Vine Ripened

 

 

               The tomato hornworm is one of the ugliest bugs I’ve ever seen.  It is almost the size of an adult human finger, sports a green skin with white stripes, and out of its rearend protrudes a dangerous looking red “horn.” 

               In fact, the tomato hornworm is not a worm at all but a caterpillar.  It is the larval stage of the five-spotted hawkmoth, commonly called a hummingbird moth.  The adult moth lays its eggs on the underside of foliage in late spring.  Within a week, the eggs hatch and the larvae emerge and feed on the foliage for a month, growing long and fat.  Next, they create cocoons and pupate in the soil.  In warmer climates, in as little as two weeks, the adult moths emerge from the soil and repeat the cycle.

               The hornworm is the bane of tomato gardeners across the country.  Working from the top down on a tomato plant, they can entirely defoliate it in no time.  Tomato gardeners know it’s critical to remove these pests if one wants to have any hope of enjoying the vine ripened goodness of a homegrown summer tomato.

               For as long as I can remember, my dad grew tomato plants in his backyard in New Mexico.  And for as long as I can remember, he battled with tomato hornworms, which he just called “tomato worms.”  Tomato worms can be dealt with by a variety of measures, but it boils down to either handpicking them off the plants or applying some type of insecticide.  When you have a small backyard plot of tomatoes and a couple of fearless, sharp-eyed kids like my dad did, handpicking is the easy choice.

               As a reward for picking tomato worms, we earned a penny apiece for each one we collected off the vines and returned to my dad. That was enough money in the 1970s to buy a few packs of Bazooka bubble gum. And, of course, we all got to enjoy the worm-free harvest of tomatoes, too.

               And enjoying vine ripened tomatoes was something my dad loved.

He would eat them straight off the vine, like an apple, savoring the sun-warmed flesh and juice. Other times, he cut them into slices with his tomato knife, which had a smooth, wooden handle and a blade worn so thin you could bend it, the result of years of resharpening. He would often eat the slices with a little salt or on top off a saltine cracker.

               Little did my dad know that the tomatoes’ flavor was the result of a complex combination of sugars, acids, and as many as twenty volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are chemicals that can be smelled by humans in minuscule amounts, measured in parts per billion, but have a huge impact on how tomatoes taste. All these chemical components are the result of some fifteen genes within a tomato that encode for flavor.

               Tomato gardeners like my dad didn’t need to know the chemistry of tomato flavor to know it tasted good. And not only do they taste good, but they are good for you. Tomatoes are an excellent source of vitamin C, vitamin K, potassium, calcium, folate, thiamine and niacin. In addition, they are a major source of the antioxidant lycopene, which has been scientifically linked to a reduced risk of heart disease.

Therefore, it is no wonder tomatoes are the most popular backyard vegetable to grow, appearing in nine out of ten backyard plots. They are also one of the most consumed vegetables in the United States, second only to the ubiquitous potato. In 2023, the average American consumed more than thirty pounds of tomatoes, counting fresh and processed consumption.

In many ways, the popularity of tomatoes is surprising. The tomato’s wild ancestors originated on the remote coast of what is now northern Peru and southern Ecuador, not exactly a likely location for the origin of one of the world’s most popular vegetables.

The coast of northern Peru and southern Ecuador is a rugged landscape, characterized by hot temperatures and little rainfall – a climate more like the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona than the beach town of San Diego, California. Again, an unlikely location for such a popular vegetable to originate.

The tomato’s wild ancestors still exist in isolated pockets, though most people would not recognize them. Their small, pea-size fruits bear little resemblance to today’s large modern tomato, although they are reported to be very tasty.

Eventually, the wild tomato made it north to Mexico or Central America, where it was domesticated by Mayan or Mesoamerican farmers. There, through controlled breeding, it began to resemble the fruit we have today, which is a thousand times larger than its wild cousin.

And this is what the Spanish explorers found when they arrived in the New World in the 1500s. The Spanish subsequently took the domesticated tomato back to Europe, where it flourished for the first time in the Old World in the arid Mediterranean climates of Spain, Italy, and southern France.

Today, of course, tomatoes are grown throughout the world, even in climates much different than the region where they originated, thanks to modern technologies like greenhouses, hydroponics, petrochemical fertilizers, and drip irrigation. More than 192 million tons were produced worldwide in 2023, making it the highest value fruit or vegetable in the world, according to the United Nations.

And as different as wild tomatoes are to domestic ones, summer tomatoes from the backyard are different from winter tomatoes from a commercial mega farm.

To begin with, while it is almost universally agreed that summer tomatoes are one of the tastiest fruits, it is also almost universally agreed that winter tomatoes are one of the worst. In consumer surveys, winter tomatoes consistently fall at the bottom of satisfaction surveys because they are essentially a large, tasteless mess.

This is because fifty years ago, tomato breeders began to breed a new kind of tomato, one that would satisfy the needs of commercial growers. Commercial growers get paid for yield, size, and appearance, not taste. So, it is these characteristics which tomato breeders have selectively bred into modern tomato varieties. They are large and they look good, but they are tasteless.

And by these criteria, tomato mega farming has been wildly successful: per acre yields of tomatoes have gone up fivefold since the 1930s and threefold more since the 1970s. But the result is a large tomato whose flavor has been essentially bred out of it, which represents a major disconnect in the supply chain between tomato breeders and end consumers.

During the winter, ninety percent of the fresh tomatoes in the supermarket come from Florida, which is not an ideal or even a good place to grow them. Florida’s sandy soil is devoid of nitrogen, an essential chemical for growing tomatoes, and sand contains almost no moisture. Florida has mild winters, so bugs and pathogens that attack tomatoes aren’t subject to killing frosts, making them available to attack again the following season. And its high humidity creates perfect conditions for tomato blight, wilt, spots, and mold.

The main attraction for growing tomatoes in Florida is, in fact, not agricultural but logistical: it is easy to transport its produce to the rest of the country by trailer trucks.

Growing winter tomatoes commercially in Florida is a far different endeavor than the way my dad grew them in the backyard in New Mexico. The cultivation, harvesting, and processing of winter tomatoes is a major agro-industrial effort that requires enormous amounts of petrochemicals and human labor.

The preparation of Florida tomato fields begins by forming the sandy soil into raised beds, which are covered in a polyethylene mulch. The beds are copiously fertilized with nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, mainly derived from industrial processes like the Haber-Bosch process, which synthesizes ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen gas. Ammonia is a critical ingredient in the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers.

