By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, May 10, 2024

EAST EARL, Pa. — Year-to-date Whole Milk sales for the first two months of 2024 are up a whopping 5% year-over-year (YOY) at 2.57 million pounds. Even when adjusted for Leap Year, the average daily increase is a substantial 3% surge, compared with the past several years of steady 1% increases YOY.

Flavored whole milk sales, year-to-date (YTD) are up a whopping18.6% YOY. Adjusted for Leap Year, the increase is a substantial 14%.

As the number one volume category representing more than one-third of the fluid milk category since 2020, the recent surge in whole milk sales has been enough to reverse the decline in total packaged fluid milk sales in four of the past five months.

USDA tallied 2023’s total packaged fluid milk sales down by a smaller margin of 1.5% for the year compared with previous years of decline; however, October and November sales were up 1% and 0.3% YOY for the first time since the months of the Covid shutdown when families ate at home. December’s total packaged fluid milk sales trailed year-earlier, but January and February 2024 have come back strong.

USDA estimates total fluid milk sales were up 2.4% and 2.5% YOY for January and February, respectively. When adjusted for Leap Year, the February increase is a respectable 0.8%. Similarly, when we adjust the YTD total of 7.325 million pounds in total fluid milk sales to reflect the extra consumption day in February, this is also 0.8% higher on an average daily basis vs. year ago.

This is good news! Let’s keep this upward trend MOOVING in fluid milk sales, led by surging whole milk sales — thanks to volunteers spreading the good word.

Now, if we could just get the United States Senate off the sidelines and into cosponsoring S. 1957 Whole Milk for Healthy Kids, we could really gain some ground — and America’s kids would be free to choose milk they love at school where they receive 2 meals a day, 5 days a week, 3/4 of the year. 

Thanks to the U.S. House of Representatives and the leadership of Congressman G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act (H.R. 1147) passed the House on December 13, 2023 by an overwhelming bipartisan majority 330 to 99. If the U.S. Senate doesn’t have the opportunity to vote it through by December 31, 2024, we must start all over again in the next legislative session 2025-26!

Check out the map above to see how S. 1957 remains stalled for the past 60 days at just 17 sponsors from 13 states. 

Where do your state’s U.S. Senators stand? Ask them! And think about their answers when going to the polls this fall. Elections have consequences. 

Also consider asking your state senators and representatives to follow Tennessee’s lead and get a whole milk bill passed in your state and signed by your Governor. 

Pennsylvania and New York State tried to be first, but leaders are afraid of USDA’s monetary penalties. Maybe the No. 8 and No. 5 milk producing states can be second and third in state whole milk bill passage.

Just think what would happen if more states passed bills that ALLOWED choice and sought creative language to let their schools choose to let children choose. Tennessee will make it available in bulk dispensers separate from the school lunch line. Pennsylvania sought to do it as a wholly in-state proposition. 

Meanwhile, DMI sent a press release on April 29 touting their “checkoff-led pilot in Cincinnati schools that offered lactose-free chocolate milk increased milk consumption…” Specifically, the pilot schools experienced a 16% increase in milk consumption and a 7% higher meal participation, according to DMI. 

(Of course, this lactose-free pilot was also fat-free per the USDA rules for milk at school built on the Dietary Guidelines that the dairy checkoff agreed to “advance” when the memorandum of understanding was signed between the USDA, National Dairy Council, GENYOUth and the NFL in 2010).

Remember, this reporter warned several years ago that checkoff and dairy industry leaders would wait until lactose-free shelf-stable milk was firmly entrenched in schools before pushing whole milk choice through. Senate Ag Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow is the main blockade this time around. She hails from the No. 6 milk producing state of Michigan, where the foundation fairlife plant is located, collecting milk from large producers in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

Wonder what consumption looks like when whole milk is offered as a choice. That’s right! A Grassroots PA Dairy Advisory Committee / 97 Milk trial in a school in northwestern Pennsylvania saw consumption grow 52% and waste decline 95%.

So, drink up Senators! Talk to your constituent Moms this Mother’s Day. Sales data and surveys both show what Moms think, and most don’t even realize the federal ban, the bait-and-switch their kids face at school where milk and dairy are concerned.

Then pour a tall cold glass of delicious, nutritious whole milk. It may just strengthen those political spines!

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