By SHERRY BUNTING  /  Special for Farmshine

WASHINGTON – After nearly 10 years of effort, it took less than 10 minutes for the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee to approve the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act after finally marking it up for the first time for a floor vote.

However, the approval of S. 222 by the Senate Ag Committee Tuesday afternoon, June 3, came with a twist. It differs from the House version, H.R. 649, which was approved in February by the House Education and Workforce Committee but has not yet been scheduled for a floor vote either.

The House bill allows non-dairy alternatives for children who bring a note from a physician, parent, or legal guardian. The Senate bill would allow schools to simply offer non-dairy look-alikes – as long as they meet certain requirements.

Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), and John Kennedy (R-La.) had introduced a Senate Bill called the Freedom in School Cafeterias Act on April 2, just hours after the April 1 full Senate committee hearing on the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act had drawn high praise and support from members of the Ag Committee.

Sens. Booker and Fetterman sit on the Senate Ag Committee and offered an amendment that melds a slightly amended version of their bill into the whole milk bill before the committee vote.

It allows schools to offer non-dairy, plant-based alternatives, if they so choose. This amendment stood, along with an amendment from Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to require school food service personnel to do annual food allergy training.

S. 222, with these two amendments and without two of the provisions in the House version, passed out of committee Tuesday on a unanimous consent voice vote.

So what, specifically, is different about the House and Senate versions of Whole Milk for Healthy Kids?

The House version (H.R. 649) states that schools participating in the school lunch program “may offer students flavored and unflavored, organic or non-organic whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free fluid milk and lactose-free fluid milk; and shall provide a substitute for fluid milk for students whose disability restricts their diet, on receipt of a written statement from a licensed physician, parent, or legal guardian that identifies the disability that restricts the student’s diet and that specifies the substitute for fluid milk.”

The Senate version (S. 222) states that schools participating in the school lunch program“may offer students flavored and unflavored, organic or nonorganic, whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free fluid milk and lactose free fluid milk, and nondairy beverages that are nutritionally equivalent to fluid milk and meet the nutritional standards established by the Secretary (which shall, among other requirements to be determined by the Secretary, include fortification of calcium, protein, vitamin A, and vitamin D to levels found in cow’s milk); and shall provide a substitute for fluid milk for students whose disability restricts their diet, on receipt of a written statement from a licensed physician, parent, or legal guardian that identifies the disability that restricts the student’s diet and that specifies the substitute for fluid milk.”

Both versions of the bill include the saturated fat language, exempting the saturated fat content in the offered-milk from being counted in the meal calculation.

The House bill also contains language in the form of amendments that were included in the Dec. 2023 successful floor passage.

One includes a prohibition on purchasing or offering milk produced by China state-owned enterprises for schools participating in the school lunch program. The other is a “limitation on authority,” whereby the Secretary (USDA) may not prohibit any school participating in the school lunch program from offering students the milk described (flavored and unflavored, organic and non-organic, whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free fluid milk and lactose-free milk and the provision of a substitute for students with a note.)

So here we are. The two bills were initially introduced with virtually identical language in the House by Representatives Glenn ‘G.T.’ Thompson (R-Pa.) and Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-Wash.) with 120 sponsors from 39 states, and in the Senate by Senators Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kan.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) with 16 cosponsors from 11 states. But it will now head to full votes on the House and Senate floors with language that differs in significant ways.

If or when the leadership in both chambers schedules these votes and the bills pass, how will these differences be sorted out in conference?

Nothing is ever simple when it comes to something as seemingly simple as allowing students, ages 5 through 19 to have access to nature’s simply nutritious and delicious whole milk at school — where they get two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year.

This, at a time when the overweight, obesity, and chronic illness crisis among children and youth is the subject of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission and is cited in numerous scientific publications as having grown steadily worse, with nearly half of U.S. children ages 2 through 19 affected.

Currently, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends switching from whole milk to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk after age 2. This governs USDA feeding programs administered by federal and state bureaucrats across the country.

Even the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) had to sheepishly admit late last year in their final meeting before issuing their Scientific Report that they just could not understand why the diets of the 5- to-19-year-old life-stage were nutritionally poorest of all life stages evaluated across all demographics. (Hmmmmm, I wonder why?)

The 2025-30 DGAC also acknowledged in their final meeting in Oct. 2024 that their recommended ‘dietary patterns’ were insufficient in nutrients of concern for growing children.

Did that change their Scientific Report? Nope. Not even when one committee member mentioned brain development and questioned why 2 years of age is the cutoff for whole milk. “USDA did not ask us to look at that question,” was the retort from the DGAC chair during the livestreamed Oct. 2024 final meeting.

What solutions did the DGAC have? Supplements. Novel food preparations that will be coming. And moving the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies to tray-pack prepared meal ensembles that put “the right assortment of plant proteins” together to provide what is needed.

Newsflash: Whole milk, and fuller fat cheeses, yogurt, and other dairy products, along with meat that the Dietary Guidelines also limits, deliver quite easily and tastily – all on their own – the complete complement of protein amino acids, 13 essential nutrients, including nutrients of public health concern and complex healthy fats that aid in nutrient absorption, among other benefits.

But hey, the DGAC rationalized that parents simply need to be educated about how to feed their kids!

Newsflash: The schools have these kids for more of their meals from ages 5 through 19 than the parents do! And the schools are controlled by these flawed Dietary Guidelines and the plethora of rigid rules, paperwork, documentation, software calculations, and auditing that is done – using countless hours of precious time and millions of dollars in compliance and enforcement that could be spent – SIMPLY FEEDING KIDS!

There is no word yet on when the House and Senate versions of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act will be scheduled for their respective floor votes.

In the meantime, the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Commission, under leadership from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins is doing a line-by-line review of the DGAC 2025-30 Scientific Report released under the previous administration last December.

The MAHA Commission is also working to come out with a national strategy in four areas identified in its recent initial report – the first and largest section of that report was devoted to Nutrition and Health.

School meals are in the crosshairs, and both Secretaries, as well as the MAHA initial report have had good things to say about whole milk.

We hope the ‘nondairy alternative’ language in the House bill (H.R. 649) wins out over what’s in the Senate bill (S. 222).

If the Senate bill language supersedes the House bill language in this area, it is possible that a school may choose to offer soy milk deemed by USDA to meet the substitution criteria and not offer whole milk – because remember, this language is about what schools are allowed to do, not mandates for what they must do.

If both are offered in schools, we know what will win the day in taste and total nutrition: REAL WHOLE DAIRY MILK.