Raw Milk, Red Tape, and Freedom: A Wyoming Family’s Fight to Protect Food Choice

So, the legislature has read through it.

“Again, the Wyoming Department of Ag sent me a five-page letter outlining.”

This is what we found, this is what we, you know, how we interpret it.

It actually works as a great road map for what we need to do to just basically re-word the law.

This coming Friday, setting our going down to meet with the agricultural committee from our house representatives. And they're putting us on the agenda. It's going on to the legislative agenda next year. I've already seen some drafts written up about how they want to rewrite the law so that this can be corrected.

“You know, and so I'm very optimistic that with, it might take about a year, but we're optimistic that the law can be straight now.”

Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential. Hey, everyone, welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David Fram. Today's guest are from Cody, Wyoming. Before we get to them, in junior mat, you, I understand, actually got to spend some time in Cody, Wyoming. So, tell us about it before we talk to our guests. Yeah, I love Cody, Wyoming. Now, I passed through their last fall when we were filming in Montana when we were out in big-sky country.

I'm from Colorado, so instead of flying out there, like most of the trips that we normally do, I decided to drive out there, and I added some extra time on the back end of our trip when we were done filming. I road-tripped out of Montana into Wyoming and down in the Yellowstone, and I had a great time in Yellowstone. And then I passed through Cody on my way out of Yellowstone, and I stopped there for a day, and Cody is such a cool town in my opinion. I love it. Now, I'm a big gun guy, I'm a big gun nerd, and they have the Cody Firearms Museum, which is, and they also have the Buffalo Bill Museum of the West as well.

They have both of those, they're within the same complex, but the Firearms Museum is incredible. So much historic stuff. They have probably one of the best gun collections historically anywhere in the country. Wow. Well, that's awesome. I'm excited to talk to our guests. They're doing some cool interesting stuff too. So I'm really looking forward to starting this conversation. So if you don't know where Cody Wyoming is, it's right outside Yellowstone National Park, and our guests today were in a small farm and a store in Cody that sells homemade foods to both locals and visitors.

What's interesting is they set out a really never set out to open a store in the first place. This whole thing started with something simple, wanting healthier food options for their family.

So one thing they did was started drinking raw milk. On their journey, they ended up opening the store and started to sell raw milk lattes. But then things got complicated, not because of something they did, but because of a complaint filed against one of the vendors selling products in their store. Now, the plans for a coffee shop are facing some major challenges. So let's hear what happened from our guests today. We have Sadie Howard and Mark Nelson who are part of the family run business, hippie cow creamery.

Thank you. Well, so let's start out like from the basics. Maybe Sadie talk about how you all ended up even owning cows, let alone getting the raw milk. Had you come up, had you end up running cows? Sure, that's kind of a wild story in and of itself. We did not grow up around cows, but three years ago my mom and my sister and I decided to buy a cow while my dad was out of town. And it was purely for us. We wanted to make our own dairy products. We wanted our own milk and we've been gardening and we've just really died into where our food comes from and how to eat and live healthier.

“So we bought this cow while he was out of town. We called him up, said, "Hey, you need to come home and help us build a corral."”

And she quickly we realized produced way more milk than we could handle. So word kind of spread and people were asking if they could join our list to get on to buy the extra raw milk.

So that was in March by November we had a second count by June we had four cows and it's just it's expanded right now. We've got 11 we're milk and 11.

We've got nine heffers that were bringing up into our herd and it's just grown bigger than any of us could have ever imagined faster than we could have imagined. And so we had our little milk pickup location on our farm and pretty soon it turned into an ant wanting to sell some sourdough goods, people wanting eggs.

We had people knock it on the door, wanting in so we opened it full time and we've now got 19 vendors who sell their homemade Wyoming food free to max products in our store.

“We sell our dairy products as well. And then the latte side of it started because my mom and my sister and I we've been baristas I was a barista for 14 years so coffee is is us if you know the Nelson's you know we've got coffee.”

