EPA to Regulate Milk Spills Just like Oil Spills

Mark Whittington Mark Whittington – Sat Feb 5, 2:59 pm ET
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It appears that the Environmental Protection Agency, in a story too weird to be fiction, has decided to regulate milk in the same way it does oil. In effect, milk spills will be considered just as hazardous as oil spills.

According to the Wall Street Journal, via Fuel Fix:

"Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that subjects dairy producers to the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure program, which was created in 1970 to prevent oil discharges in navigable waters or near shorelines. Naturally, it usually applies to oil and natural gas outfits. But the EPA has discovered that milk contains 'a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil,' as the agency put it in the Federal Register.

"In other words, the EPA thinks the next blowout may happen in rural Vermont or Wisconsin. Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow haven't made it onto the EPA docket include leaks from maple sugar taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.

"The EPA rule requires farms — as well as places that make cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream and the like — to prepare and implement an emergency management plan in the event of a milk catastrophe. Among dozens of requirements, farmers must train first responders in cleanup protocol and build 'containment facilities' such as dikes or berms to mitigate offshore dairy slicks.

"These plans must be in place by November, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is even running a $3 million program 'to help farmers and ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations.' You cannot make this stuff up."

This is clearly another in what Sarah Palin so artfully suggested is a "WTF Moment" coming from the Obama administration. Clearly the EPA has gone completely out of control and needs a little adult supervision, as well as a healthy decrease in its budget.

The economic ramifications are rather obvious, if this regulation is allowed to stand. The prices of milk, butter, cheese, ice cream and yogurt will sky rocket. This will not only be a drag on the farm economy but also on people who have to shop for food every week for their families.

The political fallout is also pretty clear. Dairy producing states like Vermont and Wisconsin are generally considered to be blue states, which vote reliably Democratic for most elections. Wisconsin may be changing since it gave Russ Feingold the Royal Order of the Boot from the United States Senate.

In any event, dairy farmers are not going to be pleased to find that the EPA considers them as much of a threat to the environment as Exxon and BP and has mandated that they spend a lot of money to build "containment facilities" to ensure that spilled milk does not get into the environment.

One wonders what Ben and Jerry, purveyors of Hippy ice cream, are going to think about this. Perhaps, as warm supporters of the administration, they can apply for waivers from the new regulation, much as unions are getting out from under the strictures of health care reform. Tough luck for Blue Bell, though, as it is located in Texas.

This runs counter to President Obama's promise in the State of the Union to hunt down regulations that impede business and get rid of them. To be credible, the Obama administration needs to take care that while they are doing this, no new regulations of that nature are imposed.

Source: EPA Spilled Milk Regulation Indicative of Broader Problem, William O'Keefe, Fuel Fix, February 3rd, 2011


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110205/pl_ac/7790580_epa_to_regulate_milk_spills_just_like_oil_spills

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.EPA Spilled Milk Regulation Indicative of Broader Problem
Posted on February 3, 2011 at 7:42 pm by William O'Keefe in General

EPA to Regulate Spilled Milk.

No, it’s not a headline from The Onion. The Wall Street Journal editorial board explains:

Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that subjects dairy producers to the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure program, which was created in 1970 to prevent oil discharges in navigable waters or near shorelines. Naturally, it usually applies to oil and natural gas outfits. But the EPA has discovered that milk contains “a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil,” as the agency put it in the Federal Register.

In other words, the EPA thinks the next blowout may happen in rural Vermont or Wisconsin. Other dangerous pollution risks that somehow haven’t made it onto the EPA docket include leaks from maple sugar taps and the vapors at Badger State breweries.

The EPA rule requires farms—as well as places that make cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream and the like—to prepare and implement an emergency management plan in the event of a milk catastrophe. Among dozens of requirements, farmers must train first responders in cleanup protocol and build “containment facilities” such as dikes or berms to mitigate offshore dairy slicks.

These plans must be in place by November, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is even running a $3 million program “to help farmers and ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations.” You cannot make this stuff up.

If the administration truly believes regulating Häagen-Dazs suppliers will help prevent another BP-scale disaster, it’s no wonder a federal judge decided to hold it in contempt this week for is gross mishandling of the Gulf spill response. These dubious decisions reinforce the notion of just how far current regulatory overreach extends.

This is just the latest example of regulatory overreach. EPA knows no limits to intrusion in our lives or the fact that it should be allocating its resources to the risks that produce the largest return to the public. Obviously, the administrator doesn’t understand more bang for the buck.


http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/03/e...oader-problem/

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Well............... Say goodbye to some more small dairy farms and sugar bushes.


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Thomas Sowell
Spilled Milk


Despite the old saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that.

We all understand why the Environmental Protection Agency was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.

In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming-- and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.

It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers' reports and prosecute farmers who don't jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be "creating jobs," even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.

Does anyone seriously believe that any farmer is going to spill enough milk to compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the BP oil spill?

Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?

It doesn't matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has expanded its definition of "discrimination" to include things that no one thought was discrimination when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to expand its jurisdiction to cover things that were never included in its jurisdiction, and that have no relationship to the reason why the FCC was created in the first place.

Yet the ever-expanding bureaucratic state has its defenders in the mainstream media. When President Obama recently mentioned the possibility of reducing burdensome regulations-- as part of his moving of his rhetoric toward the political center, even if his policies don't move-- there was an immediate reaction in a New York Times article defending government regulations.
http://townhall.com/columnists/Thoma...1/spilled_milk
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[QUOTE=Fireman]DAMMIT Larry,

We need someone to say it aint true. Why ya wanna come with more stuff sayin it is?


Think im gonna go buy a goat[/QUOTE]______________________________
Summary of Raw Milk Statutes and Administrative Codes

http://www.realmilk.com/milk-laws-1.html

Congratulations your goat is legal! However unauthorized discharges of Raw Milk are prohibited in public unless dually licensed and a visable warning has been given to said public of said possible discharge and its inherent dangers to said public.

20-59-248. Incidental discharges of goat milk not prohibited.

(a) For purposes of this section, "incidental discharges of goat milk" are those discharges where the average monthly number of gallons discharged does not exceed one hundred (100) gallons.

(b) The provisions of this subchapter shall not be construed to prohibit incidental discharge of raw goat milk directly to consumers at the farm where the milk is produced or to preclude the advertising of incidental discharges of goat milk.

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Sadly .....I did not make this up!