Farmer-consumer group challenges FDA authority to ban interstate raw-milk sales

'The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is taking on the Big Enchilada in the raw milk war: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prohibition on interstate shipment of raw milk.

The FTCLDF filed suit over the weekend in U.S. District court against FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and the secretary of the FDA’s parent agency, Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, challenging the constitutionality of the agency’s prohibition, enacted in 1987.

It filed the suit on behalf of consumers and a farmer from six different states; the consumers all travel from states where raw milk sales are illegal to buy it in states where it’s allowed for sale and the farmer sells to out-of-state consumers.'