Because of the poor soil in Florida and to increase yields, tomatoes use more fertilizers than other vegetables require. Excessive use of petrochemical fertilizers can lead to adverse environmental and health effects because of chemical deposits and air and water pollution.

This is far different than the way my dad prepared his tomato beds in his backyard. He simply broke through New Mexico’s tough caliche soil with his shovel and turned in a few spadefuls of compost from his compost pile. He always had a pile of grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen waste composting in the backyard. And to this he sometimes added horse manure, which provided a range of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, in a natural way.

During their time in the fields, tomatoes can be attacked by dozens of insect species and diseases. In addition, numerous weeds try to outcompete the tomato plant for sunlight and nutrients. The commercial tomato farmer turns to a hundred different chemicals to combat the onslaught of pests: insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. The raised beds are literally fumigated with these chemicals to keep pests at bay.

Many of these chemicals are still on the tomatoes when they reach the supermarket. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture, fifty-four percent of tomatoes sampled in one study contained detectable levels of pesticides. The residues in the sample were below levels considered to be harmful to humans, but in high enough concentrations they can cause cancer, attack the nervous system, disrupt the endocrine system, and cause reproductive problems and birth defects.

It seems that not much has changed since scientist Rachel Carson first alerted the world to such problems in her 1962 book Silent Spring. In her book, she carefully documented how DDT, the most popular pesticide in the world at the time, was poisoning birds, fish, and other animals. And she reasoned, if DDT could harm animals, then it could harm people, too. Partially because of Carson’s book, the use of DDT was banned for use in the United States in 1971. Since then, however, thousands of new pesticides have entered the U.S. market.

My dad didn’t combat tomato pests with insecticides. Nor did he use herbicides to kill weeds, preferring to “cut their heads off” with his hoe. This was before organic farming was a trend – my dad simply employed the simplest and most cost-effective means to keep his crop pest free. Of course, being able to do so is the advantage of the backyard gardener and not something that is so easily accomplished on the scale of the commercial grower.

On a commercial tomato farm, after ten to fifteen weeks, the tomatoes are ready to pick. They are not, however, picked vine-ripened like my dad did. They are picked when they reach a stage growers call “mature green,” which sounds like an oxymoron, but simply means the tomato has reached a stage where it is almost ripe but still green and hard enough to be suitable for shipping to long-distance markets. The green and hard tomatoes are then taken to packhouses for final processing before being transported to market.

At the packhouse, the tomatoes are first given a chlorine bath to kill any bacteria like salmonella that might be present. (Tomatoes are responsible for most produce-related food-borne illnesses in the United States.) Next, they are misted with mineral oil to prevent spoilage and get a sheen. Finally, they are gassed with ethylene until they take on the appearance of being ripe.

Ethylene gas is a colorless and odorless gas produced both naturally and artificially. Tomatoes and other plants produce it as a hormone, which triggers ripening, and it is also formed through organic decomposition. At the packhouse, though, it is created by an industrial process in which a catalytic generator produces ethylene by converting ethyl alcohol to ethylene and water by heating it in the presence of a catalyst. Since the 1920s, food scientists have concluded no ethylene-ripened tomato would ever have the taste and texture of one that is naturally ripened.

Ethylene is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, though not as much as other greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. It can react, however, with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, a component of smog and a potent greenhouse gas. It should be noted that ethylene is also created as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels and biomass.

Finally, the artificially ripened tomatoes are packaged and shipped on trailer trucks to supermarkets across the country. Oil is the primary raw material used in the creation of plastic packaging, accounting for four percent of the world’s oil consumption. Quite obviously, fossil fuel burning trailer trucks significantly add to the oil (and gas) used in the production of tomatoes.

As a result of these agro-industrial and transportation processes, commercially grown tomatoes are one of the most environmentally unfriendly vegetables available to consumers. In an assessment of the environmental impacts, Impactful Ninja (a global community of experts researching and publishing science-backed content) rated tomatoes as having the second-highest carbon footprint of all fruits and vegetables due to their impact on land, air, and water.

But the environmental consequences of tomato farming pale in comparison to their human consequences.

Unlike other crops like corn and soybeans whose cultivation is highly automated, the production of tomatoes is still largely a manual process that requires significant human labor from beginning to end. And most of that labor in Florida is done by a migrant and seasonal workforce totaling some 400,000 men and women, forty to fifty percent of whom lack legal work authorization.

Under the watchful eye of gang bosses, these workers toil for up to fourteen hours a day for meager pay in difficult and dangerous conditions. Workers are paid based on the number of buckets they deliver to the truck. The average piece rate today is 50 cents for every thirty-two pounds of tomatoes picked. Therefore, a worker must pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes in a ten-hour workday to earn the minimum wage.

One of the most insidious problems with Florida tomato farming is the extensive use of pesticides and other dangerous chemicals that workers are exposed to daily, without proper training or personal protective equipment. Likewise, serious injuries such as sprains, fractures, lacerations, and heat-related illnesses are common, due to the physical demands of the work.

Because many of the workers don’t speak English, lack work authorization, and don’t have medical insurance, they are reluctant to seek medical attention for their work-related injuries. When they do, they usually must pay for care out of their own pockets.

Unlike other workers in the United States, farm workers are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA), which was enacted in 1938 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The FLSA established minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards for most full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in federal, state, and local governments. It provided protections for workers, ensuring they received fair compensation for their labor, but did not include agricultural workers, an exception Roosevelt had to make to satisfy Republican demands, in order to get the law passed.

In addition to a lack of federally mandated worker protection, a new danger has emerged for tomato laborers: the threat of deportation. As part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure the U.S. borders, his administration is currently in the process of deporting 1 to 1.3 million undocumented workers across agriculture, meat packing, dairy, and food processing plants. Throughout the country, those suspected of being in the country without proper authorization are being taken into custody at homes, schools, workplaces, churches, and even courthouses by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Before being deported back to their home country or elsewhere, detainees are being housed in migrant detention centers like the one found in Florida, notoriously known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The facility, located on an abandoned airfield in the Florida Everglades, is a tent-city designed to hold three to five thousand migrants. Reports from people that have been inside the detention center describe the inhumane living conditions as resembling oversized dog kennels. They have reported the center is infested with mosquitoes, does not have proper sanitation, and lacks adequate food and reliable medical treatment.

