SALEM — Oregon farm regulators are urging raw milk producers to register as confined animal feeding operations, responding to concerns about uneven environmental enforcement among conventional dairies.

The outreach effort has raised the hackles of raw milk advocates, who suspect it’s driven by antipathy toward unpasteurized dairy products, rather than legitimate worries about wastewater management.

CAFO permit requirements are commonly waived for small family dairies that produce milk for personal use, raising questions about the state Department of Agriculture’s motivations, according to raw milk producers at an April 13 meeting with agency officials.

“If the purpose is to protect the environment, I don’t see how the environmental impact changes if one sells the milk,” said Christine Anderson, a raw milk dairy operator near McMinnville, Ore.

Raw milk is often sold directly to consumers by farms, exempt from state dairy licensing standards, that own no more than two producing cows or nine producing sheep or goats.

Their small size may not exempt these dairies from CAFO regulations, though many appear unaware of the requirement as they’re operating without permits, said Wym Matthews, ODA’s CAFO program manager.

Milking necessarily means confining the animals and generating wastewater by cleaning the equipment, which ODA believes brings raw milk dairies under the CAFO definition, Matthews said.

The conventional dairy industry contends raw milk dairies are growing in number but not sharing in the cost of ODA’s environmental oversight, giving them a competitive advantage, Matthews said.

A search of raw milk dairies advertising online turned up about 100 such non-permitted farms operating in the state, he said.

To level the playing field and ensure pollutants aren’t discharged into waterways, the agency is advising raw milk dairies to obtain CAFO permits without enforcing the requirement through 2023, Matthews said.

“We’re not fining anybody this year, we’re not putting anyone out of business this year,” he said. “We are not proposing penalties for anybody during the outreach period.”

While permits for large CAFOs have met with opposition in recent years, Matthews said the public notice-and-comment process only applies to large facilities and isn’t likely to be triggered by raw milk dairies.

“I just don’t anticipate these facilities being that size,” he said.

The application for a CAFO permit costs $125 and applicants are expected to devise nutrient management plans to prevent wastewater runoff, Matthews said.

In reality, all dairy operators already have plans for dealing with waste, but CAFO rules confirm they don’t cause unlawful discharge, he said.

The agency doesn’t dictate how to achieve that objective and each farmer has a different approach, which may require nothing more than a bucket and pitchfork, Matthews said.

“Everybody has to drive the speed limit but everyone has a different car,” he said.

Obtaining a CAFO permit may offer advantages, serving as a legal shield if neighbors complain about ordinary farm practices, he said. “Right-to-farm protects you if you’re a legal facility.”

Despite these assurances, raw milk producers and advocates at the meeting appeared skeptical of ODA’s outreach effort.

The agency has repurposed the definition of “confinement” to include animals sheltered for about five minutes during milking, said Anderson, the McMinnville raw dairy producer.

Expecting a farm with two cows to comply with CAFO record-keeping requirements isn’t realistic or likely to benefit the environment, she said.

The ODA’s approach suffers from “constitutional infirmities,” such as regulating farms with two cows more rigorously than properties with hundreds of horses, said Ari Bargil, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm that opposes government overreach.

The agency’s claim that raw milk dairies qualify as CAFOs is also problematic, particularly since ODA acknowledges acting at the behest of much larger and more profitable operations, he said.

“The department’s definition is openly protectionist,” Bargil said.

Targeting only those dairies that sell their products isn’t a fair way of applying permit requirements or preventing environmental damage, said Alice Morrison, co-executive director of the Friends of Family Farmers, a nonprofit that supports raw milk producers.

Raw milk producers aren’t actually in competition with conventional dairies, since they must expend labor on marketing directly to consumers instead of relying on a distribution system, she said.

“You’re not able to take advantage of any of the infrastructure for the industry,” Morrison said.

By scrutinizing small raw milk producers, ODA risks the perception it’s taking action amid the broader fight over CAFO regulations, said Bryan Schmidt, a Yamhill County farmer.

Friends of Family Farmers and other groups sympathetic to raw milk producers are calling for Oregon lawmakers to impose a moratorium on the largest tier of CAFOs.

The agency’s push for CAFO permits could be seen as retaliation, in a roundabout way, on behalf of large dairy operations, Schmidt said. “It looks as if I’m being punished for that.”