Connecticut has become at least the sixth state to introduce legislation allowing whole milk in schools.
The extremely brief bill from Rep. Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly, declares “that title 10 of the general statutes be amended to allow public schools to serve whole milk from any source.”
The bill, which gives no further instructions about how this could be accomplished, was referred to the Joint Committee on Education.
After a decade of dairy farmer frustration, Republican state lawmakers have started introducing workarounds to the prohibition on whole milk in the National School Lunch Program.
A 2010 law aligned the program’s milk choices with the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommend skim or 1%.
Tennessee became the first state to pass a whole milk law last year, and it provided the template for North Dakota’s bill, which passed committee Jan. 17.
Those plans focus on dispensers that are kept separate from the federally supported lunch line. Following USDA’s guidance, Tennessee told schools that they must not charge for the milk or use food service funds to purchase it.
Pennsylvania and New York were the first to introduce whole milk bills in 2022. Those bills would have allowed only in-state milk and included a mechanism for the states to defend the laws if USDA denied funding.
A 2023 Minnesota bill would have limited whole milk to kindergartners and relied on a commission. It did not receive a committee vote.
The issue could be settled nationally with legislation backed by Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa. His bill passed the House in 2023 and was folded into the Farm Bill last year. The Farm Bill failed to pass and will be reintroduced this year.