So we actually when my mom decided to start working here full time. We bought in a espresso machine because we have a big family and we all converge here and meet here and we need coffee. So we bought in a espresso machine and it started out kind of a private. And then people caught on and everybody wanted the good latte is so we we make we make our syrup from good ingredients from scratch we use God ingredients honey maple syrup and we've got a great family who roasts our beans and they're the best beans ever and then our raw milk and so it's a healthier latte and that has quickly become.

What people what people were coming in to get these raw milk latte is they love them we love them it's just been a great like.

Side business if you will for hippie cow creamery.

Well as as someone who's family. Used to pick up raw milk we used to go get raw milk every week traffic back the coolers. You know I understand the health benefits there for sure. So in Wyoming there's a law that allows you to sell your homemade goods and. And then you had you had other people start selling your products and your storefront.

Maybe tell me about the law because it's it's not necessarily true across the country, but in Wyoming you all have something that helps facilitate this right. Yeah, I'll kind of jump in and handle that we had in 2015 the Wyoming legislature legislature passed the Wyoming food freedom act. And in simple terms it was it was designed to allow an informed end consumer to be able to purchase foods from you know any small farm small vendor the foods did not have to be inspected it was to the idea or the.

The the method was that they were trying to make it so you could just as an informed consumer you could purchase the food from and whom you wanted to. The food did not have to be inspected it not have to be USDA approved anything like that. So Wyoming is kind of actually really led the entire nation in that ability to you know for us to choose where where and what we want to to buy and to to eat so that's that's the just of that. It's been going on since 2015 the law has been modified a couple of times but.

“There's still some errors in that that's what we ran up against.”

So just the idea of food freedom. I mean you guys have been living this for over 10 years and then I'm sure your customers obviously buy into that concept. I really just didn't the idea of the informed consumer because in a funny way or maybe a tragic way in America we've not we've kind of moved away from that right. We have we have big agencies that tell us what's good and what's not. What's your experience with that like how do you believe in like having an informed consumer and like kind of what's been your experience of it over the last decade.

Well without getting too deep in the weeds we just kind of started realizing that a lot of the things that you know for example the food pyramid it was basically upside down.

You know along with RFK coming in we started looking at you know we just want to eat better we want to be healthier. We we have a large garden that we grow our own food at also and and so I would just say. We kind of started realizing it's it's a we live under.

“I hate to call it a nanny state but that's the only way they can say it's a nanny state where they're telling us what's good for us and they don't really know.”

Yeah yeah. Oh, I'm just going to say for the people in our community they're seeking something different too. We've got people who've joined our milk program because you know their child has asthma and the raw milk helps asthma raw milk helps with Xima and so it's it's hugely important to our community to have healthy access. Good access to good foods. Yeah, I mean I know we use a family kind of if I've tried to keep our own council and in very informed council the funny thing about it and you know it isn't informed consumer it's not someone who's just kind of trying to be reckless.

Can be so regulated especially in other places. So I think so we're talking about a law here that in Wyoming that really is a real positive and it's kind of a leader around the country.

“But you guys end up getting still getting caught up in in tangled with the government. Maybe tell your story about what the difficulties have been lately.”

Well, about a month, a month and a half ago it's time to slip by but we just all said one day the the warming department. Health inspector just stopped in our store and proceeded to do about a four hour inspection. We were ignorant at the time as too far as what she was looking for or what she was going to try to do and and even I kind of laugh about it because we even offered her a lot. Yeah, at the end of her inspection like would you like a coffee on us, you know. I will say that while she was there we were talking to her briefly about raw milk and she said I just don't like the idea of raw milk. I don't like it.

“And so she left she didn't didn't issue any citations didn't say that there's anything wrong with what we were doing with our products. She said there's a couple of other vendors that had some very minor labeling issues.”

That is one of the requirements of the Wyoming Food Freedom Act is it's labeled that it's not inspected and again, you know, basically consume it your own risk.

So we she left and we didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks. I mean, thought everything was just fine. And she she knew of our plans so in that that time we were in one unit we were getting ready to rent two units and open up a door so a double space and she knew our intent was to create a coffee shop we were kind of debating on doing that we didn't know the logistics of it with the health department. And so she answered questions for us we left that meeting actually kind of excited feeling like it was a possibility she told us that if we obtained a food license through the state that we would be good to go.