The results are sad but predictable: some farms no longer have enough workers to harvest their crops. Many workers have been deported, while others simply don’t show up for work out of fear of being deported themselves. Farming operations are being shuttered and costs are spiking, putting pressure on profits across the food supply chain. Commercial tomato farms across Florida are being mowed over and left to rot due to Trump’s immigration policies.

Violations of human rights in the service of agriculture are nothing new in Florida. The first European settlers to arrive in Florida were the Spanish, led by Juan Ponce de León in 1513. The Spanish explorers and colonists subsequently enslaved Native Americans and used them as laborers, sexual partners, guides, porters, and suppliers of food, and their treatment was usually brutal. They were also forced to convert to Christianity.

Native Americans who resisted were often killed or punished by a system called encomienda, in which the natives were assigned to colonists through land grants. When colonists claimed a piece of land, they were also given a group of natives with it. The natives were forcibly made to work the land by planting crops and mining for the landowners.

The Spanish maintained control over Florida for some three hundred years until they ceded it to the United States in 1819 under the Adams-Onis Treaty. For Native Americans, nothing improved with the United States in control, as the U.S. pursued a policy of forced removal and assimilation exemplified by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This policy eventually led to the Trail of Tears, a forced relocation of thousands of native Seminoles from Florida to Oklahoma (then called Indian Territory).

By the time Florida officially became a territory of the United States in 1821, slavery had become an integral part of its economy, with the importation of enslaved Africans continuing to grow. Rigid laws were enacted, treating all Black individuals as inferior and suitable for slavery. In 1845, Florida was admitted to the union as a slave state, and by then enslaved labor made up forty percent or more of the population in some counties.

Florida seceded from the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy, primarily to protect slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states, but enforcement was limited until the Civil War's end in 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified that year, formally abolished slavery across the United States. After abolition, however, practices resembling slavery persisted through sharecropping and convict leasing, affecting many African Americans in Florida.

Today, obviously, slavery no longer exists in Florida, but its sordid history is being whitewashed by Florida politicians. Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, the Florida State Board of Education has adopted new African American history standards that teach that some Black people even benefitted from slavery because it taught them to be carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers, and tailors. The Florida Education Association, a statewide teacher’s union representing 150,000 teachers, called the new standards a “disservice” and a “big step back.”

It's clear that Florida has not yet escaped from the gravitational pull created by its past human rights abuses.

My dad was never a fan of the winter tomato found in the supermarket. His main complaint, like most other consumers, was they just didn’t taste as good as what he could grow on the vine. But he also stood for protecting the environment and paying people a fair wage for an honest day’s work – the result of growing up poor on a small family farm. Consequently, he had additional reasons not to like winter tomatoes like those grown in Florida.

In his later years, my dad always planted a few tomatoes in large pots, which he could move into the sunroom attached to the south side of his house at the end of the summer. Doing so allowed him to grow a few tomatoes nearly year-round in the mild winters of New Mexico’s middle Rio Grande River valley.

For my dad, it was as much about the importance of connecting with the land as it was about the tomato itself. Aldo Leopold wrote about the importance of working the land in his book A Sand County Almanac. “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm,” he wrote. “One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

When Leopold wrote those words in 1949, he was referring to the Progressive Era ideal of the independent family farm like my dad grew up on, not today’s commercial mega farms owned by corporations that harm the environment with petrochemical fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides, exploiting people with abusive labor practices all to make a profit.

I think Leopold and my dad would also agree with the spiritual dangers of not growing a few vine-ripened tomatoes in the backyard.

 

References

Bailey, Chelsea, Isabela Rosales, and Alaa Elassar. 2025. “’Alligator Alcatraz: What to know about Florida’s new controversial migrant detention facility”. CNN, July 13, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/us/what-is-alligator-alcatraz-florida

Bieber, Christy. 2025. “‘Can’t even afford to pick them’: Florida farmers are now plowing over perfectly good tomatoes as Trump tariff policies cause prices to plummet and workers to flee. How farmers are reacting.” Money Wise, June 5. https://moneywise.com/news/economy/florida-farmers-now-plowing-over-perfectly-good-tomatoes-as-trumps-tariff-policies-cause-prices-to-plummet

Carson, Rachel. 2002. Silent Spring. 2002 ed. Mariner Books

Dunn, Marvin Dr. n.d. “Slavery in Florida by Dr. Marvin Dunn.” Dunn History: A History of Florida Through Black Eyes, accessed November 25, 2025. https://dunnhistory.com/slavery-in-florida/

Estabrook, Barry. 2018. Tomatoland. 1st ed. Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Foster, Rick. 2016. “Hornworms.” Purdue University, July 5. https://vegcropshotline.org/article/hornworms/

Green, Amy. 2025. “Federal Appeals Court Pauses Litigation Over Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz”. Inside Climate News, October 23. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23102025/florida-alligator-alcatraz-litigation-paused-during-government-shutdown/

Green Packs. n.d. “Is Ethylene a Greenhouse Gas?.” Green Packs, accessed September 29, 2025. https://greenpacks.org/is-ethylene-a-greenhouse-gas/

Harris, Bracey. 2025. “Grower’s split on Trump’s ‘tomato tax’ on Mexican imports”. NBC News, July 22. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-tariffs-tomato-tax-farmers-florida-trade-mexico-texas-arizona-rcna219695

Handwerk, Brian. n.d. “The Quest to Return Tomatoes to Their Full-Flavored Glory.” Smithsonian, January 26, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/geneticists-quest-return-tomatoes-full-flavored-glory-180961933/

Howarth, Grace. n.d. “The Environmental Impact of Tomatoes: From Farm to Table.” Impactful Ninja, accessed September 29, 2025. https://impactful.ninja/the-environmental-impact-of-tomatoes/

HundredX Agritech. n.d. “Frequently asked questions about fruit ripening with ethylene gas generators.” HundredX Agritech, accessed December 15, 2024. https://hundredxag.com/frequently-asked-questions-faqs/

Institute of Food and Agricultural Science. n.d. “Ripening Tomatoes with Ethylene.” University of Florida Extension Institute of Food and Agricultural Science, accessed December 15, 2024. https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/IR/00/00/46/98/00001/CV20600.PDF

Jensen, Jacob. 2025. “The Cost of a Tomato Tariff”. American Action Forum, July 8. https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-cost-of-a-tomato-tariff/

Kafarakis, Phil. 2025. “Deportations: Who’s Picking Lettuce, Cutting Steaks, Planting Tomatoes?.” Forbes, July 17.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/philkafarakis/2025/07/17/deportations-whos-picking-the-lettuce-and-cutting-up-steaks/

Keith, Jeanne F. 2025. “Tomato Pesticides: Everything You Need to Know (2025).” Our Garden Works, September 5. https://ourgardenworks.com/tomato-pesticides-guide/

Klose, Sarah Louise. 2024. “Florida Tomatoes: Flavor and Freshness”. Produce Business, January 4. https://producebusiness.com/florida-tomatoes-flavor-and-freshness/

Lennox, Lisa. 2020. “Florida’s Culture of Slavery”. Florida Humanities, February 24. https://floridahumanities.org/blog/floridas-culture-of-slavery/

Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. 2020 ed. Oxford University Press.

