On Friday, January 25th, members of the Missouri Milk Board went to Morningland Dairy, based in the Ozarks, and destroyed 36,000 pounds of cheese that they say was not fit for human consumption. On Morningland’s website, owner Joseph Dixon protested the seizure like they have protested government actions throughout the case. The Missouri Milk Board alleges that samples from a lab in California tested positive for both staphylococcus aureus and listeria monocytogenes. The CDC states that Listeriosis is a serious infection usually caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium listeria monocytogenes. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal symptoms. Infections to pregnant women can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or life-threatening infections of the newborn. Information on the FDA website states that staphylococcal food poisoning is usually rapid and in many cases acute. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, retching, abdominal cramping, and prostration. Recovery can take two days but can be three or more in severe cases. Even a dose of less than 1.0 micrograms in contaminated food can trigger symptoms.
The Missouri Milk Board’s position is that they do not want to take the slightest chance in having such contaminants hit the food supply. However, Morningland Foods says that the government is simply trying to destroy the livelihood of small producers.
Dixon maintains on his website that the cheese that was destroyed was never properly tested and that no contamination was found in either the plant or the milk barn by the FDA. He quoted Executive Secretary Mike Wiseman of the Missouri Milk Board as saying that their cheese was not even fit for dogs to eat. However, contrary to their claims, Dixon said that when Missouri Milk Board representatives came on January 25th to seize the cheese, they used bare hands or cloth gloves to load the cheese and that they did not prevent members of the public who attended from picking up loose samples. “The Missouri Milk Board has finally succeeded in destroying our valuable cheese,” Dixon concluded. “In their haste to do so, the Milk Board has also succeeded in revealing to anyone with intelligence that the cheese posed no real danger. The real danger to the people of Missouri and our nation is the complete lack of integrity of the Missouri Milk Board.”
The seizure was the result of a 2½ year legal battle between Morningland and the Missouri Milk Board. It was appealed through the Howell County Circuit Court and then the Missouri Court of Appeals. In his order siding with the Missouri Milk Board upheld by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Judge David Dunlap provided a summary of legal and situational facts in his order. On and between January and October 2010, Morningland was engaged in the production and sale of artisanal cheeses made from raw cow and goat milk. Defendant’s products were sold in over 100 retail stores throughout the US as well as by direct order to individual customers. As such, Morningland was licensed by the Missouri Milk Board and was covered by its rules. Missouri law states that the board or its agent may condemn any offending product which is offered, exposed for sale, or sold for human food purposes. The board may order the destruction of condemned products.
On August 26th, 2010, the board learned from the State of California that two samples of defendant’s cow milk cheese had tested positive for the bacteria listeria monocytogenes and staphylococcus aureus. The board’s agents then promptly occupied defendant’s facility and condemned all current inventory by installing a placard on the door of its storage room. Soon thereafter, all cheese manufactured by the defendant was recalled.
In an effort to absolve its product and resume business, defendant selected for commercial laboratory testing seven samples each of mature cow and goat cheese awaiting shipment to customers. Unhappily, testing reported six of the seven cow cheese samples positive for l. Monocytogenes and all 14 tested positive for staph aureus. Subsequently, the Milk Board ordered that all cheese in defendant’s inventory be destroyed.
However, Dixon, on his website, says that there were problems with both the tests in question. He said that the 2nd test was cross-contaminated and that the California test involved cheese that was in California for over four months, out of which nobody could account for how it was handled for seven weeks. He said that the California sample was placed in an un-iced cooler and that the State of California had violated its own statutes by not testing the food promptly.
Morningland had been in production for 30 years before the complaint from the State of California. “In our 30 years of Morningland Dairy Production, there have been no complaints or reports of illnesses connected with eating our raw milk cheeses,” said Dixon on his website. “Yet in August of 2010, the FDA and Missouri authorities, using improperly handled and very questionable test results from California, made us recall all cheese sold in 2010, embargoed all our remaining cheese, refused to properly test our cheese, denied us a jury trial, and judged us – without any proof – to have an unsanitary plant and sick animals and ordered us to make unaffordable changes to our plant that are not required according to regulation as well as to do expensive testing of our cheese that is also not required according to regulation and have since badgered us with false accusations and demands for information from our new private membership association, insisting specifically that we include our members’ private information and threatening us with a $100/day fine until we acquiesce to their demands.”
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