And she set me an email with all of the specs to build out our coffee shop to the health department specs, which is fine. And in a couple days we started mulling over this and wondering, well, if we get a food license does that take us out from under the Food Freedom Act. And we are a part of the farm to consumer legal defense fund. We reached out to them. We reached out to AJ Richards and all of those people told us, no, if you get a food license with the state you are no longer under the umbrella protection of the food freedom act in the college laws.

And therefore you would be under the state's inspection. And so we decided not at that time to apply for the food license when about our business. And she turned us into the, what's that guy, the building inspector city inspector and the fire chief. About about two weeks after she was at our store and again, she left the store saying, oh, just just fill out this, get this license. And everything will be just fine. Just go ahead and get licensed. And again, we talked to several people and we're like, that doesn't, that's not how the food freedom act is set up. We're supposed to be exempt from licensing actually even inspections.

“We found out after the fact that her initial inspection knowing we were a food freedom act store was invalid. So yes, that's pretty important part.”

And, and then so two weeks after her inspection, I get a call from the city building inspector and he said the state has filed a formal complaint against you and we have to have a meeting. And so it was with again the building inspector, the city fire marshal and then this Wyoming Department of Ag health inspector and she was the driving force behind the meeting.

So the first question to her was if we get any kind of food license, whether it be commercial or retail, would that allow us to continue to do what we're doing under the food freedom act.

And she said, yes, absolutely. She stated that it was a, the reason we were having this meeting was it was an anonymous complaint that was filed against us. And we said, well, you know, we'd like to know and she said, well, you can file a FOIA request, which we did. And it was a bit later found out that it was really, it was a, you could call it a competitive vendor is a little squabble between a couple of vendors, one didn't like one that was at our store and so filed a complaint with the Wyoming health department.

And it was petty. We spent an hour back to the meeting, we spent an hour and a half in the meeting with the officials and discussing how we need to do this. We wanted to do everything for you protect our customer safety, et cetera.

“To the point where we agreed to, we're, we're being required to put in an ADA accessible bathroom, sanitary seeing somebody's just on and on and on, honestly, it's going to cost us well over 20,000 dollars to do this.”

And, and at the very end of the meeting, she said, well, there's just no way there's just no way that you can make lattes with raw milk.

She said, you can drive down to Walmart and buy their milk and make lattes, but you cannot make it with your own milk. So pretty much a waste of an hour and a half with city officials and in it is costing ended up costing us over 20,000 dollars. Wow, it seems like a weaponization of the system. So what did she have a solution was to go by processed store bought milk rather than your raw milk to make your lattes legal, so you could have legal lattes.

That's correct. And then get a commercial food license, which again, if we have a commercial food license, we cannot sell our products.

Right. Yeah, it's kind of like a trap in a way. I mean, like, hey, we get a commercial food license, but then you're not protected by the food free to make exactly exactly that was her solution. Yeah, it's so good. So what of, you know, what of your customers and kind of your community thought, well, and and told you, well, you've been going through this. Well, it got a little western for a couple of days. AJ, Rachel, it's got us in touch with Tyler and home and Tyler and home got us in touch with the Cowboy State Daily.

And so it just kind of blew up on social media for a couple days, but the support from the community is is huge and I'll say it's not even like a one party issue.

So I've had liberals come in and tell us, hey, I'm as liberals liberal can be, but I support your right to be able to choose what kind of latte you drink.

“And I mean, we just as a grown adult, you should be able to decide, you know, pasteurize milk latte, raw milk latte, you know, so yeah.”

So Tyler and home is one of my colleagues who's a mayor's prosperity Wyoming State Director. He is a true cowboy and rancher, but yeah, the fact that it got kind of cowboy or kind of got stirred up is is a hallmark of Tyler. So he'd called me about this. I was like, all right, man, this is kind of fun. He told us it was going to get western. And if I could say AJ Richards runs a website formed it from the farm and he does a lot of lobbying. He's well known nationally and I've got to give a lot of credit to both AJ and Tyler because my first thought, I don't operate in this in this realm. I didn't know what to do.

And I'm friends with AJ and I reached out to AJ and immediately put me in contact with Tyler and I messaged Tyler immediately responded and it again, it just grew grew from there, but without their help, we would be lost. We'd be lost.

