Milk Confiscated by Minnesota Officials
Minnesota agriculture officials this week confiscated about 400 gallons of raw milk that a Gibbon farmer delivered to a house in a suburb of Minneapolis where customers were waiting to pick up their orders, according to search warrant documents obtained by Minnesota Public Radio. No charges were filed, but the action appears to be part of an ongoing state investigation that began this summer with an outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 that public health investigators linked to the Hartmann farm in Gibbon. The farm has been under state orders to stop selling raw, unpasteurized milk..jpg)
Farm owner Michael Hartmann told the radio station that 30 to 40 consumers were at the scene, protesting the confiscation. He has argued that the state has no regulatory power over his operations because he is a farmer selling directly to consumers and that the Minnesota Constitution gives him that right.
The Minnesota Department of Health issued a news release earlier this year saying Hartmann’s farm was implicated as the source of an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections in May and June. As a part of that illness outbreak, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture ordered Hartmann to stop selling milk until he addressed alleged unsanitary conditions on his farm. The agency also directed him to comply with the state law that allows for the sale of unpasteurized milk only on the farm at which the milk was produced.
Then in October, the state health department again issued a news release that routine disease surveillance had detected additional illnesses linked to consumption of raw dairy products from the Hartmann dairy farm in Sibley County. State epidemiologists said the illnesses included three people infected with a bacterium called Campylobacter jejuni, and four people infected with a parasite called Cryptosporidium parvum.
