Milk Legislation Takes First Step in Uphill Struggle

For such a wholesome liquid, milk might as well be nitroglycerin when it hits the state Capitol.

State Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) brought last year’s unsuccessful crusade for lower milk prices back to the Legislature on Wednesday with a bill to set minimum calcium standards for milk. It was approved by the Senate Health Committee on a 5-1 vote.

But the bill faces an uphill fight against lobbying from California’s $3.7-billion-a-year dairy industry.

“This is banned from being sold here,” said Bowen, as she held up milk cartons from Massachusetts and Washington that she said contain as much calcium as California milk but would be illegal to sell here because of the state’s strict dairy regulations.

Increasing competition by allowing such milk in, Bowen maintains, could lower prices.

The nutritional change she’s proposing with SB 2164 seems straightforward enough--except it would wipe out 40-year-old enrichment standards that act as a deterrent to out-of-state dairies.

Some of the capitol’s highest-priced lobbyists are fighting it. Opposition to the bill is financed by California’s dairies; support for the legislation is bankrolled by a wealthy Arizona dairy, Shamrock Foods.

The legislation is one of three bills Bowen is carrying this session and it will probably join the other two in the Senate Agriculture Committee later this month. One of the others also sets nutrition standards, based on protein and calcium found in enriched California milk, and the other ends a complicated pricing system for raw milk that is unique to California.

State Sen. Ray Haynes, a Republican whose Riverside County district includes several dairies, suggested that any out-of-state dairy could sell its product here, as long as it wasn’t called milk.

“You could call it ‘simulated dairy beverage,’ ” said Haynes, who cast the negative vote in committee.

Frederick M. Pownall, a lobbyist representing Shamrock Foods, said other states have given consumers a choice, offering both regular and enriched milk at different prices.

California milk prices topped the nation last spring before Bowen and state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Daly City) took on the issue. Gallons of milk were then costing more than $4 in some stores.

Since then, however, prices have dropped, at least temporarily undermining one of the legislators’ strongest arguments--cost.

So Bowen has turned to nutritional standards. And there she has some new ammunition.

California law requires milk to be enriched through a process of adding concentrated milk. Out-of-state dairies, which do not ordinarily undertake that process, must meet the state’s standards to sell here.

The process may increase calcium, but can also--and here was Bowen’s new weapon--increase cholesterol and calories.

If more calcium is the goal, Bowen said, the standard should center on calcium content instead of the broad enrichment process.