Why bring our dairy history up now?<\/p>\n
Because both President Donald J. Trump and his Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are on a dairy kick. They\u2019ve stood the longtime food pyramid on its pointy head, instead promoting lots of meat and whole milk foods over a healthier diet grounded in whole grains and vegetables.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Agriculture Department has posted an image of Trump leaning forward on his knuckles on the Oval Office desk, a belligerent look on his face and a milk mustache on his upper lip. RFK Jr.\u2019s more genial video version shows him sipping a glass of milk and being dreamily transported to a lively dance floor.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771086748_471_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
A postcard from Houk\u2019s Farm Creamery, 331 W. 5th St., in downtown L.A. Circa 1910.<\/p>\n
(Collection of Patt Morrison)<\/p>\n
Maybe it hardly matters to consumers whether the milk is skim or full-fat \u2014 the former with about half the calories per glass and of course none of the fat of the latter \u2014 but fat or skim, 1 in every 5 glasses of milk that\u2019s drunk in this country comes from California dairy companies.<\/p>\n
How did California do it? How did it snatch the crown from \u201cAmerica\u2019s Dairyland,\u201d the motto on the license plate of Wisconsin? The \u201cBadger State\u201d still holds the cheese-making champion title but lost the overall dairy edge in 1993, when California surpassed it as the milk-producing leader.<\/p>\n
That PR campaign about the country\u2019s top dairy title was brutal, and costly \u2014 $23 million on California\u2019s end. The first punch was landed by the \u201cGot Milk?\u201d campaign<\/a> from the California milk industry, with one 1993 TV commercial in particular.<\/p>\n It was directed by that Michael Bay, and in it, an Alexander Hamilton super-fan is eating a peanut butter sandwich when his phone rings. It\u2019s a radio quiz show: for $10,000, who killed Alexander Hamilton? The fan shouts \u201cAaron Burr! Aaron Burr!\u201d but his mouth is so stuck full of peanut butter that he\u2019s unintelligible. He reaches for his carton of milk \u2014 it\u2019s empty. The radio quiz caller finally says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, maybe next time.\u201d Cut to the screen message: \u201cGot milk?\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how California did it. It\u2019s not just California\u2019s greater size, but its dairy practices. In Wisconsin, dairy farms are smaller, herds are smaller, and cows are usually sent out to pasture to graze in good weather, which is not easy to come by in Wisconsin. Not all Wisconsin cows are grass-fed, but grass-fed milk can have up to twice the beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids compared to milk from feedlot cows.<\/p>\n And feedlot cows are what California has. Dairying here quickly scaled up to an industrial level, like factory-grade milk production. Forget cows ambling in biodiverse pastures. Here, rather like the Chicago stockyards, thousands of dairy cows are fed in crowded feedlots by a method called intensive and dry-lot feeding, or, alternately, kept indoors in barns.<\/p>\n Feedlot cows are given a special blend of hay, alfalfa, soybean meal, sometimes almond hulls and even what we\u2019d call leftovers \u2014 human candy and leftover baked goods.<\/p>\n These cows yield more milk but can be more susceptible to health problems. In August 1977, humidity and heat from a tropical storm was blamed for killing 725 dairy cows in Chino. Experts speculated that dry-lot cows can\u2019t sweat as freely as free-range cows, and that weather and feedlot conditions contributed to deadly heat exhaustion.<\/p>\n It all began through the first decades of the 20th century, when good-sized pieces of land in southeast LA County could be had for not much money, and there was water for agriculture \u2014 Artesia was named for its artesian wells \u2014 and specifically crops to feed the cows.<\/p>\n Dairymen from the Netherlands and from the Portuguese Azores staged dairy festivals and competitions, and went to culturally based schools and churches. And they soon embraced mechanized milking and the feedlot model to up their yield.<\/p>\n African American coach driver for a Pacific Creamery Co. carriage, 1905. Written on back of photo: Negro ice cream vendor using a cow to pull his \u201cLily Cream\u201d wagon. <\/p>\n (UCLA Library Special Collections)<\/p>\n The city of Paramount was incorporated in 1958 by folding together a pair of renowned dairy and hay communities named Hynes and Clearwater. In downtown Paramount, a five-story-tall tree bears state historical marker No. 1038. It\u2019s the 130-year-old Hay Tree. Hynes bragged about being the \u201cworld\u2019s largest hay market\u201d whose prices were listed in New York, and jawed over and set daily by local farmers and hay growers who gathered under the branches of that camphor tree.<\/p>\n Still, in 1965, as agriculture of all kinds was being crowded out by subdivisions, California enacted the Williamson Act to give tax breaks to landowners who kept their property dedicated to agriculture.<\/p>\n Even that wasn\u2019t incentive enough for some dairy farmers, whom developers were offering 10, 20, 50 times what they had paid for their land. Some sold up and left. Others, like German immigrant August Handorf, simply relocated \u2014 repeatedly.<\/p>\n As neighborhoods went up, his dairy business moved on: from Highland Park to Eagle Rock to the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue \u2014 for a time in the 1920s and 1930s the busiest intersection in the nation. He moved his operation way out to Burbank, to land now occupied by Warner Bros. studios. And Handorf bought land near La Puente, which he forbade his family from selling. Not until he died, in 1955, was it sold off.<\/p>\n Alta Dena was founded by three Stueve brothers in Monrovia at the end of World War II, with 61 cows and a milk wagon. Now it\u2019s owned by a dairy cooperative but for decades, the Stueve family catered to local tastes and habits, like drive-through dairy windows. The Stueve brothers always defended raw milk, as brother Melvin Stueve phrased it, \u201cthe very best and safest milk there is.\u201d<\/p>\n Bosch Dairy in Ontario, Calif., in 2022.<\/p>\n (Irfan Khan\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Here in California, raw milk products are sold at higher-end markets, but must be labeled thus: \u201cWARNING: Raw (unpasteurized) milk and raw milk dairy products may contain disease-causing microorganisms. Persons at highest risk of disease from these organisms include newborns and infants; the elderly; pregnant women; those taking corticosteroids, antibiotics or antacids; and those having chronic illnesses or other conditions that weaken their immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Still raw milk has a big-name poster guy in RFK Jr., who not only fancies whole milk but swears by raw milk and drank unpasteurized milk \u201cshooters\u201d at the White House. Soft cheeses made with such unpasteurized milk can run an infection risk from listeria bacteria, a special danger for pregnant women and newborns.<\/p>\n![\"African](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771086748_976_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Dairy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771086749_752_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"Black-and-white](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771086749_618_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Patt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771086749_517_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n