License of raw milk purveyor in Telford suspended

Pennsylvania is lapping up raw milk - the unpasteurized, yellowish, straight-from-the-cow variety - at a booming rate, but the boutique beverage just became harder to find in the suburbs.

The state Department of Agriculture suspended the license of the only state-certified seller of raw milk in Montgomery County, Hendricks Farms & Dairy in Telford, on Friday after customers in seven unrelated households came down with gastrointestinal infections tied to the campylobacter bacteria.

With the market for raw milk flourishing in Pennsylvania, with 115 licensed sellers statewide and a dozen in the Philadelphia area, the suspension of Hendricks Farms was said yesterday to illustrate that the beverage's claimed health benefits are accompanied by legitimate, and unpredictable, safety concerns.

In seven years of holding an unpasteurized-milk license, Hendricks Farms had no health violations until last week, state inspectors said.

"They can have years and years of no problems, and because it's a 'raw' product, [a dairy] can have a problem one day and not the next," said Christopher Ryder, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

Dairy owners Trent and Rachel Hendricks posted a sign for would-be customers at their farm store hoping that test results expected today would clear the dairy's name.

Previously, it sold some 600 gallons a week to 300 households, according to the company's Web site. A note there about the suspension described a "history of stellar test results" and said the company was disappointed by the suspension.

A Hendricks staffer declined to comment yesterday at the farm.

Pennsylvania has more than double the 55 licensed unpasteurized-milk vendors that it had in 2005. Devotees drive in from afar, believing that pasteurization kills healthful bacteria and dulls milk's taste. Hendricks, on a separate Web site, claims customers from seven states.

"I'm a raw cheese fan, and cheese tastes much more interesting when it's made with raw milk," said Christopher Holst, a Harleysville lawyer and fan of Hendricks' cheeses. "It tastes more like where it came from when it hasn't been pasteurized."

Pennsylvania's raw-milk licenses come with requirements for multiple bacteria tests each month to screen for campylobacter and other germs, with salmonella being the most common problem, Ryder said. He added that bad findings are relatively rare. In a large-scale testing this spring of 83 dairies, six came back with harmful bacteria.

Hendricks Farms is the only dairy in the Philadelphia area to have its license suspended this year, and could resume selling as soon as Friday if the test results come back favorably, Ryder said.

A call to an Ohio lawyer who is advising the farm and other raw-milk purveyors was not returned yesterday.