Published on September 1, 1993

Laini Fondiller sells cheese at the Montpelier Farmers Market in 2007.  Photos by Joseph Gresser

WESTFIELD — Laini Fondiller of Westfield milks goats, makes cheese, and sells it at farmers' markets.  She's been so successful that she's interested in expanding her herd.

"I want to go up to six.," she said  "I'm milking four."

What she doesn't want to do is milk 20 goats and build a full-scale processing plant with an expensive pasteurizing machine.

But the Vermont Department of Agriculture says she cannot continue to make cheese out of raw goat milk and sell it.

Ms. Fondiller is not alone.  In fact, she and Byron Moyer of the Department of Agriculture are organizing a meeting, probably for sometime later this month, for producers of very small amounts of dairy products who have been selling their wares at farmers' markets, technically illegally, for years.

Ms. Fondiller has been doing it since 1988.

"They told me to stop, and I really kind of said, no I'm not," she said.

She said people at the department told her she was liable for someone getting sick.  But she figures she is liable anyways, with or without the department's blessing.

She said she believes the law says that anyone who produces less than 24 quarts of milk a day is exempt from getting a license.

"We understood that the farmers' market was the extension of the home," she said.  "It's a buyer-beware kind of thing."

She said she keeps her cheese cold in a cooler at the market and tells customers to take it right home, or else she'll hold it for them until they're

A selection of the cheeses Ms. Fondiller brought to Montpelier.

ready.  If they're tourists with no cooler, she said she won't sell them her cheese.

This seemed to her to be working fine until a short time ago.  The change in official stance arose after a recent outbreak of salmonella from a small goat cheese maker in the Chelsea area.  Ms. Fondiller said salmonella is a tricky disease and mentioned that there was also an outbreak at a very elite restaurant recently.  In other words, it could happen to anyone.

She said she is trying to do what the department has been recommending for years — diversify and provide a new agricultural product — and she feels she should be getting more support from the state.

"Okay, we'll be licensed.  But give us something we can afford," she said.  "I don't want to drive big tractors all the time and milk 100 cows," she said.

She used to be a herdsperson for a large farm and always wanted to be involved in agriculture herself somehow.  This is how she's decided to do it.

She said if she can work something out with the state and expand, she expects to milk between six and eight goats.

"Between six and eight goats you can make $200 to $300 a week," she said.

That's only for part of the year, however.  She has a large loom and makes rugs from 30 sheep the rest of the time.  She sells small rugs at the farmers' markets and large ones to furniture stores and homeowners.

Mr. Moyer of the Department of Agriculture explained Tuesday that the 24-quart rule specifically addresses raw milk only.  It was meant as an exemption to allow farmers to sell family or employees a small amount of raw milk without a special license.

"Once you take the milk and modify it," Mr. Moyer said, it doesn't qualify under the 24-quart rule.

He said making cheese in a "stove-top operation" has always been illegal, and despite producers' impressions, it was never the state's intention to look the other way when it happened.  Salmonella is a serious disease and could even be fatal in an infirm or frail elderly person, he said.  Raw milk can also carry other serious diseases, he added.

Mr. Moyer said the reason people have the impression it's a new decision is that after the salmonella outbreak from goat cheese, he sent a memo to managers of farmers' markets spelling out the letter of the law.  Until the outbreak, he said, the department had no knowledge of the goat cheese maker involved.

He said the memo encouraged the managers of farmers' markets to ask for licenses from dairy product sellers, and he sent a copy of the license so they would know what it looks like.

"If somebody is making soap or fudge I don't care," he said.  But he does care about soft cheeses.  Some aged cheeses can be made without pasteurizing, he said, and he is working with an organic farmer who is doing just that, with a license.

Some people make fudge from goat's milk, Mr. Moyer said, and that's not a problem because the process involves a lot of cooking and uses sugar, which inhibits bacteria growth.

He said he is willing to work with people like Ms. Fondiller, and he thinks he has some practical ideas for them.  For example, although one producer with six goats could hardly afford a pasteurizing plant, a group that formed a cooperative could do it.

"One of the problems is these people are fiercely independent," said Mr. Moyer.

He said he has been working with someone who just opened a dairy goat cheese plant in the Putney area, and he is planning to get some pictures to show the small producers — if and when a meeting can be arranged.

"I sympathize with Laini.  But by the same token, you've got to realize that what we're talking about here is human food," he said.

He said he doesn't buy the "buyer beware" idea because as soon as consumers see that kind of information on a label, the producer will lose his or her market.

"What they would like is some sort of separate set of regulations for these ultra-small producers," he said, and some areas may be negotiable.

But Mr. Moyer pointed out that, unfortunately, the most non-negotiable aspects, like pasteurization, are the most expensive to implement.

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