* Milk quality control on our farm:

Understandably, some concerned families have asked us what assurance we can give that the milk we sell on our farm is safe to consume. I'll admit, at first, such a question seems silly to me; after all, I've been drinking the stuff since I was a baby, and I haven't died yet! But when I think about it, I understand that it's a very legitimate concern. There's a lot of weird stuff out there that's super healthy, and a lot of stuff that looks like you can't live without but is actually killing you slowly. Raw dairy sits somewhere on that spectrum, but I think just exactly where is more a matter of your own opinion than a set reality, so I'm not going to try to set it in stone. But I hope I can thoroughly fill you in on what goes on here on this farm so you and your whole family will be able to drink our milk with confidence.

The Little Elk Organic Farm has been in the family since it was homesteaded over 125 years ago by my great-grandafather John Peter Dalquist. While I know very little of the early years of the farm, I do know my father and grandfather Dalquist where both dairymen, and obviously I followed in their footsteps. We have always (in my lifetime) sold Grade A milk. Grade A certification is a necessary qualification for milk that is to be commercially sold as class 1, which is for fluid milk; grade A is the highest quality, cleanest milk. Most milk in the Midwest is sold as class 3, which is primarily made into cheese, and grade B can also be sold into that market. That being said, we have always maintained our Grade A status, regardless of which class our milk is being marketed as. To keep that Grade A status, we are subject to an unscheduled state inspection twice a year to ensure proper cleanliness protocols are being observed on the farm and equipment is sanitary and up-to-date. They also check over structure integrity and make sure the water well is free from contamination. This is the first area of oversight our farm is subject to.

Above that, we sometimes have a federal inspection, which is basically to check up on what the state has found out about our farm. This one is a bit more stringent, but so far we've always passed without issue.

For quite a few years our dairy co-op has been required to have all farms pass a human and animal welfare inspection in order to market our milk where we want to. This has been a true headache, not so much because of following rules we don't already observe on our farms, but the problem of having to have ALL these farm protocols written down for review and criticism. In former years this was done through an organization called Validus, but we recently switched to the FARM program instead, which isn't quite as ridiculous. Most of the Validus rules were geared toward multi-thousand-cow conventional dairies with many employees, and none of the farms in my co-op fit that description. Not by a long shot! Anyway, this requires a whole bunch of paperwork and an occasional on-farm inspection from a third-party agency.

In the year 2005 our farm was certified Organic through MOSA Organic. Since then We have not been able to use any chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, or hormones on the farm (not that we did much before then either). To maintain our status as Certified Organic, we are subject to more extensive paperwork, and a yearly on-farm inspection. As mentioned before, we market our milk through a co-op made up of other small family farms, and currently our milk is primarily being shipped to Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, where it is made into cheese. Every time our milk is picked up from the farm (every three days) a sample is taken and sent to a lab where it is tested for various things, particularly antibiotics. As I said before, we are not allowed to use antibiotics anyway, and even in the conventional milk world, cows treated with antibiotics need to wait until the antibiotic has left their system and is no longer present in the milk before that cow's milk can be sold. These safeguards don't prevent antibiotic-resistant bacteria from entering the system, but I digress. . .

Other things tested at the lab include butterfat, protein, and other solids content, somatic cell count, milk urea nitrate, water content, and several bacteria counts known as PI, PLC or SPC, and LPC. PI (Preliminary Incubation count) tells us how much bacteria is present that can reproduce in a cold environment. This is primarily helpful to the farmer to help diagnose areas of contamination in the milking system. So if my PI is high, I know I need to check to make sure my water temperatures are hot enough for washing pipelines, make sure sanitation protocols are being followed, and that the milk is being cooled fast enough to prevent rapid bacterial growth. PLC (Plate Loop Count) or SPC (Standard Plate Count) measures the total number of aerobic bacteria in the milk. Similar to PI, this helps the farmer to know that there's bacterial contamination present and equipment and cow cleanlines needs to be examined. LPC (Lab Pasteurized Count) measures bacteria that are able to survive pasteurization, and this contamination is primarily caused by worn-out rubber parts or milkstone deposits in milking equipment or pipelines. As you can see, these tests are useful for the farmer to make sure good procedures are being followed and equipment is kept clean and up to date. All this being said, these tests are not checking for specific varieties of bacteria, such as E. Coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, or Lysteria, but they can indicate that any of them (or none of them) could be present in the milk. These however are not just for the use of the farmer, but for our milk buyer as well. Our milk price also reflects how we do with our milk quality. Our pricing logarithm has a system of bonuses for high quality and deductions for low quality that serves as a goad to keep us producing the highest quality of milk we possibly can.

I would like to direct you to a recent study done on the growth of these bacteria in raw milk, which I will summarize for you now. Scientists did a study where they introduced the aforementioned four strains of bacteria into refrigerated raw milk at high and medium levels and studied what happened for fourteen days. The samples with E. Coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter bacteria saw NO growth in 14 days. The Listeria samples showed some growth in the second week of incubation, but it was found that the risk of getting listeriosis is actually greater from consuming pasteurized milk than from raw milk. If you want to know the gritty details, you can follow this link to read the study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289249 See also www.realmilk.com/

So all this was to show you the oversight that my farm is under to help me produce milk that is safe and saleable. I would like you to consider the fact that my family consumes a great deal of our own milk every week and never in my lifetime has any of us, either my family growing up or my wife and children now, gotten sick such that we suspected that it may have come from the milk. I do my very best to keep my cows and equipment clean and up-to-date, and when there's spikes in my bacteria counts, I analyze my system to try to figure out what the cause could be.

I also want you to know that if ever I suspect that my milk may be unsafe for any reason, I will let you know so you can make your own informed decision about if you want to buy it or not. This is why I do my best to keep open communication between myself and our farm's customers. If you ever suspect that you may have gotten sick from milk you received from my farm, please, PLEASE, contact me so we can work together to figure this out and make it right! I know of farms that were trying to serve their communities in the same way as I do that got “turned in” when someone got sick, and their farm got shut down and their lives ruined. And all the other milk customers that had been happily buying their milk for years all of a sudden couldn't get it anymore. Communication is key! What we are doing here is technically legal per MN law, but we know very well that regulators are absolutely salivating at the thought of shutting down every small farm that dares to think and work outside the modern paradigm. We don't fit the modern “Get-big-or-get-out” way of thinking, and that means we're always under Big Brother's proverbial microscope. I'd better stop before I get any further down that rabbit trail. . .

Above all, I want you to realize that we are real people, we enjoy getting to know you, and we want you to be comfortable talking to us about whatever concerns you regarding the products we produce here on our farm. Rules can be “obeyed” to the letter, but if the man in charge of an operation is a scoundrel, you probably don't want to buy his products. It is my hope that you understand that we are people of integrity and truly do the best we know how to produce healthy, tasty, and safe food on our farm for us and you to enjoy. I hope I answered a good share of your questions, and provided more information that you didn't even know to ask. Thank you for supporting our little farm! Michael