The Milk War in Finley
Valley farmers push back against a new city health ordinance requiring the tuberculin testing of dairy herds.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Kennewick’s new cow testing ordinance was met with stiff opposition at a meeting in the Finley Grange hall last Friday. Farmers argued that the mandate, which prohibits the sale of butter or cream from untested herds, would cripple the local dairy industry. While acknowledging the importance of public health, they contended that testing is prohibitively expensive now that state subsidies have been exhausted, and that the city is forcing them to take the financial hit. Local grangers served notice to business leaders that they would rather ship their cream to Spokane or Tacoma than comply with what they view as a discriminatory burden.
“The visitors were given to understand that the valley farmers had never loved them very much because of numerous little things that have happened in the past.”
Conflicts over local regulatory control versus the needs of the agricultural periphery are a perennial struggle in Kennewick. This 1916 dispute over public health mandates mirrors modern tensions regarding infrastructure costs and rural-urban policy divides in Benton County.
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