The VT Agency of Agriculture’s conflicting – and confounding – dual roles of promoting and regulating the dairy industry remains at the heart of the state’s inability to move on from a destructive industrial dairy model.
Time after time, the Agency’s cheerleading of Big Dairy — even while it pays Vermont farmers less than the cost of production! – takes precedence over its duty to police and punish threatening practices.
Take, for example, the problem with the overuse of antibiotics on these mega-dairies. The on-farm usage of antibiotics is overseen by the state veterinarian, Dr. Kristin Haas, which seems rational enough, even though she’s proven her allegiance to Big Pharma by saying things like: “The reduction of farm animal antibiotic use is not a goal of the Agency.”
But Dr. Haas isn’t just the state veterinarian within the Agency of Ag, she’s also the head of “food safety and consumer protection.” With that role, one would expect her to be informing consumers when farms violate food safety rules, especially when those violations result in contamination of the food supply.
Think again. Just look at the “consumer protection” section at the Agency’s own website (screenshot below). “Text goes here” is all they’ve got.
RegenVt found this bare webpage while seeking to find out if the Agency was alerting consumers about two recent cases of farms shipping milk in violation of antibiotic residue limits. And both shipments were not detected until AFTER they were processed and made into dairy products.
It seemed like a pretty good opportunity for Dr. Haas to put on her “food safety and consumer protection” hat, no? Instead, the silence is deafening.
But the silence ends when the enabling begins again.
Here, for example, is how Dr. Haas responded when asked how the Agency of Ag is responding to the World Health Organization’s “urgent” call for a reduction of on-farm antibiotics usage: “The reduction of farm animal antibiotic use is not a goal of the Agency…The Agency does not monitor antibiotic purchases and sales or maintain records that quantify this data.”
Data? Reduction goals? Who needs that? It’s the sound regulatory heads stuck in sand. And it’s NOT in the public’s interest.
The consumers of Vermont’s dairy products deserve better, much better. It’s time to break up the dual and conflicting roles within the Agency of Agriculture. Because it’s clear our “state veterinarian” isn’t taking her “consumer protection” job very seriously.
– M. Colby
