TodayTroopers raid Nolt's dairy farm for third time
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Article RatingState police raided a Newville farm for the third time Friday and seized about a ton of raw milk products.
Mark Nolt, owner of the farm, said authorities cleaned out a walk-in cooler full of raw milk and other non-pasteurized dairy products including cheese, milk, butter, cottage cheese, yogurt and more after executing a warrant at 10 a.m.
“They just cleaned it out, took everything that was there,” Nolt said. “Not only did they take all our food but they took all the food that we had made to sell.”
Under commonwealth law it is illegal to sell raw milk or hard cheese without a permit and illegal under any circumstance to sell soft cheeses or yogurt that are not pasteurized.
“It’s devastating,” Nolt said. “It’s what we depend on to make a living. Our customer base does not want pasteurized products. They want it because it’s homemade and it’s real.”
Although he was served with a warrant, Nolt claimed that he was not given time to read it and he does not recognize the authority of the commonwealth to seize his products.
Nolt said the raid took about 45 minutes to complete. “It was get in here and get out.”
He said his family is left “struggling to sort everything out” after his farm was raided for the third time in the last two years.
“They’re evidently determined to make a point,” Nolt said of law enforcement. He maintains that the dairy products that his farm makes are safe to consume.
Public health experts disagree. In a hearing before the state Senate Agricultural and Rural Affairs Committee in September of 2007, Michael Huff, then deputy secretary for health planning and assessment said unpasteurized milk can harbor harmful bacteria.
In 1938, before the widespread adoption of pasteurization, 25 percent of all food- and waterborne-illnesses were associated with consumption of raw milk products.
“Raw milk has long been known by public health authorities to be an inherently unsafe product,” Huff testified at the hearing.
Nolt said the raid will not stop him from continuing to make raw milk products. “The cows milk every day so we’ll just have to take what we get.”
