AN ACT CONCERNING THE SALE OF ADULTERATED MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS.

This bill explicitly prohibits selling, offering to sell, bartering, or exchanging adulterated milk, milk products, or cheese (i. e. , dairy products), and other activities related to these products. A first violation is an infraction and a second violation within one year is a class A misdemeanor. It exempts from its prohibitions production of dairy products for personal consumption or consumption by immediate family members.

The bill eliminates the Department of Agriculture (DOAG) commissioner's option to adopt regulations that incorporate by reference the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. It requires instead that all milk dealers processing, handling, storing, distributing, transporting, selling, offering for sale, bartering, or exchanging any dairy product comply with the sanitation, handling, storage, and processing requirements of relevant state milk and milk product laws and regulations.

It defines “adulterated” and “misbranded” dairy products and makes technical changes.

The bill explicitly prohibits adulterating dairy products and selling, offering to sell, bartering, or exchanging them. It also prohibits:

1. selling, offering for sale, bartering, exchanging, manufacturing, distributing, or processing such products from an unlicensed facility or

2. selling, offering for sale, distributing, or offering for barter or exchange milk for pasteurization, retail raw milk, or retail raw milk cheese from an unregistered dairy farm. (By law, dairy product facilities must be licensed by and dairy farms must be registered with DOAG. )

Under the bill, violators commit (1) an infraction for the first violation and (2) a class A misdemeanor for the second or subsequent violation within a year of the first. (An infraction is not a crime but subjects the violator to a fee; a class A misdemeanor is punishable by up to one year in prison, a $ 2,000 fine, or both. ) The bill specifies that nothing in it prevents the DOAG commissioner from seeking any other remedy the law provides.

By law, the DOAG commissioner may tag or otherwise mark a dairy product that is suspected of being adulterated or misbranded. Violators are subject to an administrative civil penalty.

The bill defines “adulterated” as any milk, milk product, retail raw milk, or cheese that:

1. bears or contains any poisonous or deleterious substance, which may render the dairy product injurious to health; provided, if the substance is not an added substance, the dairy product is not considered adulterated if the quantity of the substance would not ordinarily render it injurious to health;

2. bears or contains any added poisonous or deleterious substance that is unsafe;

3. consists in whole or part of any diseased, contaminated, filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or is otherwise unfit for food;

4. has been produced, prepared, packed, or held under unsanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth or rendered diseased, unwholesome, or injurious to health; or

5. has packaging or a container which is composed in whole or part of any poisonous or deleterious substance, which may render the contents injurious to health.

The bill defines “misbranded” as the use of any label, written or printed advertising, or graphic upon or accompanying a product or container of milk, milk products, or cheese, including, but not limited to, signs, electronic displays, electronic communication, placards, or other means of communication intended to provide information to consumers, which is false or misleading or which violates any applicable municipal, state, or federal labeling requirement.

Infractions are punishable by fines, usually set by Superior Court judges, of between $ 35 and $ 90, plus an additional fee based on the amount of the fine and a $ 20 surcharge. An infraction is not a crime; thus, violators do not have criminal records and can pay the fine by mail without making a court appearance.

The Connecticut Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is intended, in part, to safeguard the public health and promote the public welfare by protecting consumers from harm caused by merchandising deceit.

The Connecticut act bans, among other things, the sale in intrastate commerce of food that is adulterated or misbranded (CGS § 21a-93). Among several grounds, a food is adulterated if any valuable part of it has been substituted wholly or in part (CGS § 21a-101). Among several grounds, a food is misbranded if (1) its labeling is false or misleading in any particular; (2) it is offered for sale under the name of another food; (3) it is a food for which no standard of identity has been established and it (a) falls below the standard of purity, quality, or strength which it purports or is represented to possess or (b) does not bear its common or the usual name of each ingredient, except that spices, flavorings, and colorings may be designated as such without being specifically named (CGS § 21a-102). The law deems federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act standards of identity to be state standards for enforcement purposes (CGS § 21a-100).

Enforcement Powers. The act authorizes the Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) commissioner or his agents to embargo food that they have probable cause to believe violates the standards of identity requirements. Once the commissioner has embargoed an item, he has 21 days to either begin summary proceedings to confiscate it or remove the embargo. Proceedings are held in Superior Court by complaint and verified by affidavit. The law stipulates the elements of a complaint.

Once a verified complaint has been filed, the court must issue a warrant to seize the described article and summon the person named in the complaint. The law requires the court to hold a hearing not less than five days or more than 15 days from the date of the warrant. The court must order the food confiscated if it appears that it was offered for sale in violation of the act. If the food is not injurious to health and could be brought into compliance with the act if it is repackaged or relabeled, the court may order it delivered to its owner upon payment of court costs and provision of a bond to DCP assuring that the product will be brought into compliance (CGS § 21a-96).

Yea

Nay

(03/13/2009)