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A small panhandle dairy 50 miles west of the State Capitol has been fighting the state for three years over whether or not it can sell it’s skim milk without being forced by the state to add vitamins to the milk. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, A federal judge may soon make the call.

Ocheese Creamery started selling milk wholesale and directly to the public five years ago.

“This is actually where the milking takes place up here” says Pierre Wesselhoft, the son of the owners.

Its a niche dairy…using low temperature pasteurization “We think this makes a better product.”

And even bottling in glass bottles. “There’s no possibility of things to leach into the milk you don’t want there” says Wesselhoft.

Three years ago, the state ordered Ocheesee to stop selling skim milk…unless it agreed to add vitamin A back into what is already a natural product. Ocheesee says its customers want no part of added vitamins.

“Let us make our product. Say what it is, Natural skim milk with nothing added to it, and let us sell it like that, and they want to say, no, you can’t do that, so..” says Pierre.

Now its a case of David battling Goliath. Ocheesee is suing in Federal Court. They argue the state can’t make the dairy call its milk “imitation skim milk” because it isn’t.

On any given day, this dairy is milking a hundred cows a day. Each one producing five gallons of milk.

Ironically, Ocheesee is allowed to use the skim milk it can’t sell to make yogurt or cottage cheese. “It’s sort of silly” says Wesselhoft. “We can make yogurt from it. All we do is add culture to the skim milk so we can sell that yogurt and its safe for people to eat and we don’t add vitamin A to the yogurt.”

Until the case is resolved, OCheesee will keep skimming it’s milk to make cream and butter, and will keep dumping as many as 400 gallons of drinkable skim milk each week onto its fields as fertilizer.

Not all states require the vitamins removed from milk in the skimming process to be added back in before it can be sold. A ruling from the Federal Courts is expected in about a month.