By Taxpayers Association of Oregon Foundation
We are not far away from having liberal groups issue at least one official lawsuit against every single favorite Oregon brand in our State.
Oregon’s highest court will hear arguments in March on the appeal of a five-year-old lawsuit against the Tillamook County Creamery Association, which contends the large dairy producer mislead consumers through deceptive marketing by using milk produced by cows in Eastern Oregon, according to the Portland Business Journal.
A Multnomah County Circuit Court dismissed the initial lawsuit, a decision upheld by the Oregon Court of Appeals. But the plaintiffs, who are working with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, contend people pay a premium price for Tillamook cheese, butter, ice cream, yogurt, and other dairy products they erroneously believing come from cows raised on small pastures near the Oregon Coast. Instead, they contend in the 2019 lawsuit, the cows are raised in an industrial dairy.
Tillamook, which formed in 1909 as a farm cooperative, contends that the Animal Legal Defense Fund is anti-dairy and noted the company supplemented production with cows from Threemile Canyon to meet demand.
This is a sad state of affairs for a much beloved company that has donated 10% of sales to help local farming in Oregon. Tillamook was also hit hard during the pandemic. Now the company must divert money from both being competitive/surviving in tough market and from helping those in need to instead waste money fighting misguided lawsuits.
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