Dairy For Life & Cottage Foods Program

Dairy For Life & Cottage Foods Program

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Sixty thousand dollars worth of milk will be donated over the next twelve months by six dairies in the Yakima Valley to help needy families in the Yakima and Tri-Cities areas. Second Harvest will be distributing the milk to area food banks, making roughly 400 gallons available per week. The Mid-Columbia Basin dairy farmers who launched the Dairy For Life program are hopeful that the program will extend beyond this year, and that other dairies will join the effort to help the hungry.

Since the first permit was granted last July, the WSDA Cottage Food Operation Program has received 68 applications for Cottage Food Operation permits, and to date 40 have been approved.
WSDA Assistant Director, Kirk Robinson, talks about a surprising challenge for the WSDA with the program thus far.

ROBINSON: We thought that we might see five or six recipes submitted by folks interested in becoming one of these permittees. What we’ve seen is up to eighty or so recipes, so we’re doing an analysis of that because that added quite a bit of time for us as far as doing a review of those recipes and making sure the labeling would be correct and they identify allergens and different things in their recipe mix.

Robinson says permittees have voiced concerns on the program’s $15,000 cap.

ROBINSON: They would like to see it higher in some cases cause they feel that they are doing a higher value product or want to make this more than just a sideline job.

Legislation has been brought forth this year on removing that cap all together. Those interested in having a Cottage Food Operation should visit the WSDA website where they will find a Q & A listing of the most often asked questions.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.