“Well, so have you ever had much interaction with the government or the legislative process prior to this being kind of thrust upon you?”

Not prior to this, no, none at all. And what's been your impression? After the fact, I would say it's been quite well, you know, our state legislature and senators are actually very pro. Getting this corrected and working through it. And honestly, I'm not going to come down too heavy handed on the Department of Ag because even the people that I dealt with outside of the inspector, I'll say that. And we're quite helpful, but they just said there's there's too broad of an interpretation in the law. And they interpreted it one way. We interpreted it another.

The intent of the law seemed to have gotten lost in that. But I would say generally speaking, Wyoming as a whole is very pro, excuse me, having the ability to choose for themselves. So I would say, after we were exposed to this, that we were very impressed with our state representatives. And that's, that's, that's going very well. I would say that this mid-level bureaucratic inspector, it was an overreach without a doubt. She's flexing her muscles.

And different people in that bureaucracy can, you know, decide to make your life difficult or arbitrarily over and force something, sometimes they over the misinterpret or other times, you know, other times it's legit, of course. But, you know, one of the things we like to highlight on the show and that managed to prosperity is what we're working on is, you know, trying to right-size that kind of bring some sanding and actually having the legislature or Congress, the legislative bodies, play their correct role.

“Not so many times they've advocated to the administrative state or the bureaucrats to kind of determine what's what.”

When the reality is, is that we expect our legislators to do that and they need to take that responsibility. So what do you guys hope, I understand there might be action in the legislature when they come back in session, what are your hope that they, that they do there?

Well, obviously, we're very helpful that we can get the law kind of tighten up, reworded, take out a few of the, I will say one thing in the law.

It kind of, at least the Wyoming Department of Ag focused in on a term, it says that all products must be made in a private home kitchen, and that was kind of their, they narrow focused on that. And I'd point out that, you know, corn isn't grown in your home kitchen. There's a number of things where if they, if they focus in on that, they could eliminate an awful lot of things that are being allowed to be sold. So the legislature has read through it again, the Wyoming Department of Ag sent me a five page letter outlining, this is what we found, this is what we, you know, how we interpret it.

It actually works as a great roadmap for what we need to do to just basically reword the law.

This coming Friday, setting our going down to meet with the agricultural committee from our, our house representatives and they're putting us on the agenda. It's going on to the legislative agenda of next year. I've already seen some drafts written up about how they want to rewrite the law so that this can can be corrected. And so I'm very optimistic that with, it might take about a year, but we're optimistic that the law can be straight now, written in a different way.

I will say, I don't know if it's right or not, but it's my personal objective to, I'd like to see this health inspector removed from her position, because it was simply a, a, a pride thing.

If we had to go along with what she wanted us to do, everything would have been fine. Yeah, the, the arbitrary niche is disturbing there. So, you know, one of the things we talk about on the show a lot is people taking their one small step. And what we mean by that is, folks who, you know, throughout American history, there's just regular Americans who got activated. They, they, they, they saw a problem or that problem was kind of placed at their doorstep like in your case.

And they took actions to get involved and try to change laws or try to change their government and, you know, it ends up affecting their community, their state, the whole nation. It's the story of America and I'm kind of, it's true that, you know, you guys didn't really, we're, like, doing your own thing. If, in fact, you're kind of doing more of your own thing than most people do because you had your own cows, he had your raw milk, you just happened to be continuing to grow. And then the government decided to interact with you.

“Has that shaped how you think about kind of getting involved in the legislative process or in, in your community?”

Or, you know, what are your reflections on on that when, you know, when you kind of step back and look at, like, you're probably in a place you didn't anticipate you were going to be even a year ago. Yeah, I had a customer say to me, gosh, lady, did you know cows would make you political? No, I did it, no, but I, I think God placed us here in a unique time in a unique spot with people surrounding us like AJ and Tyler and home that, I mean, if just people surrounding us that can help us through this process.

And, and it's bigger than the lattes, you know, I mean, we can survive without selling coffee for sure because milk is our gig and, and that's not in, you know, we're not threatened with the milk sales, but, you know, it's bigger than the lattes.

