After vowing to loosen Wyoming’s restrictions on selling raw milk and certain other home-grown foods, state lawmakers advanced a “Band-Aid” measure this week.
The proposed law change is not perfect, Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper, conceded during a meeting of the Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Committee, which he co-chairs.
“We are trying to put a Band-Aid on something right now,” said Ide. “But I think the Band-Aid’s probably good … and we maybe can amend it in committee before it goes to the floor.”
The bill seeks to give the director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture the discretion to give one exemption each, for home food sellers wanting to sell products outside the designated food-freedom sale sites already in law.
It’s an answer to outcry over the stop-sale order the Hippy Cow Creamery in Cody received in April for selling raw-milk lattes out of a shop a few feet from the owners’ home kitchen.
It’s also a stopgap meant to prop up a complicated law that needs much more detailed rewriting, multiple lawmakers and advocates said in the Tuesday meeting.
No False Hope
Wyoming Department of Agriculture Director Doug Miamoto indicated the stopgap emerged from concern about rolling the state’s food freedom law back too much.
He said it’s hard “to figure out how you would craft that wording so that you don’t create a dumping ground out of the state of Wyoming for corporate food manufacturers that could make a claim that, you know, (their wares are) homemade food.”
Miamoto said discretion may give the department the ability to identify true local producers and their intentions for exemptions that pose “no health and safety risk.”
“I’m under no illusion we’re going to fix this overnight,” said Rep. Steve Johnson, R-Cheyenne, who brought the bill to the committee after leading a working group on the topic. “I’d like to get this bill passed, and help Hippy Cow Creamery, and anyone else that needs an exemption like that.”
But Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, worried aloud that the bill might not help Hippy Cow.
The shop didn’t just run into trouble for selling raw-milk lattes outside the owners’ home, but also for selling coffee without a commercial license.
So Give Coffee Away
Miamoto hinted at a workaround.
“We have muffler shops all over the state that give away coffee,” he said. “You could do that.”
Rep. Bob Davis, R-Baggs, pressed for clarification.
“So he (the shop owner) essentially is giving away the coffee, and then selling the raw milk?” asked Davis.
“That’s correct,” said Miamoto. “If he wanted to operate without a license we couldn’t allow him to sell the coffee itself because that requires a license.”
That would leave only the location problem to exempt, indicated Miamoto.
Crago said he wants to help people toward food freedom, but he also voiced uncertainty toward workarounds and potential vague points in the bill.
“Let’s not make promises that are hollow,” he said. “Let’s actually get to the bottom of this and start digging into the statute itself, and figure out what we want to regulate and what we don’t.”
Crago ultimately voted for the bill, saying he was still hoping for a longer-term fix.
The committee adopted it 12-2, meaning it could go into the January 2027 lawmaking session with an edge. If it passes, the bill would not become effective until July of next year.
Davis and Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, voted against it, both saying the policy change would offload the Legislature’s responsibility to make laws onto an executive-branch department head.
“I support the effort of what we’re trying to do,” said Provenza. “But there’s intent, and there’s impact.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
