By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January 26, 2024 (Cosponsor data updated Feb. 21, 2024)

WASHINGTON — The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is now up to the Senate, where more cosponsors are definitely needed to push it past some barriers and get it to the floor for a successful vote.

Senate bill S. 1957 is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk, which is federally banned from schools (2% reduced fat milk is also prohibited. Only fat-free and 1% low-fat milk are allowed to be offered with meals or a la carte or in vending machines).  

In December, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocked the unanimous consent motion by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). Marshall was seeking an immediate Senate vote on H.R. 1147 – Congressman G.T. Thompson’s bill – on Dec. 14, 2023, just one day after it was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan 330-99 vote. It was previously passed in the House Education Committee in a bipartisan 26 to 13 vote.

Marshall chugged a glass of whole milk and gave an inspiring speech about getting the bill to the President’s desk for Christmas. Sen. Marshall is a medical doctor, an obstetrician, and a member of the Senate Ag Committee.

“This is a slam-dunk for American families,” he said.

Sen. Stabenow played the role of the Grinch stealing the opportunity for immediate whole milk passage in the Senate on the heels of the overwhelming House vote as she objected to the unanimous consent request on Dec. 14.

But that’s not the end of this story, just the beginning.

An identical Senate bill, S. 1957, The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was introduced in June 2023. It was read twice on the Senate floor and referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by — you guessed it — Sen. Stabenow of Michigan. This means she is in a ‘gate-keeper’ position for this bill. If it doesn’t come before her committee, it will have trouble getting to the floor.

This is where we can help by raising the number of Senate cosponsors! There are 15 sponsors as of Feb. 21 (updated). We need to get to one-third or one-half of the Senate. That’s 35 to 50.

While news reports indicate Sen. Stabenow will retire after this term and is not seeking re-election, her legacy in caring about childhood nutrition and agriculture may be important to her. She stated on the Senate floor that these decisions about milk in school should be made by the scientific committees. She wants to “keep having these conversations.”

Let’s take her up on that by having conversations with our Senators to cosponsor S. 1957. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has for three cycles and over 15 years refused to consider the preponderance of sound evidence about the benefits of milkfat that the USDA keeps screening out of their deliberations process. 

The DGA Committee is meeting right now for 2025-30 DGAs that seek to refine the current dietary patterns, not re-evaluate them. Even the DGA Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns are deficient in key nutrients that milk delivers.

Here’s the bottom line: S. 1957 was introduced in June 2023 by Sen. Marshall (R-Kan.), along with Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Risch and Mike Crapo (both R-Idaho), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Angus King (I-Maine).

Four more cosponsors have been gained, they are Senators J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.)

As of January 24, 2024, S. 1957 has 14 sponsors from 11 states in the U.S. Senate. Of these 15, seven are on the Senate Ag Committee (Marshall, Hyde-Smith, Gillibrand, Fetterman, Welch, Grassley, Braun). 

We need the rest of the Ag Committee, including Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.). If you live in Arkansas, contact him. If you live in Minnesota, contact Ag Committee Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith; in Illinois, Sen. Richard Durbin; in Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown; in Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell; in Iowa, Chuck Grassley has already signed on, but Joni Ernst has not; in North Dakota, talk with Sen. John Hoeven; in South Dakota, Sen. John Thune; in Nebraska, Sen. Deb Fischer; in Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnack; in New Mexico, Sen. Ben Ray Lujan; in Alabama, Sen. Tommy Tuberville; in Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet; and in New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker.

No matter where you live, contact your state’s two U.S. Senators. We need as many Senate cosponsors as possible, and we need Senators motivated to speak with Chairwoman Stabenow, to ask her to please stop putting the ego and agenda of Washington bureaucrats above the health and welfare of America’s children and the economic stability of America’s dairy farmers.

This bill is about choice. It is not a mandate. It simply allows schools to offer whole and 2% flavored and unflavored milk at school lunch and breakfast without financial penalties for exceeding outdated milkfat limits that are unnecessary or even harmful to children.

If we want children to benefit from the nutrition milk delivers, then we need to deliver the permission for our children to be able to choose milk they will love at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. That’s how they actually benefit from the complete protein and 13 essential nutrients milk delivers.