“It's, it's, it's community and it's a choice to what you should be able to feed your family.”

And, um, so we're taking that on because we do feel like God put us here to help our community and help other Wyoming nights and then also somebody said to me, you know, Wyoming's food freedom act is a beacon of hope to our other states who don't have this.

Well, I gotta tell you, I could agree with you more because, um, when there's a kind of a bastion or a beach head of freedom, like I'd say in this case of food freedom act, and we allow that to be eroded or really dismantled. It does have an effect throughout the country. I mean, we see this with homeschooling friends. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's a kind of a pure way to that, you know, for parents to determine how they're kids are educated. And we find in different places that, you know, at times the education bureaucracy for various reasons will come and try to erode that freedom.

“And it sometimes it seems very common-sensical, but, you know, we take the sand that we need to stop that or try to fight those things because if we start to erode that freedom, it has a, you know, a cascading effect throughout the country.”

We see that in other ways. We've, we've worked been working on and it was passed in Wyoming, the Reigns Act, which is a regular term reform. We see that type of good legislation passing in one, two states, then all seven, it's five and then it's seven, you know, so there is a cascading effect. And so I appreciate you guys, you're kind of on the front lines of kind of defending, you know, kind of a basic freedom here of like we wanted to determine what we've put in our bodies when we're, what are kids putting their bodies in?

Yeah, we never set out to, to be activists of any kind, like you said, we were just doing our own little thing, but we do see the value of the importance in this, you know, as, as we've seen, just exactly like you said there's just been little sidesteps or somebody didn't take a step. And we wound up where we are in our country and I think that's a terrible thing.

So even though this sounds like a very small thing, I mean, we're, we're arguing over whether we can use raw milk and a latte, that's not a big thing.

In the, in the, in the big picture, but at the same time, it is, it's absolutely a case of government overreach, telling us what we can and cannot do. It's, it's, it's funny, you know, I'm 60 years old now, I've been pretty much Republican my whole life, but the older I get, I'm, I'm far, far more libertarian. It's, it's like, you know, leave me alone, you know, I'm an adult. I know what I want to do. I know what I can do, but our government has become just way too intrusive into our lives, our everyday life.

I'm going to scream more out after that our tagline at the end of this show, you'll hear me say is that liberty and freedom we're easily taking for granted. Absolutely. We really shouldn't take for granted. And it's so true. I mean, a lot of people could have just folded here, and I give you guys a lot of credit for saying, hey, you know, there's a principle here and, you know, this, you're, you're engaging on something that affects a lot of other people, it's not just you.

“And so the fact that you've stood up and kind of made your voice heard and pushing back, I think is, is good for your community, for your state and ultimately nation. That's where you hope, you know, hope people can listen to this.”

Maybe anybody's going through Cody, hopefully you can go get a latte.

That's right. You're good. You're going to yellowstone and pop on over. Well, actually, the community support has been so good that we started making pre pre-made lattes. And because they said we could do that, we can make them in our home kitchen and then sell them through the store.

So we've been making these pre-made lattes in the fridge.

And the man who roasts our coffee Chris said that we're blowing through the beans faster than we were before.

So people, people come in to get a, we call them freedom coffees. So. Nice. We don't actually make some freedom for appetinos. Yeah, we don't like telling too many people that how great a state Wyoming is. In fact, we kind of like to keep it where people don't really know why I'm going to get this.

And that's kind of how we like it. But I tell you one of the reasons we have, we have a pretty big streak of, you push us too far and too long. The, the rebel kind of rises up, you know, so. Yeah. Yeah, no, get into the Tyler and considering him a good friend, I've known this.

And so sometimes hopefully I'll, uh, I'll get in there and trips around Wyoming with Tyler. We'll come get some coffee. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much.

Thanks so much for what you're doing. Uh, fighting for freedom and I wish you guys the best in this. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thanks.

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“And always remember, liberty and freedom are easily taken for granted.”

Don't take it for granted. Go out there and defend freedom of liberty.

Thank you for listening to American Potential. You may listen to more stories from Americans working every day to expand freedom and opportunity in their communities by visiting Americanpotential.com.