In 2025, Ohio House Bill 406 was introduced and sought to allow the sale of raw milk with a permit. Current law only allows sales with a permit to “grandfathered” producers who had been selling raw milk before 1965. This, of course, carved out just about all producers in the state and left them with no legal avenue to sell raw milk, although herd-share arrangements remain legal pursuant to a previous court decision.
While this bill seeking to allow the sale of raw milk might seem to move the needle in the right direction, many rightfully raised concerns about the permit requirement and additional proposals to have producers enroll in a milk quality production program, obtain liability waivers from their customers, and perform monthly testing, among others. All of these would have added unnecessary, costly, and restrictive hurdles for small producers.
Several of our members in Ohio quickly jumped into action, alerted other producers, and reached out to their representatives and state legislators, including some on the Agriculture Committee and the House majority leader, to address their concerns and seek amendments to the proposal. We also canvassed our Ohio members about the bill and received valuable feedback on how we could best represent their interests in our policy efforts.
By October 2025, we learned that one of the two bill sponsors had withdrawn her support and asked that the bill not move forward at all. It was, we hoped, a dead bill.
Unfortunately, we recently learned that the bill was revived and reintroduced this March. It had also been revised and included new language seeking to require anyone operating a raw milk herd share to register with the state. Again, our members jumped into action, made calls, and were ultimately informed by the Office of the Agriculture Committee that there were no plans to move the bill forward, and it was effectively dead.
We wanted to share this story with all our members to illustrate the power of advocacy. With little effort, our producer members in Ohio were able to change the course of this bill and were prepared to mobilize their producer and advocacy communities to take action if it had progressed further. These members let their voices be heard and proved that grassroots advocacy efforts have real value and get results!
We call on all our members to monitor legislative activity in their state and to speak up and get involved in shaping the laws that govern their farming activities. We are always ready to guide our members and assist them in achieving their policy goals. Read our policy primer here to learn more about the policy work that we do and how you can help advocate for food freedom!
