Dairy watchdog The Milkweed marks 40th anniversary

Pete Hardin (Isthmus photo)

The Milkweed, a gutsy watchdog of the dairy industry in Wisconsin and the nation, marked its 40th anniversary in June. The monthly's motto, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," comes from Muhammad Ali, and signals publisher Pete Hardin's willingness to bedevil and challenge the powerful.

"Year after year, Hardin has been a hard-edged voice challenging exploitative food processors, errant farm cooperatives, bullying seed companies, and self-serving agricultural groups that he feels habitually abuse the farmers who enrich them," Marc Eisen reports for Madison weekly Isthmus.

Hardin's "intensely fact-based, assiduously sourced" reporting makes him a sought-after source for reporters nationwide, and his independence from influence makes his voice all the more important. "Pete’s not beholden to the forces that other publications are," Milkweed farm reporter Jan Shepel told Eisen. "He takes to task people who have gotten too big for their britches. You don’t see a lot of that in farm publications."

Hardin's tenacity has led to some big stories over the years. "Years ahead of the national press, The Milkweed broke the story in 1991 of how Kraft General Foods drove down the price of cheese and milk by manipulating the National Cheese Exchange in Green Bay, a tiny market with outsized influence because it set the benchmark price for virtually all private cheese sales," Eisen reports. Hardin also published repeated exposés on the dangers of recombinant bovine growth hormone, which has been banned in other countries but is still sold to U.S. farmers.

Sometimes his targets punch back: The Milkweed was sued for $40 million in 1981 for reporting how his old dairy co-op got a federally insured loan to buy Mafia-linked mozzarella cheese plants. Hardin stuck by his reporting and fought the suit. Though a federal judge eventually dismissed all counts of defamation, it took a financial toll on Hardin. It also garnered nationwide attention as an example of how big businesses use courts to silence critics, Eisen reports.

Hardin, 70, is a New Jersey native with dairy farming and defending underdogs in his blood. "His great-grandfather led a rancorous three-week milk strike in 1916 that shut off the supply to New York City," Hardin reports, "and ended with the farmers winning a 50 percent pay hike and his great grandpa beating an indictment for price fixing." Hardin carries on that tradition with The Milkweed, which Eisen calls "essential reading for anyone — citizen, professor, activist, politician — who wants to understand the under-reported dairy crisis."