In 1933 the U.S. Public Health Service passed the first Milk Ordinance and Code. This document outlined the legal parameters for labeling and selling milk as pasteurized.
During this time many people were getting sick and dying from diseases that were carried in raw milk. In order to reduce the risk of Americans getting sick, the government made it mandatory for milk to be pasteurized before it could be sold to customers.
This marked a huge turning point for our business because at the time we were one of many small local farms that were milking our cows and delivering it to neighboring customers. When the law passed dairy farmers were left with three options: sell their cows and stop producing milk, continue milking cows but send the milk to a centralized processing center, or purchase the equipment needed to pasteurize on farm.
Ernest Wright, 2nd generation, decided to invest in the equipment and establish an on farm dairy processing facility. Although the equipment has been updated, we continue to pasteurize all of our own milk on farm today.