Live to Plant. 2025. “The Environmental Impact of Chemical Fertilizers”. Live to Plant, July 7. https://livetoplant.com/the-environmental-impact-of-chemical-fertilizers/

Montoya-Galvez, Camilo. 2025. “Florida to receive federal funds to build immigration detention sites, including ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ Noem says”. CBS News, June 24. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alligator-alcatraz-florida-immigration-detention-centers-dhs-secretary-noem/

Neatherwood, Roland and Neil S. Mattson. n.d. “Ethylene in the Greenhouse: Symptoms, Detection & Prevention.” Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, accessed September 29, 2025. https://greenhouse.cornell.edu/crops-culture/ethylene-in-the-greenhouse-symptoms-detection-prevention/

Planas, Antonio. 2023. “New Florida standards teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills”. NBC News, July 20. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-florida-standards-teach-black-people-benefited-slavery-taught-usef-rcna95418

Russell, Erin Marissa. n.d. “GMO vs. Non GMO Tomatoes, fully explained.” The Gardening Channel, last revised November 2023. https://www.gardeningchannel.com/gmo-vs-non-gmo-tomatoes-explained/

Rutledge, Alvin D, James B. Willis, and Steve Bost. n.d. “Commercial Tomato Production”. University of Tennessee, Agricultural Extension Service, accessed November 25, 2025.

Staff Writer. 2025. “How Did the Spanish Treat the Native Americans”. Reference, May 2. https://www.reference.com/history-geography/did-spanish-treat-native-americans-cc9cb9a768f0a020

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Walsh, Joe. 2025. “Appeals court rules Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention site can stay open”. CBS News, September 5. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alligator-alcatraz-appeals-court-florida-trump-administration/

Call of the Wild

 

The hair on my neck stood up.

Alone in the dark in Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, I heard a wolf howling near me.  I was on a solo backcountry elk hunt, settling into my primitive camp for the night, when the unmistakable sound rang through the mountains.

It had been many years since the howl of a wolf echoed in these woods, because the species had been extinct here for the past fifty years. But in 1994, a reintroduction program had begun, and I was hearing firsthand the successful results of that effort.

But I was miles from any semblance of civilization, my only light coming from my headlamp and trusty backpacking stove. And just up the canyon in the dark was an apex predator and probably a few members of his family. 

It’s easy to let your mind play tricks on you in these situations. I won’t deny being nervous.

From a young age, we are conditioned to fear the wolf. It begins with stories like the Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, and Little Red Riding Hood. In these childhood tales, we are taught the wolf is a killer. Our conditioning continues into adulthood with stories like The Grey, the action-horror movie starring Liam Neeson in which a pack of wolves mercilessly haunts the steps of six oil workers after their plane crashes in Alaska.

But childhood stories and Hollywood movies are entertainment, not facts. And I knew the facts about wolves, as well as the stories.

I knew from scientific studies that worldwide since 1950 there had only been a handful of humans attacked every year by wolves, about the same number as by the American black bear (and far fewer than by the brown bear). And of those wolf attacks, only a dozen or so resulted in a fatality.

The studies also showed that when an attack did occur, it was rarely because wolves saw humans as prey. Most often they occurred because the wolves were rabid, had been provoked, or had been otherwise conditioned to seek food associated with humans.

So, I knew that when traveling in the backcountry, there are much greater dangers than wolves. I remembered that in the U.S. alone, hornets, wasps, and bees kill about sixty humans per year, and lightning kills another twenty. In fact, bees and lightning kill more humans in one year in the U.S. than all the wolf fatalities combined worldwide going back to 1950.

Certainly, I knew that wolves can be dangerous and should be respected. All wild animals do. But as I recounted the facts, my nervousness soon turned to joy in getting to experience the wilderness as it was before humans tamed it by exterminating wolves. A big smile crossed my face. I loved the howl of the wolf as much as I loved the bugle of the bull elk.

As I crawled into my sleeping bag, I thought about Aldo Leopold, the renowned outdoorsman and conservationist, who wrote poetically about the wolf’s howl, which he heard in the Carson National Forest of New Mexico when he worked there as a forester in the early part of the 20^th century.  Leopold wrote:

Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call.  To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine forest of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet.  Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself.  Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.

And at that moment, trying to think objectively about the howl I just heard, I flicked off my headlamp and drifted into a restless sleep filled with dreams of wilderness, wolves, and elk.

Reintroducing wolves to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which includes parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, was a radical change of policy for the federal government. In the first half of the 20^th century, federal agents shot, trapped, and poisoned wolves out of existence everywhere in the United States except for Alaska and isolated areas in Minnesota. In Montana, 100,000 wolves were turned in for bounties in one decade alone, and by the 1940s, wolves could no longer be found in the Yellowstone area.

Wolf extermination was official government policy in those days. It was believed to be necessary to protect farming and ranching interests and to promote public safety. Even Aldo Leopold got in on the action as a young forester in New Mexico. He wrote, “In those days, we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf.”

But unlike most of his peers, Leopold’s wolf hunting experience proved to be a quasi-scientific discovery and even a spiritual transformation. As a forester, he noted that as wolves were removed from the forests, plants were grazed to the ground by deer and elk. He recognized that healthy ecosystems required biodiversity, which included wolves. In addition, as a philosophical man, he came to realize that ethically, wolves – indeed all plants and animals – had an intrinsic right to life.

