‘I am a big promoter of whole milk’

By SHERRY BUNTING  /  Special for Farmshine

ANNVILLE, Pa. – Imagine a crisp spring morning finishing up the milking chores and getting an extra pair of hands from – the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

That was the scene Monday, April 14, when USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins made the first stop in her full day in Pennsylvania at Talview Dairy near Annville. The Keystone State with the diversity and importance of agriculture and dairy was one she said was at the top of her list to visit in her first few months.

Farm owners Brent and Stacey Copenhaver got the heads up three days earlier from the “milkshake man”, Dave Smith, after a call from Mike Firestine, working with Pennsylvania’s own congressman — U.S. House Ag Committee Chairman GT Thompson — to set up farm tours for the Secretary before her participation with state ag leaders and lenders at a roundtable in Bird-in-Hand, Lancaster County, Pa. and other events.

All smiles as she stepped outside the milking center after 30 minutes inside with the Copenhaver family, she declared: “I milked some cows, and as you know, I am a big promoter of whole milk!”

She joined Rep. Thompson, Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA-9), U.S. Senator David McCormick (R-PA), various staff, several farm organization leaders, area farmers, and a bevy of media for a walk up to the freestall barn.

With the Talview  dairy herd as witnesses, the VIPs opened their whole milk bottles provided by Wayhar Farms of Bernville in neighboring Berks County to kick things off with a special milk toast led by Secretary Hollins to whole milk and the cows and dairy farmers across America who produce it.

Brent shared a bit about the farm, and Stacey, a high school ag teacher told the Secretary how alarming it is to see what teens are drinking, including energy drinks and soda.

“Can you believe this whole milk is not allowed in our schools?” Rep. Meuser observed.

“We’ve got a lot of changes to make,” Sec. Rollins replied.

“USDA and HHS are reviewing the Dietary Guidelines, which we are changing this year,” Sec. Rollins continued. “The guideline is fat- free or skim milk, so that’s why the schools don’t have the option of whole milk — because it’s not in the Dietary Guidelines! So we’re going to change that, and of course there is also the legislation that you guys are working on.”

Rep. Thompson, champion and prime sponsor of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, said legislation in 2010 tied the school meals, and other USDA food programs, directly to these Dietary Guidelines, “and it’s all based on bad science and really driven by these members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. We have provisions in the farm bill to make changes there. We want to put science back into it.”

In the meantime, it’s the whole milk bills — H.R. 649 and S. 222 — that will overturn the specific language from the 2010 legislation, where school milk choices were limited to fat-free and 1% low-fat.

Meuser also brought up the Dairy Pride Act: “Milk comes from animals not almonds and things of that nature. That’s nut juice.”

Lawmakers discussed how the lack of milk choice in schools and the lack of labeling integrity have impacted not just nutrition but also led to the steep loss of dairy farms over the past 15 years.

“We don’t just lose the dairy farms,” Rep. Thompson stressed. “We lose the businesses that support them. We lose the employees of those businesses, and then that starts to affect the grocery stores, the pharmacies, the roots of the community. Bad policy has a ripple effect. But despite all of that, dairy is still the number one commodity in Pennsylvania, where the number one industry is agriculture.”

Reminding everyone how important it is to get the whole milk deal done, Bernie Morrissey with the Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee said it was “a great day. Secretary Rollins just confirmed that without the whole milk option, the kids are losing out, and so are the dairy farmers.”

Berks County dairy farmer Nelson Troutman chimed in to say that most people don’t even realize whole milk is virtually 97% fat free. He brought four of his grandchildren to the event and made sure 97 Milk signs and materials were available in addition to what the Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association put out on the ‘milk table.’

Walking back to the milkhouse, Secretary Rollins engaged the national and state media.

“You are tracking this, so you know that we are making a lot of changes in Washington and going very quickly under President Trump’s leadership and vision,” she said.

Asked about the line-by-line review of the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines draft released last December, Rollins gave details.

“Secretary (Robert F.  Jr.) Kennedy and I have been in multiple discussion on this. We are both very committed to a process that is not driven by the lobby… but instead is driven by what is the healthiest food for our families, and it doesn’t have to be a 480-page Dietary Guidelines, which is what we were handed from the last Administration,” she said.

“Bobby (Kennedy) and I believe very strongly that what we do with these Dietary Guidelines is a very big first step toward making America healthy again,” Rollins added.

While noting the previous work will be acknowledged, she said the bottom line is: “This is not that complicated. It’s about good nutritious healthy food from this country’s farmers and ranchers that are the best in the world.

It’s about moving good nutritious food (through the multitude of food programs) by getting food closer to the people in a way that hopefully reverses what we’ve seen… the trend toward chronic disease, diabetes and other things that on the back side from a health care cost perspective is going to bankrupt our country.”

In a follow-up question, Sec. Rollins talked about how flexibility may play out for school nutrition programs, first in making whole milk choice available, but also in addressing the way schools are hamstrung from providing nutrient dense foods that contain saturated fat.

“1000 percent more flexibility is what we want,” she said, noting that within the first hour of being sworn in as the 33rd Agriculture Secretary, she sent a letter to all of the governors, Republican and Democrat.

“Our letter said that this is a new day at USDA, that we believe in the laboratories of democracy that our Founding Fathers envisioned under the Constitution that the government closest to the people is the government that’s most effective,” Rollins reflected. “No offense to all of my people at USDA, but why are we just deciding what food to get into schools, and how to feed kids that are nutritionally challenged.”

The Secretary’s challenge to governors is: “Bring us innovation; bring us ideas; tell us how you can better and more effectively get that good nutritious food into the schools in an efficient way.”

On April 10, she had nine governors from both parties on a Zoom conference. “We talked about what they’re already doing to innovate, and we talked about them getting us waivers, and we’ll meet them,” she said.