In a unanimous decision yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vindicated Ocheesee Creamery’s free speech rights when it reversed a district court’s decision that prevented the creamery from telling its customers the truth about the products it sells.
Ocheesee Creamery is a small, all-natural dairy farm located in rural Florida that prides itself on selling organic products to its customers. This mission requires that they not add ingredients to the food they sell. One such product the creamery offered was “skim milk”—which is simply milk that has had the cream removed. For a number of years, Ocheesee sold its milk and accurately labeled it as pure pasteurized skim milk—nothing more, nothing less.
In 2012, however, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) told the small business that it had to inject its all-natural milk with artificial vitamins or quit telling its customers that what they were offering was skim milk, and instead call it “imitation milk product.” FDACS regulations define skim milk as milk that is not just milk, but as milk injected with vitamins A and D. Now, you might ask yourself how injecting artificial ingredients into all-natural product transforms it into something that is considered “imitation”. Yet that’s precisely what the FDACS requires under its regulations.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/government-cant-ban-businesses-telling-their-customers-truth
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