What a great way to end a year — and begin a new one.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which is now law, not only because it represents major progress in improving the nourishment of American schoolkids, but because of what it says about the moment that dairy is experiencing, and the great opportunities this industry has to build on that momentum.
Just as much as $11 billion in new plant investment the industry is now experiencing, this legislation’s passage tells the story of how dairy has reasserted itself as essential to the American diet, after that position was seemingly threatened merely a dozen years ago. When whole milk was restricted from school menus in 2012, it was billed as a health measure — in that telling, milk had too much saturated fat, and too many calories, to be acceptable in anything other than 1% or skim forms. The types of milk Americans drank most at the time — whole and 2% milkfat — were rendered suspect in the eyes of the federal government, a move with significant implications for federal programs and the next generation of milk-drinkers.
The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, an effort led in the House by Rep. GT Thompson since 2019, frankly, was considered “aspirational” for several years — a nice idea, but not one with much hope of becoming reality. Demonization of dairy was rampant in media, and plant-based beverages were the next big thing, with sales and market share rising. It would have been easy at that time to have despaired for the industry, which also was going through a period of low prices and intensified consolidation.
But dairy farmers had a product they believed in. And in retrospect, from “almonds don’t lactate” statements at FDA to falling sales in some plant-based beverage categories, cracks were showing in the “Death of Dairy” armor.
The COVID-19 pandemic was the inflection point, as consumers increasingly sought tried-and-true nutrition options and became better educated about dairy’s value — as a result, they began buying noticeably more of it. Cottage cheese became a Gen Z craze that spread. Whey protein became the go-to energy supplement. Even as schools restricted options, the percentage of milk bought at retail that was whole or 2% increased. Plant-based beverage sales peaked in 2021 and have been declining since. Fluid milk sales reversed decades of decline, increasing in 2023.
Just as importantly, science began to more convincingly support what we knew all along — dairy fats don’t deserve demonization, and in fact have nutritional values we didn’t fully understand earlier. As fat concerns were shown to be overblown, it wasn’t just parents who endorsed dairy — it was leading nutritionists. And with marketplace and scientific consensus in alignment, Congress began to notice. Whole milk legislation moved from dream to no-brainer; in 2023 it became an overwhelmingly bipartisan reality in the House of Representatives, which easily passed GT Thompson’s bill. It would have passed the Senate too, were it not for concerns that Congress was outrunning the dietary guidelines, which was still looking backward at the science. We went to work on overcoming that concern, both in congressional advocacy and in reinforcing the newer finding on whole milk benefits.
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