Leopold’s views presaged and even inspired a conservation ethic that over time grew into a movement to reintroduce wolves to many of the areas from which they had been exterminated, including Idaho. By the mid-1980s, a family of wolves trekked down from Canada and established themselves in Glacier National Park in Montana. At that time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service floated the idea of formally reintroducing wolves into the United States under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted in 1973. It passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate and was signed by President Richard Nixon who said, “This is an environmental awakening. Wild things constitute a treasure to be protected and cherished for all time.” The ESA required the recovery of endangered and threatened species by relying on the best science available.

By the time of its passage, the United States had already lost the great auk, the Carolina parakeet, and the passenger pigeon. It was in danger of losing the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, California condor, and gray wolf. The decline of the bald eagle (the country’s national symbol), however, is what provoked the nation into saving American wildlife.

But it wasn’t until 1994 that the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbit, finally approved a plan to officially bring wolves back to Yellowstone National Park and to central Idaho. The plan called for the release of thirty-one Canadian gray wolves into Yellowstone and thirty-five into central Idaho. Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness received eleven of those, while the area near Salmon, Stanley, and Indian Creek, Idaho, received the other twenty-four.

The reintroduction was wildly successful. The wolves quickly adapted to their new habitat, which was rich in prey, and began to mate and reproduce. In Idaho, within three years, the wolves established ten breeding pairs and numbered one hundred individuals, far above initial recovery goals.

But in the beginning, the program’s success was far from certain, more because of political than ecological reasons. In early 1995, the Idaho Legislature rejected the Wolf Recovery and Management Plan that was put forth by its own Legislative Wolf Oversight Committee. The plan would have allowed Idaho Fish and Game to take a leading role in wolf recovery in Idaho, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This surprised no one, given Idaho’s ultra-conservative politics – dominated by farming, ranching, mining, and lumber interests. In addition, Idaho’s hunters decried the introduction with the argument that it would lead to the cataclysmic decline of the state’s elk herds, the most popular big game animal in the state. The prevailing attitude of the anti-wolf advocates was “shoot, shovel, and shut up” – shorthand for kill all wolves, bury them, and don’t tell anyone.

Without a state partner to lead the way, Idaho’s wolf recovery was in jeopardy of failing before it even got started.

Fortunately, the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to assume the lead role in the state. Because of the tribe’s connection to wolves and history of coexistence with them, it was more than willing to engage on wolf reintroduction. And the tribe took pride in protecting a species with which it had previously shared a homeland. The Nez Perce Tribe’s positive attitude couldn’t have been more different than that found in Idaho’s capital, and it literally saved the state’s wolf reintroduction program.

With a partner finally in place, Idaho’s wolf reintroduction took off without the help of the state’s own fish and game department. The rest, as they say, is history.

By 2023, Idaho counted more than 1,200 wolves in the state. The reintroduction, in fact, has been so successful that the gray wolf is no longer even listed under the ESA. Although coming late to the party, the Idaho Fish and Game is now successfully managing gray wolves in accordance with state management plans, under which its wolf populations have remained secure and well above recovery objectives.

There is, of course, a risk of oversimplifying a complex subject involving the wolf-elk-human relationship. But it does not appear that the cataclysmic decline of the elk herd which was predicted by hunters has materialized. According to Idaho Fish and Game statistics, the elk harvest has grown by a whopping sixty-eight percent, from about 15,500 in the year 2000 to more than 26,000 in 2024.

But the gray wolf is not the only success story written by the Endangered Species Act. The bald eagle, peregrine falcon, California condor, whooping crane, Hawaiian monk seal, Oregon chub, and Apache trout are all species that have been brought back from the brink of extinction because of sound environmental and scientific initiatives carried out under the authority of the ESA. In fact, a 2019 scientific study found the ESA has prevented the extinction of 291 species since 1973, and 54 of those species have sufficiently recovered to be removed from the endangered and threatened list altogether.

Despite its overwhelming success in preventing the extinction of species, however, the ESA is needed now more than ever. Scientists believe the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate – that is, the speed of extinction that would occur if humans were not around. This phenomenon has become known as the “sixth mass extinction,” which, unlike previous extinction events caused by natural phenomena (like the dinosaurs being wiped out by an asteroid), the sixth mass extinction is driven by human activity, primarily the unsustainable use of air, land, and water, as well as climate change due to factors such as the burning of fossil fuels.

Relatives of the gray wolf – the Mexican gray wolf and red wolf – are among the species most critically endangered with extinction. In 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated there were only 286 Mexican gray wolves remaining in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico. This population is the result of the capture of some of the last remaining Mexican gray wolves in the wild in Mexico and a binational captive breeding program between the United States and Mexico.

The red wolf is in even worse shape than the Mexican gray wolf and is the most endangered wolf in the world. It was once widespread throughout the Southeastern United States. Today, however, the only known wild population – about 20 individuals – is found on the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina. The primary threats to the red wolf population are habitat loss, illegal hunting, motor vehicle collisions, and hybridization with coyotes.

Just when it is needed most, though, the ESA is under threat – not from the usual suspects of farmers, ranchers, logger, miners, and misinformed hunters, but from the federal government itself. In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring a national energy emergency, an order that specifically targeted the ESA in order to undermine it. The order stated, among other things, that the ESA cannot stand as an obstacle to the extraction of energy sources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, and coal.

In furtherance of Trump’s anti-wildlife agenda, Brian Nesvick, Trump’s pick to be the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (responsible for protecting the nation’s fish and wildlife and their habitat on public lands), has proposed to rescind the definition of “harm” under the ESA. Rescinding the definition of “harm” would result in habitat modification or destruction no longer being considered a violation of the ESA, as those actions are defined today.

The term “harm” is found in the ESA’s statutory definition of “take,” and for decades has been defined through regulation as any action that either kills or seriously injures protected wildlife through actions that include habitat modification. Removing the regulatory definition of “harm” would ultimately redefine what constitutes “take” of a species.

The proposal is likely to become finalized next year, and “take” of a species would no longer include activities that modify or degrade species habitat as long as species are not directly killed or injured. The term “take,” however, would still prohibit activities that directly injure or kill wildlife.

Nesvick’s proposal is nothing but a land grab for oil and gas, timber, mining, farming, and ranching interests. By eliminating habitat destruction as a cause of action under the ESA, corporate interests will be much freer to engage in land-use activities that affect protected species habitat.

The fact is, however, there is no actual national energy emergency. According to the U.S. Energy Information Association (EIA), the U.S. produced a record amount of energy in 2024, more than 103 quadrillion British thermal units, which itself was a one percent increase over the previous record set in 2023. The EIA wrote, “Several energy sources—natural gas, crude oil, natural gas plant liquids, biofuels, solar, and wind—each set domestic production records last year.”

