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in a while, but that’s just my take. Cow sharing is probably a Pandora’s box, but for now
it makes raw milk legal and available to the public, which is important.”
The retail sale of raw milk for human consumption has been illegal in Oregon since the
state Legislature rewrote its dairy law four years ago. By law, only farmers with three
cows or fewer can sell raw milk to Oregonians who physically go and pick up the milk
themselves. Raw milk farmers are not allowed to deliver or advertise their product to
consumers either in or out of state.
“The idea is to keep raw milk localized so it’s just for neighbors within a small farming
community,” Paulson said. “This encourages people to see the farm and really educate
themselves about how the milk is produced on a regular basis. It’s kind of a buyer-beware
system.”
But these regulations leave most city dwellers, who are either unwilling or unable to
drive a few hours a week to dairy farms, out of the raw milk loop.
Enter the loophole of cow sharing.
It’s not the usual milkman
“The cow-share program really saves us,” said Skamakaway, Wash., dairy farmer
Lonnie Praski, who serves more than 100 shareholders — 80 of whom reside in the
Portland area. “We’re not technically selling the milk to customers, so legally that falls in
our favor.”
Praski actually delivers his raw milk to drop-off points around the metro Portland area
— usually to shareholders who offer to chill the milk until neighboring shareholders can
pick up their own gallons of milk.
Other local cow shareholders work it out differently, running carpools between families
so that people take turns picking up the milk for one another, explained Claire Darling, a
local chapter head for the Weston A. Price Foundation — a national nonprofit behind a
raw milk resource Web site and other raw milk-advocacy endeavors.
“Cow shares have made it abundantly more convenient for families. There are about
five to eight families in any given carpool, and about four drop-off sites. The middlemen
are just families who agree to have a bunch of coolers on their porch once a week.
They’re not getting paid or handling the milk themselves.”
Darling estimated that she knows of at least 150 families involved with the cow-share
program, and that most do some kind of carpooling pickup and drop-off scenario.
But it’s these middlemen practices that start to make people like the Oregon
Department of Agriculture’s Paulson a little wary. Not to mention the fact that these
deliveries and drop-offs start to sound a whole lot like small-scale retail sales to
consumers. In some cases the trade crosses state lines, which would not be legal in
Oregon save for the cow-share loophole, Paulson said. The theory is that cow sharing
eliminates the consumer, which means everyone involved is technically a cow owner.
Cow shares definitely make the legality of raw milk a little fuzzy, agreed Jim Pressley,
Washington Department of Agriculture’s food safety program assistant manager.
Washington, like Oregon, has no specific laws against cow sharing. “I can’t say that there
are specific laws yet that address cow shareholders getting milk across state lines. It gets
confusing to navigate because of the ‘owners’ and where they actually live.”
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