We all get frustrated with politics and bureaucracy, but there are times when we need help and there is nowhere else to turn. Today’s column is about one of those times.
I have written about struggles the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board faces in working with the federal bureaucracy at USDA. In all fairness, USDA has its processes and procedures the same as we do, but we did have to resort to contacting our Pennsylvania federal legislators to get help.
I am specifically talking about issues we have faced since January 2021 with The Emergency Food Assistance Program and other related federal commodity purchase programs.
These programs provide many millions (if not billions) of dollars to states for the purchase of agricultural commodities such as grain products, cheese products and fluid milk. The purchased products are sold to approved vendors that bid for a contract to deliver these commodities to food banks and other food distribution centers that serve low-income families.
Because of the minimum wholesale price requirements in the commonwealth, as required by the milk marketing law, bids for fluid milk and ultra-high-temperature (UHT, longer shelf life) milk must be at the Pennsylvania minimum wholesale price or higher for the month the bid submission is due. We have struggled to find ways to work with both USDA and eligible vendors to ensure that our laws are not violated, and it truly has been a struggle.
After intervention by Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in December 2021, we met with USDA personnel to develop strategies to help vendors with the bidding process. USDA provided us with a list of its eligible dairy vendors and adjusted its time frame for release of bid requests to coincide with our monthly price release schedule.
We worked hard to develop spreadsheets with minimum legal prices for all Pennsylvania delivery sites, by area, and sent them out via an extensive email distribution list and also posted them on our website.
I also sent hard copy (snail mail) letters to general managers at all companies on USDA’s eligible vendor list, including those out-of-state vendors who may or may not ever submit bids, to ensure that all would have good information about where to find legal minimum bids for each fluid milk or UHT milk solicitation.
USDA does not have a process in place to separate Pennsylvania bids from other delivery states. Bids are awarded to the lowest bidder. If a bid for Pennsylvania deliveries is below minimum wholesale price, that company will receive the award. We are left, then, with having to deal with the situation of a violation of our laws.
Our process is to issue a warning to the company for its first violation, but the company may not fulfill the contract and deliver the milk to Pennsylvania locations; each delivery constitutes a violation of the law on top of the violation incurred by the illegal bid. A second bidding violation is more serious and can result in a hearing before the board and possible suspension of license.
So you might think that all the efforts of USDA combined with board staff would eliminate lower-than-minimum bids. Not so, we have sadly learned.
It seemed that with almost every solicitation there was at least one violation. USDA was frustrated and we were as well — you see, USDA requires vendors to certify that they have obeyed relevant state laws.
USDA also had put in bold as part of this statement the states that had pricing laws. We were frustrated because of all the effort required to provide minimum bid information within 36 to 48 hours of a solicitation.
Unfortunately, USDA decided one day following the release of a fluid milk solicitation on March 8 of this year to send out an amendment removing all Pennsylvania deliveries from the solicitation. This was followed by the same action for a solicitation released later in March.
We did learn that someone complained about Pennsylvania laws and USDA acted without contacting us regarding any specific information provided to the agency.
Once again, we were faced with the need to contact our federal legislators to intervene in the situation. We are fortunate, regardless of your individual politics, to have a White House with Pennsylvania ties, a senator who responded to our needs, and a Pennsylvania congressman, G.T. Thompson, as chair of the House Agriculture Committee.
USDA did try to find a way it could work legally with us to resolve the problems. One thought was to separate Pennsylvania bids from all the others to review them. However, USDA’s legal counsel indicated that is not a possibility.
Source: lancasterfarming.com
Photo Credit: gettyimages-d-keine
Categories: Pennsylvania, Livestock, Dairy Cattle