in several Vermont farm organizations. “We have plans to build a new stable on just one floor,” said Patenaude, who milks 35-40 Jerseys. “The cost of changing over would mean that we would have to add more cows to pay for the stable. Will it be worthwhile?”

Before changing over to cement, Patenaude said, he will wait to see what happens to the supply and demand for milk as a result of the federal dairy diversion program and the new national milk promotion effort. “Today there’s a milk surplus, so it’s a time when they can better enforce their regulations and tell us to either go to cement or stop shipping milk. That may change if the surplus disappears. These things tend to go in cycles.”

“Borrowed time”

Patenaude said he has known for 20 years that wood floors would eventually have to be changed to cement. “We’ve been living on borrowed time.”

On the other hand, Patenaude said, he and other farmers he knows aren’t convinced that changing to cement floors will do a thing to improve the quality of milk or the health of cows. “Most of us who have wood floors think the inspectors are wrong not to look at overall quality, because there are a lot of cement stables and free stalls where the cows are kept in some damn dirty conditions. But they’re on cement so it’s OK.”

This refusal to condemn wood floors is shared, to a certain extent, by the head dairy inspectors of Vermont and Massachusetts. “About 20 years ago, I did some inspections in northeastern Vermont,” remembers Donald George, chief of Vermont’s Dairy Division. “There were a lot of old barns and a lot of wooden floors back then. It was in the Winter and it was a Winter when there was a severe shortage of bedding, and I found the cleanest cows on wooden floors.

“But wood floors can be a real problem, too, unless the cows are well taken care of and lots of fresh bedding is used,” George cautions, “and wood can harbor mastitic bacteria. And then if you have to sterilize a barn because of brucellosis; you just can’t do it. Wood harbors bacteria and you can’t hose it down with a high pressure hose like with a cement floor.”

George said, “Connecticut has told us they interpret the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance to mean there can be no wood where cows are milked. We do, too, but we interpret the PMO to allow a debit on that farm’s inspection, unless there is a problem with that floor. If a barn has wooden floors or crossovers, we take off three points from the Interstate Milk Shippers score. But the farm can still get a 97, and that’s a real good score.

“If a floor is rotten or punky, I wouldn’t approve it,” he said. “And a lot of farmers don’t like the metal crossovers because the cows slip on them, and can get hurt.” He says a company in Bennington, Vt., is now selling a concrete crossover pad “that seems to work pretty well.”

In Boston, where David Sheldon of the Massachusetts Bureau of Dairying is in charge of inspecting milk shipped into the region’s biggest market, two points are taken off a farm’s IMS score for a wooden floor. “We’re not strictly enforcing the PMO against wood, unless that wood is broken or damaged,” Sheldon said. “Our laws are not against wood in every situation. It’s OK if it’s tight and clean and in good repair. We tell our producers they should have cement–we strongly recommend it–but we don’t insist.

“Most farms can stand having a wood floor and still be over 90 on the IMS score,” Sheldon said. If a farm falls below 90, then his bureau would increase the number of inspections and insist on such changes as moving the cows to cement for milking.

In Connecticut, where it has been against the law to milk cows on wood for nearly 20 years, the dairy division has a different attitude. “Back in the early ’60’s, Dr. Perry, then chief of the Connecticut Dairy Division issued an order to comply with the PMO, said Paul Gottshelf. “It is a requirement of the ordinance that we have cement where the cows are milked. And not just wooden floors are prohibited either, but cross-overs too — any wooden stanchions.”

No exceptions

Gottshelf said Connecticut won’t allow wood floors in a new barn or an old one. “You have to be consistent. If you say no wood floors in a new barn, then why should they be allowed in an old one?

“We work with the farmer who is not in compliance,” he said. “We give them time to correct the situation, if we can. Some farmers don’t want to make adjustments–maybe they’re getting along in years. We tell them it might be best to find alternate markets.”

Gottshelf said it would be improper for his office to take two or three points off a farm’s IMS score year-after-year because of a wooden floor. “Under the PMO, if you debit something twice, then you’re supposed to take corrective action.”

The prohibition of wood floors where cows are milked is clear, said Gottshelf. “All 48 contiguous states go by the PMO, but some states have dragged their feet. Low enforcement could hurt the farmer in the long run because the buyer might not want to buy the milk if it doesn’t meet all the requirements.”

Meanwhile, caught in the middle between the “foot draggers” and the “strict enforcers” are Agri-Mark and its 140 odd member farms with wooden dairy floors. “The cement floor requirement has nothing to do with Agri-Mark,” says Bob Stoddard, the cooperative’s manager of Field Services. “Agri-Mark is not opposed to wood floors, but Connecticut is. Years ago when Connecticut first accepted the U.S. regulations there were many wood floor dairies in Connecticut, but no more.”

Unfortunate

“It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it. To try to make changes in the federal regulation would be an awesome task. It’s the state that makes the decision about wooden floors and we have to comply.”

“We’re trying to get Connecticut to inspect some of the farms (with wooden floors),” said Stoddard, “but the individuals involved will have plenty of time to comply. If we can keep their milk in a local supply, we’ll do it as long as we can.”

“Connecticut has been looking at some Vermont farms that we haven’t looked at before,” said Gottshelf, “but most of them have been cement. Agri-Mark may have some new applications in.”

And, although it is now the Agri-Mark wooden floor farms that will soon be receiving visits from the Connecticut inspectors, it may not be long thereafter before farmers who ship to Cabot, and other milk handlers, find that they too will be required to milk their cows on cement floors. So don’t be surprised if on some dark day, when everything is going wrong, you look up from the dumping station to see your son round the corner with the alert: “Dad! The Connecticut inspectors are here!” ■