Let’s stay positive. We can’t afford to lose ANOTHER generation of milk drinkers and think we will still have a dairy industry in many parts of the U.S. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is an opportunity for dairy farmers to revitalize and renew fluid milk demand, but more importantly, it’s an opportunity for schoolchildren to choose milk they will love for life and health. It’s also an opportunity to drastically cut the amount of wasted milk in school cafeterias, a win for stewardship of resources and the environment.

A 2021 survey by IDFA showed that 78% of American parents who described themselves as voters, choose 2% or Whole Milk for their families as the most delicious and nutritious option, but their children can choose neither 2% nor Whole milk at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year.

This survey is consistent with what a Pennsylvania school trial in 2019 showed. The students preferred Whole Milk 3 to 1 over the 1% low-fat milk. When 2% and Whole Milk were offered in the coolers, students consumed 52% more total milk and the average daily volume of discarded milk was reduced by 95%. This means more students took the offered milk instead of refusing it, and fewer students threw away the milk they took with their meals.

The Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee, under chairman Bernie Morrissey’s leadership, has launched a letter-writing and phone-calling campaign seeking cosponsors for S. 1957. They have put together the tools, but grassroots farmers and citizens must be the ones to carry it out and send the letters and make the calls.

We need to help Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow understand this issue is about lifting the federal school lunch and breakfast ban that was placed on delicious nutritious whole milk in 2012 so that school districts, parents and students can make healthy milk choices that are enjoyed and not discarded.

This bill is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk.  

This is about options, choice, and a future for kids and dairy farms. Will YOU call or write your TWO?

Let’s keep this bill moooving. Every state has two U.S. Senators. Click here for a sample letter.

Find the Washington addresses and phone numbers for your state’s Senators at https://www.senate.gov/ – Click the icon in the top left corner, select your state from drop-down menu to see how to contact them. Or look for your state in this printable directory.

For a more detailed letter, like the one sent by the Grassroots PA Dairy Advisory Committee to Senator Robert Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, click here.

For a simple phone message guide for contacting Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (and if in PA Senator Robert Casey) click here.

See the complete Action Packet and find some additional resources in a folder here

To email your Senators: Go to https://democracy.io/ – type in your address, city and zip code, click submit. Your two Senators and one Rep. will show up with red check marks. Click ‘Write to them.’ Then, on the next screen, write the body of your letter. If you want, you can start with who you are, where you live, what you do. You can also mention if you have school-aged children or grandchildren. Then copy and paste from the text below or write your own message simply asking your Senators to cosponsor S. 1957 The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act

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RE: Whole Milk for Healthy Kids, S.1957 by Senators Roger Marshall and Peter Welch

I write to ask you to cosponsor S. 1957, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, to bring back the choice of Whole Milk in schools. This bill is not a mandate, it is about choice, so students can have the delicious Whole Milk option to benefit nutritionally from milk they will love. The House passed this in a 330 to 99 vote in December. We hope you will soon add your name to the list of cosponsors for the Senate. Whole milk is standardized at 3.25% fat (3.5% in Calif.). Systematic reviews of the scientific literature show milkfat should no longer be demonized by federal policies, especially for children.

Currently, 95% of U.S. schools are in the National School Lunch Program, which in 2012 made rules requiring only fat-free and low-fat (1%) milk be available to students during school hours. Since then, student milk consumption has declined drastically, and milk has become a most frequently discarded item. A 2021 survey showed 78% of parents choose whole or 2% milk for their families, but these options are restricted at school, where kids receive two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. A 2019 school trial showed milk consumption increased by 52%, and waste volume decreased by 95%, when offerings were expanded to include Whole and 2% milk. More students chose milk, and fewer students threw away milk. That is a win for kids, dairy farmers and the environment.

This is a critical time to provide what milk delivers — complete protein and 13 essential nutrients. When students aren’t drinking the milk offered at school, they don’t receive its nutrition. In fact, the Dietary Guidelines Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns lack enough key nutrients, including three of the four nutrients of public health concern that milk provides: potassium, calcium, and Vitamin D, which is fat soluble.

Thank you in advance for helping bring the nutritious, delicious option of Whole Milk back to school lunch and breakfast by cosponsoring S. 1957.

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