Trump’s national energy emergency executive order was simply a lie designed to undermine the Endangered Species Act. “Drill, baby, drill,” Trump promised his supporters on the campaign trail, and his executive order, coupled with Nesvick’s assistance, helped fulfill that promise.

The problem with Trump’s and Nesvick’s attack on the ESA is that a single species interacts with many other species to produce healthy ecosystems which benefit people. The extinction of a single species can have a ripple effect on critical ecological functions that support human life – factors such as a stable climate, predictable regional precipitation patterns, clean air and water, and productive farmland and fisheries.

The renowned naturalist John Muir famously captured these associations when he wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This is the same principle Aldo Leopold articulated when he wrote about the negative effects of wolf removal on the mountain ecosystems of New Mexico.

Trump and Nesvick have a different view of nature than Muir and Leopold did. To Trump and others like them, nature is subordinate to humans and exists solely for human use and benefit. Trump’s view is nothing new, and, in fact, it has largely been the land ethic humans have pursued for most of history. Leopold labeled it the “Abrahamic view,” and expressed it elegantly as the following: “Abraham knew exactly what the land was for: it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham's mouth.” To Trump and Nesvick, milk and honey are corporate profits.

And so, after more than fifty years of successfully protecting endangered and threatened wildlife, the Endangered Species Act itself is in danger. Nesvick’s proposal will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts, but should it prevail (as is likely), the nation will face a scenario in which a few corporations benefit and profit from the destruction of species at the expense of everyone else as well as the natural world.

And once again, we may not know the call of the wild.

 

References

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Associated Press. 2024. “US House Votes to Remove Wolves From Endangered List in 48 States.” US News and World Report, April 30. https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2024-04-30/us-house-votes-to-remove-wolves-from-endangered-list-in-48-states

Busek, Aubry. 2023. “Flight to Survive: From the Razor’s Edge of Extinction, Whooping Cranes Stage a Remarkable Comeback.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, September 21. https://www.fws.gov/story/2023-09/flight-survive

Corbin, Clark and Heath Druzin. 2025. “River of No Return: How the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho.” Idaho Capital Sun, June 11. https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/2025-06-11/river-no-return-nez-perce-tribe-wolf-reintroduction-idaho

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Jones, Emily. 2020. “Idaho’s wild wolves: A look back at the history of wolf reintroduction.” Idaho Mountain Express, September 11. https://www.mtexpress.com/news/environment/idaho-s-wild-wolves-a-look-back-at-the-history-of-wolf-reintroduction/article_0fac201e-f3bc-11ea-8388-ffec050da824.html

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Whittle, Patrick. 2025. “Environmentalists say Trump’s energy order would subvert the Endangered Species Act.” Associated Press, January 22. https://apnews.com/article/trump-climate-change-oil-whales-turtles-9d068d755e8ac4060fd7381178d87421

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Jersey Girls

 

               On Saturday mornings, my mother would put us in the car and drive to McIlhaney’s Dairy in the north valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to buy a few bottles of milk.  My mother was a milk connoisseur who had been raised on raw milk as a young girl.  And even though McIlhaney’s milk was not raw, my mom felt nothing tasted better.  To her, it was worth a special trip to get it.

               When people think of dairy cows, they most often think of the large black-and-white Holsteins, which comprise ninety percent of today’s commercial dairy herds.  Holsteins are favored in the modern dairy business because they produce the most milk of all the breeds of dairy cows, up to nine gallons per day.  More milk means more profit.

McIlhaney’s herd, though, was composed of Jerseys, not Holsteins.  A Jersey cow is much smaller than a Holstein and golden-brown in color.  Not only is it smaller in stature, but it also produces a lot less milk per day, about six gallons.  Due to their lower production, Jerseys are not preferred by today’s large commercial dairies.  Less milk means less profit.

The distinctions don’t end there, though.  The milk itself is quite different between the two breeds, something my mom could tell just by tasting it. Holstein milk is composed of about four percent fat and three percent protein.  Jersey milk, by contrast, is more than five percent fat and nearly four percent protein, earning Jerseys the nickname “butterfat champions.”

Indeed, it was the Jersey milk’s fat that gave it the flavor and texture that my mother and a lot of other people loved about McIlhaney’s milk and why they would drive across town to buy a few bottles.

Few people are as particular as my mother when it comes to milk. But like my mother, milk still represents a tasty, wholesome beverage to most people. And while the consumption of milk has ebbed and flowed over the years because of changing consumer preferences, war-time rationing, and the Covid-19 pandemic, it remains a staple in American homes and school lunches. Consuming several daily servings of dairy is even recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate nutrition guidelines.

It is hard to imagine milk as anything but a healthy part of the American diet. But the story of milk has always been controversial, and it is no different now.

 While many, if not most, people consider milk to be an essential part of a healthy diet (as recommended by the federal government), this wasn’t always the case. In the past, cow’s milk was often associated with disease, not with good nutrition. As late as 1938, milk was responsible for twenty-five percent of all disease outbreaks associated with contaminated food and beverages, so there is little wonder people questioned its consumption.

That milk could be responsible for disease is not surprising, because science could not have designed a better Petri dish than a bottle of raw milk. Raw milk is loaded with high energy protein, fat, carbohydrates, and sugar.  It is also rich in minerals including potassium, calcium, phosphorous, and sodium.  And, it is full of vitamins including A, B2, and B12. 

Consequently, bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, C. diphtheriae, and mycobacterium thrive in raw milk. These bacteria cause various human diseases, including tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, septic sore throat, and typhoid fever. Similarly, the H5N1 virus, which causes bird flu, has been found to be present in the milk of H5N1-infected dairy cows. In addition, Stanford University researchers found that a strain of human influenza called H1N1 PR8 could survive in refrigerated raw milk for up to five days.

In practice, these bacteria and viruses can arise in milk from a variety of sources: unclean conditions such as with dirt and feces; from within the cow itself such as with the mycobacterium bovis bacteria that causes tuberculosis in both cattle and humans; and from dairy worker mucus such as with the H1N1 virus.

Contamination by bacteria wasn’t as much of a problem when milk came from the family cow, because the family cow could be kept clean and well cared for and its milk only had to be transported from the barn to the refrigerator (or icebox). Moreover, the milk was consumed by a single family, not the public at large, which limited the spread of contamination. Therefore, the risks of disease were minimal.

