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WASHINGTON: PRIDE AND JOY CREAMERY
For the past decade, Allen and Cheryl Voortman of Pride and Joy Creamery in Granger, Washington, have pro-
duced high-quality raw milk that has benefited the health of thousands of their customers. At the beginning of 2017,
Pride and Joy Creamery was one of the largest raw milk dairies in Washington, distributing their nutrient-dense product
throughout the state. Long certified as a 100% grass-fed organic dairy, Pride and Joy received the highest rating given
by the nonprofit organic industry watchdog Cornucopia Institute to organic milk producers—a rating given only to ten
other dairies in the country.
Sadly, today, Pride and Joy Creamery is out of the retail raw milk business and only produces raw milk for pas-
teurization. The Voortmans no longer have the herd that produced raw milk for direct consumption. Two shutdowns
of the dairy engineered by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) led the Voortmans to make the
decision to end their raw milk operation.
In February 2017, WSDA and the Washington Department of Public Health accused the dairy’s raw milk of making
two people ill with salmonella poisoning. It is not known whether public health officials tried to find any other foods
the two sick individuals might have consumed in common once it was discovered that each drank the dairy’s raw
milk. WSDA sent samples of the dairy’s raw milk to the state lab; while the samples were negative for salmonella, two
samples were positive for shiga-toxin producing e-coli (STEC), a result the department used to pressure the Voortmans
into conducting a voluntary recall of the dairy’s raw milk which ultimately resulted in the dairy being shut down for
over two months. WSDA produced no evidence that the STEC it found in the milk samples was capable of making
anyone sick.
In September, milk samples taken by WSDA tested positive for salmonella, eventually leading the department
to suspend the dairy’s license to produce raw milk. When samples WSDA took in October were also positive for
salmonella, the Voortmans shut down their raw milk operation for good rather than incur the tremendous expense it
would have taken to get WSDA’s approval to start up again. Samples from the same batch of milk that the Voortmans
sent to an accredited laboratory in Idaho were all negative for salmonella. During this time, there were no reports of
illness caused by the consumption of raw milk. A November post on the Pride and Joy Facebook page announcing the
end of the dairy’s retail raw milk business noted, “the bureaucracy, financial burden and uncertainty of this business
is now too much for us.”
There is something wrong with the Washington regulatory system when one of the state’s most popular dairies is
forced out of business even though its raw milk has arguably made no one sick. Pride and Joy is not the only Wash-
ington raw milk dairy to go out of business in recent months; since around the middle of the year, three other dairies
have turned in their permits. The four farms account for about ten percent of the total number of licensed Washington
raw milk dairies. WSDA’s actions helped shatter in a matter of months a business that a hard-working, conscientious
family had taken years to build.

ONTARIO, CANADA: SCHMIDT RELEASED FROM JAIL
On November 22, Durham Ontario dairy farmer Michael Schmidt was granted bail and released from serving a
sixty-day jail sentence pending the farmer’s appeal of a conviction for obstructing a peace officer; Schmidt posted a
twenty-five hundred dollar bond to secure his release. Schmidt had been convicted on October 19 for the offense;
subsequently, Justice Ronald Minard of the Ontario Court of Justice sentenced Schmidt to sixty days in jail with time
to be served over fifteen consecutive weekends. The farmer had served eight days of his sentence at the time bail was
granted. Four others—Enos Martin, Robert Pinnell, George Bothwell and John Schnurr—were charged with a similar
offense; Schnurr was found not guilty and charges were dropped against Martin, Pinnell and Bothwell.
The charge against Schmidt stems from an October 2, 2015, raid of his farm. Schmidt and seventy supporters
were at the farm when government officials possessing a warrant were blocked from leaving the premises in a van
containing equipment and dairy products. The officials left only after leaving the seized materials at the farm; multiple
provincial and municipal government agencies participated in the raid.
The government obtained a warrant to search the farm on the grounds that it needed to investigate Schmidt to
determine whether the farmer was violating the Ontario Milk Act. The Act prohibits the sale or distribution of raw
milk for human consumption; many believe this provision only applies to raw milk sold or distributed to the general
public. Schmidt only distributes milk to individuals who own shares in his farm; he distributes no milk to anyone who
isn’t a shareholder.
Schmidt is appealing the conviction for the obstruction of a peace officer as well as a court ruling holding that the
twenty-three months the case went on did not violate the speedy trial provision contained in the Canadian Charter

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