Small dairy says it thrives by offering better, healthier milk

"The most common thing I hear after people have tasted our milk is 'Wow,'" Taylor said, standing among piles of papers and books on the dairy industry Friday at the Snowville Creamery. He said that people from countries all over the world tell him they haven't tasted milk like his since they left home, and that they didn't know there was such a thing as bad milk until they came to America.

Taylor pointed proudly to a book of testimonials. After one milk-loving child tried Snowville milk for the first time, his eyes grew wide and with a large smile he asked his mother, "Is this new milk?"

"Look what we've done to our children," Taylor said. "This is where I'm calling out the dairy industry. They should be ashamed of themselves... My model is based on a commitment to making the finest milk we can make."

Taylor's Snowville Creamery, about a 20-minute drive from Athens, has a commitment to freshness. The milk is pasteurized and packaged at Bill Dix and Stacy Hall's dairy farm in Meigs County. The milk is bottled on the farm and delivered to stores within 48 hours. The milk is minimally pasteurized and not homogenized. The cows are local, pastured, grass-fed and antibiotic and growth hormone-free. The 220 cows live and graze on 40 acres of pasture.

"Food is what nourishes us; food is what makes us what we are," Taylor said as he railed against a corporate dairy industry that produces half of America's milk on 3 percent of its dairy farms. The vast majority of these are confinement factory farms in which cows eat grain from troughs, walk on concrete and are crowded hundreds to the acre. "We're raising the sickest generation of children in the history of the planet in the midst of the highest standard of living and the greatest abundance," he said. "What's wrong? I think part of the answer to what's wrong is corporatization."

Taylor said that over the past 30 years cows have been pushed to greater output, and distribution systems have been pushed to both greater distances and time between milking and store delivery. There's increasing scientific evidence that today's grain-fed, confined cows produce milk and meat that is less healthy for humans than that produced from grass-grazed cows, he said.

Cows with a grass-based diet produce sweet, rich milk high in protein that also contains higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids and up to five times the conjugated linoleic acid, according to information provided by Snowville. This boosts immune health, increases lean body mass, and is a powerful anti-inflammatory, the material said.

"We're making milk that is changing people's lives, changing the way they view milk," Taylor said. "And I say all we're doing is making milk as good as it was 50 years ago in America. That's all we're doing."

Taylor alleged that the dairy industry has gradually degraded the quality of milk in America over the past 30 years. The fundamental idea of a functioning democracy is the ability for people to make informed choices, he said.

"Our model is to contribute to informed choice by being transparent," Taylor said. "At Snowville Creamery, we like to say that we don't market, we inform. You make your own choice."

The small dairy farmers of America are not in competition with one another, Taylor stated. He said he actively helps other small dairy owners. His competition at this level is Dean Foods and Horizon, Taylor said.

"As a business we expect to serve," he said. "We serve our community and we serve our customers."

The Snowville Creamery produces about 45,000 gallons of milk per month and is just about breaking even with $2.5 million per year in sales. In Athens, consumers can find the milk at the Village Bakery, Seaman's, Farmacy, Foodland, Food World, Donkey Coffee, Casa Nueva, and one of the largest outlets, the Athens Kroger Store.

Snowville Creamery milk is now sold in about 29 Whole Foods Market stores serving Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The milk can be found at Kroger and Giant Eagle in Columbus, Heinen's in Cleveland and Remke in Cincinnati.

Last year the two main Washington dairy lobbies, the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association got the U.S. Department of Agriculture to eliminate a producer-handler classification that exempted businesses like the Snowville Creamery from pricing and pooling provisions. Now, Snowville has to pay large amounts of money into pooling, something that, as a small dairy, it can't afford to do like the large corporate conglomerates. Taylor said he has to pay 2 percent of gross, even when he's making only a 1 percent profit.

As far as Taylor's beef with the corporate industry, he said he's not advocating outlawing or restricting their businesses in any way. He said he doesn't even mind if they keep all of their government handouts and subsidies.

"Just stop them from restricting my ability to operate in a free and open marketplace," he said.