Following a 37-13 Senate vote late Monday, Senate Bill 315 goes to Gov. Kim Reynolds for her signature.

Previously passed by the House with amendments, it will let producers sell unpasteurized milk to Iowans from their farms, as well as cheese, yogurt, ice cream and other raw milk products.

“I call it the fresh milk bill,” said Sen. Jason Schultz, a Crawford Republican and the bill’s Senate floor manager. He added that he’d waited 17 years for a raw milk bill to clear the Legislature.

Dairy groups opposed bill

Supporters say raw milk tastes better and has more nutrients, while opponents say it can contain bacteria that’s dangerous to children and could spark a public health outbreak.

Several major farm organizations, including the Iowa State Dairy Association and Iowa Dairy Foods Association, registered to lobby against the bill. Proponents included Americans for Prosperity, a conservative-leaning national libertarian group that helped organize the tea party movement.

“The passage of SF 315 is a victory for families and agriculture across our great state and reaffirms that the government has no right to dictate what Iowans choose to drink,” Tyler J. Raygor, deputy state director of Americans For Prosperity-Iowa, said in a statement following the Senate’s vote. “With this legislation, Iowans will have the freedom to choose what to feed their family while enabling innovation in the fresh milk industry.”

House member who’s infectious disease doctor sounds warning

Rep. Megan Srinivas, a Democrat and Des Moines infectious disease doctor, said last week during the House’s debate on the bill that she’s concerned children will become ill, with potentially lethal ramifications, if adults give them unpasteurized milk.

“Raw milk increases chances of infection by 150 times — 150 times,” Srinivas said, adding that it “leads to outbreaks that not only impact the people who are directly consuming the milk themselves” but others via the spread of bacteria.

Iowa is one of 19 states that has prohibited the sale of unpasteurized milk, according to Raw Milk Facts.

House proponent says people have consumed raw milk for millennia

Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican farmer from Wilton who was the bill’s House sponsor and floor manager, said the legislation gives Iowans the opportunity to buy raw milk if they want it. Those who have health concerns “don’t have to buy it,” he said.

“We’re simply adding this to the list of foods that people can get without Jiminy Cricket, the government, sitting on their shoulder, and whispering what’s best for their families,” Kaufmann said, adding that people have been “consuming fresh milk, free of government regulation” for thousands of years.

Bill’s testing requirement questioned

Under Senate Bill 315, producers can sell the raw milk and related products from their farms, but not at farmers markets or restaurants. Containers must have labels saying the contents were not subject to state inspections or public health regulations that require pasteurization and grading.

The House’s amendments provided requirements for storing and selling raw milk and preventing sales if the cows, goats or sheep recently received antibiotics. It also outlines testing for bacteria and requires the records be made available to consumers and state officials.

“It’s an attempt to address some concerns that folks had expressed,” Kaufmann said last week.

But Srinivas said the testing focuses mostly on animals, not the milk they produce. The farms selling raw milk can have no more than 10 dairy animals at one time and must test the animals monthly for their “coliform count,” or their bacteria levels, and have them assessed annually by a veterinarian.

“That’s not where we see the contamination happen in raw milk,” Srinivas said. “We see it in the handling. We see it in the storage. We see it in the collection.

“When we test an animal for what they might be carrying, that has no implication on what one could consume in the milk itself,” she said.

Opponent says type of bacteria in milk can be more important than amount

Also, while the bill sets a testing requirement of no more than 25,000 colony-forming units, or CFUs, of bacteria per milliliter in raw milk, it doesn’t distinguish between the types of bacteria, Srinivas said, adding that some bacteria are good for people, while others are deadly.

“If I had 25,000 CFUs of lactobacillus, which is a very healthy gut bacteria that we have in probiotics, growing in my raw milk, I wouldn’t be concerned,” Srinivas said. “But if we have even 5,000 or 10,000 colony-forming units of Shigella, that can be lethal.”

Shigella is an easily transmitted bacteria that causes stomach pain, cramping, fever and diarrhea. Children and immunocompromised populations are most at risk, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency warned in February it was monitoring “extensively drug-resistant” Shigella infections.

Despite Srinivas’ concerns, Kaufmann said the bill still has “one heck of a lot of regulation in it, more so than I’m even comfortable with.”

Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457.