Court: Florida dairy’s skim milk is skim milk, not imitation
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A small, all-natural dairy isn’t being deceptive when it calls it’s skim milk “skim milk,” a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a victory for the creamery that’s fighting the state’s demand to label the product “imitation” because vitamins aren’t added to it.
The ruling overturns a decision last March when a federal judge sided with the Florida Department of Agriculture, which said the Ocheesee Creamery couldn’t label it’s skim milk “skim milk” because the state defines the product as skim milk with Vitamin A added. The state instead said that if the creamery wanted to sell the product, it should label it as “imitation” skim milk.
But that didn’t sit well with a dairy whose whole philosophy is not to add ingredients to natural products. So instead of complying, the creamery has dumped thousands of gallons of skim milk down the drain rather than label it as an imitation milk product.
“The State was unable to show that forbidding the Creamery from using the term ‘skim milk’ was reasonable,” the three-judge, Jacksonville-based panel wrote in its ruling.