By the late 19^th century, though, for the first time more Americans lived in the city than the countryside. My mother witnessed this firsthand when her family moved from their small farm in the rural south valley of Albuquerque to a housing subdivision on the city’s west mesa, leaving behind the family cow.

As a result of America’s urbanization, the development of commercial dairies accelerated, replacing the family cow. Milk from these commercial dairies came from cows that were more likely to be kept in crowded and unsanitary conditions. And their milk also had to be transported longer distances and, prior to refrigerated trucking, stored at higher temperatures than ever before. In the process, milk became a major vector of human disease.

To protect themselves from milk-borne illnesses, people took steps to purify milk.  The simplest and most effective way to do so was simply to boil it, which killed the harmful bacteria and viruses, rendering the milk safe to drink and to use in milk products like cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.

An important innovation that used boiling to sterilize milk was evaporation. A Swiss dairyman by the name of John Meyenberg, known as “Cheese John,” is credited with the innovation as well as the formation of the Carnation Milk Company.  In 1899, working with Kent, Washington, dairy farmers, Cheese John developed a process in which boiling was used to evaporate sixty percent of the water in milk, yielding a concentrated milk fluid.  The concentrate was then canned, which also required boiling.

Evaporated milk met a lot of consumer needs. Importantly, it was free from pathogens. And it could be substituted for conventional milk in many recipes or even diluted with an equal part of water to resemble fresh milk. Since it was canned, it could be safely transported long distances and stored at room temperature.

Evaporated milk had one big disadvantage, though: it had what people felt was a “cooked” or “caramelized” flavor.  Consequently, the public did not accept it as a substitute for fresh milk.

Another innovation, known as pasteurization, fixed not only the milk contamination problem but the taste problem, too. The process of pasteurization pre-dated evaporation, but it wasn’t adopted for commercial use until many years after evaporated milk came to market. 

The French scientist Louis Pasteur is credited with creating pasteurization. In 1857, he identified microscopic organisms, or microbes, in milk, beer, and wine that were responsible for making people sick. In 1863, Pasteur further discovered these microbes could be killed by raising the temperature of milk, beer, or wine to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and then quickly cooling them down.

Today, pasteurization uses a higher temperature (160 degrees Fahrenheit), but the idea is the same.  The big advantage of pasteurization over evaporation is that the milk is not actually cooked (boiled), which preserves its natural flavor.

Despite the advantages of pasteurization, it was not immediately adopted by the food industry. In what may be one of the biggest cliches of food processing, the Frenchman Pasteur focused more on wine than milk. Pasteurization of milk languished, and it wasn’t until the 1920s when market regulations finally required it in every corner of the country that it became the standard for milk safety and preservation.

With the widespread adoption of pasteurization, it appeared the problem of eliminating harmful contaminants from milk while still retaining its taste was finally solved. This was not the case, however, as new substances found their way into the milk supply, ones that were not eliminated by pasteurization.

Pasteurization solved the microbial problems that plagued raw milk; however, even milk that has been pasteurized is sometimes home to a variety of other substances with questionable, if not actually negative, effects on humans.  These substances include artificial hormones, antibiotics, and toxins, all of which are passed along to humans through the consumption of milk.

It is important to note that all milk, including human milk, contains a range of naturally occurring hormones including estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Even soy milk contains nonsteroidal plant hormones called phytoestrogens.

About twenty percent of farmers, however, also inject cows with an artificial hormone to increase their milk production. More milk means more profit. This artificial hormone is called recombinant bovine somatrotropin (rBST), also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). rBST was created in the laboratory by the food company Monsanto, using genetic engineering to insert the DNA sequence of the cow’s natural growth hormone (BST) into the DNA of the bacteria E. coli. rBST can increase milk production by as much as ten percent.

Even though rBST is injected into the animal, not added directly to the milk, the hormone shows up in the milk of injected cows. Naturally, many people are concerned about the health effects of rBST on the human body. It is important to note that rBST and BST are not active in human bodies, so scientists do not believe they directly cause health effects for people exposed to the hormones through drinking milk.

Cows treated with rBST, however, have higher levels of the hormone IGF-1 in their milk, and several scientific studies have found that IGF-1 at the high end of the normal range may influence the development of certain cancers, including prostate, breast, and colorectal. To date, however, scientists have not proved a definitive link between rBST, IGF-1, and cancer in humans.

Regardless of what scientists now believe, news of this possible correlation created a major backlash against rBST in the milk market. As a result, by 2010, one hundred of the nation’s top dairies, major grocery stores, and fast-food restaurants went rBST-free. Tillamook, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, and Chipotle are but a few of the names of companies rejecting the artificial hormone.

Significant doses of growth hormones, coupled with overcrowding, stress, and immobility, subject dairy cows to a variety of health problems including infections (mastitis), muscle inflammations, fevers, and parasitic worms. Although dairy farming practices are regulated, they vary widely in terms of housing, feeding, milking, healthcare, and waste management, and many dairy cows are consigned to a short, brutish life.

These difficult conditions are in turn treated with a slew of drugs, including antibiotics (such as penicillin, florfenicol, sulfamethazine, and sulfadimethoxine), non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (flunixin), and anti-parasitics (ivermectin).

In many cases, the antibiotics used on dairy cows are the same ones used to treat human infection (for example, penicillin). And their overuse has led to medical concerns about the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The extent of antibiotic use in animal husbandry is staggering. Eighty percent of antibiotics manufactured in the U.S. are dispensed to livestock, not to humans. And a 2017 United Nations study reported that 141,000 tons of antibiotics were given to feed animals in that year alone.

When people drink milk in which antibiotic residue is present, they are in effect receiving a small, non-therapeutic dose of the antibiotic, creating an opportunity for drug resistance to develop. Furthermore, cows excrete the antibiotics into the soil, where bacteria in the soil can also develop resistance. When bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics which once effectively treated them, they become an even larger threat to human health.

Finally, cows are also exposed to a variety of environmental toxins resulting from human activities such as farming, burning fossil fuels, smelting, refining, and manufacturing. Independent studies have found the herbicide atrazine, as well as the insecticides permethrin, cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, and diazinon, in milk samples supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In that sense, not much has changed since scientist and environmental pioneer Rachel Carson called out the presence of the pesticide DDT in milk in 1962.

Given the plethora of contaminants possible in milk, whether originating from nature or from human activities, it is clear the regulation of milk is essential to ensure the product is safe for human consumption.

