EAST EARL, Pa. — U.S. fluid milk sales continue to show signs of stabilizing midway through the 2020-decade after the 2010-decade of deepest decline, which was prompted by the federal prohibition of whole and 2% milk in schools and daycares for kids over age 2.

According to USDA’s Estimated Total Packaged Fluid Milk Sales Report released Aug. 13, total fluid milk sales were up 0.5% in June vs. a year ago. Conventional milk sales rose 0.6% while organic slipped 1%.

For the first half of 2025, however, sales were 0.5% lower than the same period a year earlier when adjusted for Leap Day 2024, totaling 21.1 billion pounds. Conventional sales fell 1% while organic edged 0.7% higher.

Whole milk drives the category

Flavored whole milk is gaining traction. Conventional flavored whole surged nearly 20% in June and is up 6.5% year-to-date at 388 million pounds.

Reduced-fat (2%) milk sales fell 5.6% in June and 4.2% year-to-date. Low-fat (1%) milk was down 2% in June and 6.5% year-to-date.

Skim milk saw a surprise uptick in June, with unflavored sales up 12.7% and flavored skim up 14.4%. Still, both remain lower year-to-date, down 2.7% and 4.7% respectively. The June bounce likely reflects back-to-school packaging of shelf-stable ESL milks reported under the fat categories and not separately by pasteurization type — unless labeled lactose-free.

The “other fluid” category — including lactose-free options like fairlife, Lactaid, and specialty beverages — rose 4.7% in June and is up 20.1% so far this year to 1.15 billion pounds. Even so, it represents just 5.7% of total fluid sales, up from 4.5% a year ago.

These trends align with Circana’s 2025-26 Food and Beverage Outlook. Across the retail food and beverage sector, overall volume growth has been flat at just 0.4% through the first half of 2025. Consumers are cautious, budgets are tight, and definitions of “value” are shifting. Against that backdrop, milk’s relative 2024-25 stability and the growth in whole, flavored, and lactose-free milk, stands out.

Decade of deepest decline

The bigger story lies in the long-term shifts. USDA data show total fluid sales were declining at a relatively stable rate from 1975 through 2010, when modest per-capita (per-person) declines averaged 0.5% per year. (Fig. 1)

However, since 2010 — the year Congress banned whole milk in school meals through the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, followed by USDA’s 2012 “Smart Snacks” rules for competing beverages — per-capita fluid milk sales have plunged.

USDA data show that during the 35 years from 1975 to 2010, fluid milk consumption per-capita fell 20%. Then in the 12 years from 2011 to 2023, per-capita milk sales fell 28%, averaging a 2.2% decline annually. That’s more than four times the annual rate of decline seen before whole milk was banned in schools, daycares, and the WIC program for children over age 2.

Impact on children and teens

A 2021 USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) report demonstrates the impact between the decade-2000 when per-capita consumption fell 1% annually and the decade-2010 when it dropped 2.6% annually. (Fig. 2).

ERS examined this decline using 2003-18 ‘What we eat in America’ data collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), identifying changes over time in the amounts of fluid milk consumed by children, teenagers, and adults as well as the amounts by each age group as a beverage, poured onto cereal, or added to another beverage.

From 2003 to 2010, children’s daily milk intake was steady to rising, at 1.10 cup-equivalents per day, while teens averaged 0.74 and adults 0.36. But from 2010 to 2018 — the first eight years after whole and 2% milk were prohibited in schools and daycares — children’s intake dropped 33%, teens plunged nearly 60%, and adults dropped 44%. (Fig. 3)

Earlier studies were harbingers of what this trend would mean in terms of childhood health and nutrition. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dietary Data Brief published in 2010 analyzed the NHANES ‘What we eat in America’ data for 2005-06 and found milk intakes among children and teens were already under pressure from low-fat Dietary Guidelines in institutional feeding settings, but adult consumption had not declined at all.

Milk was shown in this report to contribute significantly to nutrient intake. Children and teens who reported drinking milk had substantially higher intakes of potassium, calcium, and vitamin D — nutrients of public health concern the study referred to as ‘shortfall’ nutrients. (Fig. 4)

In fact, the report found milk drinkers consumed three times more vitamin D and nearly 50% more calcium than non-milk drinkers, even when total calories were higher.

Where are our priorities?

The 2010 NIH report also highlighted disparities. Adolescents from higher-income households consumed significantly more milk than lower-income peers.

Yet Congress and USDA ignored these findings, when they passed and implemented the whole and 2% milk prohibition, effectively reducing access to nutrients for those very children federal programs were meant to help.

By removing whole and 2% milk choices, federal policy put children in schools and daycare on a low-fat fast-track that reduced milk consumption and nutrient intake overall. Taxpayer dollars have continued to fund the fat-free and low-fat milk that often ends up discarded in school cafeterias.

Looking ahead

The first-half 2025 data suggest fluid milk sales may finally be leveling off after years of steep total and per-capita declines, largely due to renewed consumer demand for whole milk and strength in flavored and lactose-free segments.

Still, the long shadow of federal dietary policy lingers amid hope for edits by the current administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission while the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act languishes in the Senate. Both are needed to change the future.

For more than a decade, children and teens have been locked into low-fat and fat-free milk and dairy options for two meals a day, five days a week, most of the year from ages 5 through 19, while parents and adults retain the freedom to choose whole milk and full fat dairy whenever they want.

What does it say about our priorities as a nation and as an industry when we’re content to take the low-fat fast-track even further, pushing half-pints of fat-free chocolate milk on kids in the McDonald’s Happy Meals, while mom and dad order McCafé drinks made with full-fat dairy?

(Yes, that was the answer from checkoff representatives when asked by farmers at a local meeting why they can’t get the fast-food restaurants that they partner with to serve whole milk in the kids’ meals. The representatives responded to say that, yes, they did get full-fat dairy in the beverage line through the McCafé drinks! Well, hooray for the adults, but kids are still missing out!)

A whole cavalcade of change could follow if the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act gets over the finish line and the Dietary Guidelines are amended to consider the importance of milkfat to childhood health and brain development, not to mention the taste that encourages actual consumption.

Farmers, meanwhile, continue to feel the consequences of lost demand tied to decisions that disregarded nutrition science and consumer preference. Dairy farmers often say they’ve lost a generation of milk drinkers, but it goes far deeper than that, and the time for the overdue course-correction is now.

Author’s note: If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to contact your two U.S. Senators. It’s time to stand with kids and dairy farmers and get this done. Tell Senator Chuck Schumer to stop stalling and move the committee-approved Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act (S.222) forward and on to the House and the President’s desk. Time’s a-wastin’, and so is the fat-free/low-fat school milk, and the tax dollars spent on it. Find who represents you at https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member; and contact the two who are holding up the bill: Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) via schumer.senate.gov or call 202-224-6542, fax 202-228-3027; Sen. Luján (D-N.M.) via lujan.senate.gov/contact or call 202-224-6621, fax 202-224-3370.