Raw milk raids rile Hawke’s Bay farmer

It is a familiar tale of small-town New Zealand versus a government rulebook, and both of them refusing to blink. And all for a bit of raw milk.

There is a stand-off between the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and family-owned Hawke’s Bay raw milk supplier Lindsay Farm. It follows raids in December when MPI confiscated milk from eight unregistered suppliers in six regions around the country after a year-long investigation.

Lindsay Farm supplies unpasteurised milk to local shareholders. Its 1700 customers are scattered from one end of Hawke’s Bay to the other, so it uses refrigeration collection points across the region where its shareholder customers can pick up their milk.

But MPI’s current regulations state raw milk must be delivered by a driver to customers’ homes.

But Lindsay Farm director Paul Ashton said doorstep deliveries would be too costly, and if the customer was not home, leaving the milk on the doorstep would increase the health risks. His system had worked for 12 years.

MPI’s food compliance manager, Melinda Sando, would not comment on whether suppliers would be prosecuted as the investigation was ongoing. But she confirmed there were no plans to change the regulations, which she said were in place for good reason. ‘‘We know there are 26 suppliers of raw milk that are registered so to us that is an indication those suppliers are making it work.’’

‘‘The regulations are in place to manage risks to public health and at the moment indications are that they are working.’’

MPI has a factsheet online that cautions people against raw milk, which says there were 46 cases where raw milk was a ‘‘risk factor’’ in people getting sick between 2009 and 2016.

Ashton said that since 2008 Lindsay Farm had supplied about 5000 litres of milk to people every week. That was a million litres a year, every year, for 12 years. He said he had never heard of anyone getting sick from his milk. – RNZ