The regulation of milk began in the early 20^th century. A major factor showing that regulation was needed was the work of Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemist and physician who led the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Chemistry (the predecessor to today’s Food and Drug Administration) from 1882 to 1912. Wiley might be best known for a series of experiments he conducted on human volunteers (dubbed the “Poison Squad”) to test the effects of various food preservatives on the human body.

Wiley collected milk samples that he showed suffered from numerous dangers. Much of the milk he tested had been thinned with dirty water. Once thinned, it had to be thickened again; chalk and plaster of Paris were popular choices for thickening agents. Sometimes toxic dyes were added to make the “milk” look more golden instead of gray or blue.  And finally, preservatives were used because the resulting concoction was prone to rot. The most popular preservative was formaldehyde, an embalming compound.

As a result of Wiley’s work to expose unscrupulous food processors and tainted milk, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into the law the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The act’s main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate trade in adulterated and misbranded food and drug products. It directed the Division of Chemistry to inspect those products and refer offenders for prosecution.

Even though the Pure Food and Drug Act was a milestone in the federal government’s involvement in the regulation of food and drugs, the law was primarily a truth-in-labeling law. It did not give the Division of Chemistry the power to set food and drug standards.

Without strong federal oversight, states and municipalities took up the cause to regulate milk. By the 1920s, milk regulations requiring pasteurization had reached virtually every part of the country.  The regulations, however, were a hodge podge of state and local laws: some jurisdictions restricted the sale of raw milk, while others did not.

To address the deficiencies in the federal law, in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which replaced the Pure Food and Drug Act, and gave the Food and Drug Administration (the Division of Chemistry had been renamed in 1930) the power to establish standards for foods, drugs, and cosmetics. The new act remains the statutory basis for the federal regulation of milk today.

But it wasn’t until 1973 that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was charged with overseeing the interstate sale of milk, ruled that nearly all milk had to be pasteurized if it crossed state lines.  An exception to the law was made for so-called “certified” raw milk.  Subsequent studies linked even certified raw milk with disease, however.  Thus, in 1987, the FDA finally mandated that all milk used in interstate commerce must be pasteurized.

               It should be noted that within state boundaries, the sale of raw milk is still permissible in all but twenty-one states. Of those states that permit its sale, some only permit on-farm sales while a handful allow retail sales, too.

In addition to pasteurization requirements, the federal government established standards for antibiotics, artificial hormones, and pesticides in milk. These are known as maximum residue limits, which are the maximum acceptable levels of pesticides and veterinary drugs in food and agricultural products that will not be a concern to human health. Specifically, the FDA approved the use of rBST in 1993.

Thus, after more than a century, it seemed that technology and regulation finally caught up with ensuring a safe milk supply. Having a safe milk supply would appear to be uncontroversial, but true to its history, the debates over milk rage on today.

Until recently, one of the biggest controversies about milk centered on conventional versus organic milk.  Even though federal regulations stipulate the maximum residue limits that are thought to be safe in milk, many people didn’t want any level of pesticides and veterinary drugs in their milk. And, according to an Emory University study published in Public Health Nutrition, conventional milk does, in fact, contain low to elevated levels of artificial hormones, antibiotics, and toxins, while organic milk does not. Therefore, as a matter of personal choice, many consumers made the switch to organic milk.

The most recent controversy, however, sets the milk debate back a hundred years: raw versus pasteurized. The resurgence of interest in raw milk is a social phenomenon that is driven by a variety of diverse groups, all converging at the same point. These groups include health food advocates seeking unadulterated whole foods, fitness enthusiasts trying to find the next superfood, and even status seekers willing to pay twice the cost of conventional milk for a status symbol.

Perhaps the most influential group, though, is the anti-science, anti-government faction that rails against governmental regulation, sparking a backlash against pasteurization. This group, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, revels in defying the established science and ignoring the checkered history of raw milk.

Yet, defying the federal government doesn’t change the facts: the risks with raw milk persist.  From 1998 to 2018, 2,645 people were sickened by raw milk. Of those, 228 were hospitalized and 3 died.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, more than 20,000 employees have been terminated from Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA. As a result, in April 2025, the FDA suspended its quality control program for milk and other dairy products, due to the reduced workforce in its food safety and nutrition division. This downsizing sets the country back years in its efforts to ensure a safe milk supply and foreshadows a return of the bad ole days.

All of this would have demoralized my mother, who loved a simple glass of milk from McIlhaney’s Dairy. To her, there was nothing controversial about it and nothing sinister about the federal government trying to keep her milk free from contamination.

Today, McIlhaney’s no longer exists, and its small herd of Jerseys is only a childhood memory. The dairy’s disappearance is not the result of a decline in the demand for high-quality milk. Far from it. More than ever, health-conscious consumers desire milk which is free from germs, hormones, antibiotics, and toxins. In fact, in 2024, Americans consumed some forty million more gallons of milk than they did the previous year, reversing a slump in sales dating back to 2009.

Rather, McIlhaney’s disappearance is the result of the same factors that put many other family dairies (and family milk cows) out of business: urbanization, the rise of mega farms, and children who didn’t want to follow in the family business.

When my mother used to take us to buy milk, the north valley of Albuquerque was still populated with small farms and dairies like McIlhaney’s. But McIlhaney’s was prime real estate for the growth of the Albuquerque metropolitan area, a region that would balloon from 300,000 to 1,000,000 people. Eventually, as Albuquerque expanded, the dairy was pushed out in favor of single-family homes, churches, self-storage units, distribution centers, and other non-agricultural uses. Urbanization guaranteed there was no room for a dairy with its associated smells, solid waste, and effluence.

Over the same period, the business model for dairies changed, too.  It was a change that rendered small dairies obsolete while Big Dairy developed massive operations to produce ever more milk.  William McIlhaney, the patriarch of the family, lamented this fact in a 1996 interview when he noted that in his lifetime the typical size of a dairy had increased ten-fold, from one hundred cows to more than a thousand.

Given these factors, it is no wonder that William McIlhaney’s children didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. Dairy farming has become big business, one shrouded in controversy.  There was a time when a family dairy could provide a decent, albeit strenuous, living, and people would drive across town to buy its milk. Today, dairies are mostly the province of corporations filled with lawyers, marketers, lobbyists, and accountants.

In the end, the rise and fall of McIlhaney’s Jersey girls is the story of milk in America.

 

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