Odds & Ends

Irish butter battle

MADISON, WIS. (AP) >> Wisconsin resident Jean Smith snatches up entire stocks of her beloved Kerrygold Irish butter from stores when visiting family in Nebraska, thanks to an antiquated law in her dairy-obsessed state that bans it and any other butter that hasn’t been graded for quality.

“We bring back 20 bricks or so,” Smith said, noting she plops a tablespoon of the Ireland-made butter into her tea each morning. “It’s creamier, it doesn’t have any waxy taste and it’s a richer yellow.”

Tired of trekking across state lines to stock up, she and a handful of other Wisconsin butter aficionados filed a lawsuit this week challenging the law, saying local consumers and businesses “are more than capable of determining whether butter is sufficiently creamy, properly salted, or too crumbly.” No government help needed, they say.

On the books since 1953, the law is strict: It requires butters to be rated on various measures — including flavor, body and color — by the federal government or people licensed as butter and cheese graders with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Wisconsin’s grading scale dictates that the highestgraded butter must “possess a fine and highly pleasing butter flavor.”

Graders might

de- This March 3photo shows packages of Kerrygold Irish butter on a shelf at a store in Waukesha, Wis. A handful of Wisconsin residents has filed a lawsuit challenging a 1953 state law that bans the sale of Kerrygold Irish butter, or any other butter that hasn’t been graded for quality. While retailers have been issued letters reminding them of the law, Kerrygold butter occasionally finds its way to store shelves in Wisconsin. scribe a butter as “crumbly,” ‘’gummy” or “sticky,” and its color as “mottled,” ‘’streaked” or “speckled.”

Anybody convicted of selling unlabeled or ungraded butter is subject to a fine between $100 and $1,000 and six months in jail.

Wisconsin is the only state in the nation with such a stringent butter provision, which the lawsuit argues amounts to an unconstitutional “governmentmandated ‘taste test.’”

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative legal group representing the plaintiffs, said the grading process is subjective and doesn’t protect consumers.

The real issue, the group argues, is personal freedom.

Institute attorney Jake Curtis acknowledged it’s a light-hearted case, “but economic liberty is a civil right.”

Department spokesman Bill Cosh released a statement saying his consumerprotection agency has to uphold state law, but noted that enforcement “has been limited to notifying retailers of what the law says.”

Ornua, the company that markets Kerrygold, isn’t part of the lawsuit and declined to comment on the case.

The Wisconsin Dairy Products Association didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.

Curtis said he’s also heard from residents frustrated they can’t buy their favorite Danish and Ice- In this photo taken from video footage, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray hands a diamond during a meeting with delegates of Kono district, where the gem was found, at the presidential office in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Thursday, March 16, 2017. A pastor in Sierra Leone has discovered the largest uncut diamond found in more than four decades in this West African country and has turned it over to the government, saying he hopes it helps to boost recent development in his impoverished nation. landic varieties near home. Smith said Kerrygold butter, which uses milk from grass-fed and hormone-free cows, occasionally shows up in stores near her home in Waukesha, but its availability is unpredictable.

“If I couldn’t get Kerrygold, I would use the other butter,” Smith said. “It just doesn’t taste as good.”

Huge diamond

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE (AP)>> A pastor in Sierra Leone has discovered the largest uncut diamond found in more than four decades in this West African country and has turned it over to the government, saying he hopes it helps to boost recent development in his im- poverished nation.

Pastor Emmanuel Momoh found the 706-carat alluvial diamond in Yakadu village in Sierra Leone’s diamond-rich east, and it was presented to President Ernest Bai Koroma on Wednesday, said presidential spokesman Abdulai Bayraytay.

The gem, a bit smaller than a hockey puck, is the second largest diamond found in Sierra Leone. In 1972, the 968.9-carat Star of Sierra Leone was found by miners and sold for about $2.5 million.

Momoh told The Associated Press that he turned in the diamond because he was touched by the development being undertaken in Kono District, where the gem was found.

He cited road construction and improvements to electricity after almost 30 years of blackouts.

“I believe the government can do more, especially at a time when the country is undergoing some economic challenges,” he said.

Sierra Leone’s diamond wealth fueled a decadelong civil war that ended in 2002.

Despite its mineral wealth, the country remains one of the poorest in the world.

It was not immediately clear how the pastor came across the diamond.

The president expressed appreciation that there was no attempt to smuggle the gem out of the country, and encouraged others to emulate the pastor’s example.

He promised the diamond would be sold to the highest bidder and whatever is due to the owner and government would be distributed accordingly.

“A gift from God, and it will be a terrible thing if anyone tries to do something criminal with it,” the president said.

Spokesman Bayraytay said the diamond has not yet been valued and has been placed in the Bank of Sierra Leone.

The president has given “clear instruction to the Ministry of Mines that the evaluation, sale and distribution of the proceeds must be done in the most transparent manner,” he said.