Dannemeyer Lobbies State Agriculture Officials on Behalf of Raw Milk Producer

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer on Friday personally lobbied top state agriculture officials to relax one of the quarantines blocking the sale of raw milk by a former law client.

Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) met for more than an hour with Agriculture Director Henry Voss on behalf of the Stueve dairy of Chino, the country’s biggest raw milk producer now idled by two state quarantines on its dairy herds.

Emerging from the meeting, Dannemeyer declined to recap what he said to Voss but added: “He listened very courteously. It’s his call.”

The outspoken congressman, however, blasted state regulators--in particular Kenneth W. Kizer, director of the Department of Health Services--for picking on raw milk producers because of fears about salmonella poisoning. On Thursday, Kizer’s department proposed emergency regulations requiring warnings that raw milk and raw milk products could contain “disease-causing microorganisms.”

“The claim of the Health Department of this state that somehow salmonella is a serious problem is a joke,” Dannemeyer said. “We lose more people in America each year by death of constipation than we do by salmonella. The money this state is spending for salmonella eradication is an abuse of discretion of the health authorities.”

Voss said late Friday that Dannemeyer’s visit wouldn’t change the quarantines, despite concerns expressed by the congressman that his former law clients “may have gotten an undue amount of attention in the checking of their herds” by state agriculture officials.

Voss also said Dannemeyer cited his “long association with the Stueves” in asking the department to relax its quarantines affecting the Chino dairy farm.

State agriculture officials have quarantined four of the Stueve herds after finding evidence of a bacteria that causes brucellosis, a sometimes fatal disease that causes spontaneous abortions in cattle and severe flu-like symptoms in humans. The four herds were quarantined between December, 1989, and last August. Dannemeyer said he doesn’t object to these quarantines.

But the congressman has said he disagrees with quarantines the Agriculture Department slapped on the two remaining Stueve herds last October after tests found organisms causing salmonella and listeriosis. Salmonella is often associated with symptoms of common “food poisoning”--fever and nausea--and the potentially lethal listeriosis has been blamed for the 1985 deaths of 48 people who consumed the defunct Jalisco brand cheese.

The quarantines have shut down Stueve’s production of raw milk, which devotees claim contains nutrients otherwise killed in the pasteurization process. Dannemeyer said he believes the salmonella and listeriosis fears are overblown and that two of the Stueve herds should be put back into production.

He also said the new warning labels on raw milk are part of a government “vendetta” against the raw milk industry.

“If they want to put a label on certified raw milk, they’re going to have to label all of the food products that are periodically shown to be infected with a pathogen--carrots, radishes, beef, chicken,” he said.

Dannemeyer also said that the Stueve family, a powerful political force in the agriculture community, and one of his former law clients, did not pay for his trip to Sacramento. He said he decided to make the trip after talking to R. Dean Thomas--a microbiologist, Dannemeyer neighbor and consultant for raw milk producers.

Thomas accompanied the congressman to Friday’s meeting with Voss and presented his scientific arguments in favor of relaxing the quarantines. Also attending was state Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim).

“I’m not being paid for being here, and if you check the records of the (Federal Elections Commission), I think you’ll find that the Stueves contributed $300 to my campaign last year,” Dannemeyer said.

Harry M. Snyder, director of the West Coast office of the Consumers Union, criticized state officials for agreeing to meet with Dannemeyer.

“I’m very disturbed that the department has found time to meet with an individual like Dannemeyer, who is clearly following his own personal dictates than scientific evidence, who has worked for and has received payment in the past from the Stueves,” Snyder said.