Court’s ‘Skim Milk’ Ruling a Win for Free Speech: New at Reason

“The leftover product is skim milk: milk that has had the fat removed through skimming.”

If those words—from a unanimous 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling earlier this week—sound like some sort of dicta—words in a court decision which represent a judge’s ideas or observations but aren’t part of the holding of the case and which, therefore, carry little legal weight—then it may surprise you to learn the question of whether all-natural skim milk is skim milk actually go to the heart of the case in question.

The case, Ocheesee Creamery v. Putnam, has its roots in 2012, when Florida’s state agriculture department ordered Ocheesee, a small creamery in the state’s panhandle, to stop selling its skim milk. The state claimed Ocheesee’s skim milk ran afoul of Florida’s standard of identity for skim milk, which requires creameries and dairies to add vitamin A to their skim milk.

In response, Ocheesee, which prides itself on its all-natural milks, proposed instead of introducing vitamin A additive to its milk to label its skim milk as “Pasteurized Skim Milk, No Vitamin A Added.” The state rejected that label. Food policy writer Baylen Linnekin explains the important food freedom victory that resulted this week from the subsequent lawsuit.

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