Lovers of Irish butter in Wisconsin will finally be able to buy Irish butter again. The Badger State’s strict rules for dairy products meant Kerrygold - Ireland’s best known brand of butter - was banned in February.
The ban provoked an outcry from locals with one woman even driving all the way to Nebraska to stock up and one group of residents filing a lawsuit.
Read More: Why selling Irish Kerrygold butter is now illegal in this US state
However, Old World Creamery of Sheboygan has come up with a solution. The company will buy Irishgold’s butter, have its own professionals check its quality and then sell it itself. Irishgold is a different brand.
Speaking to IrishCentral the company was at pains to stress that they were not selling Kerrygold, which is “still banned” but the butter they sell would be imported from Ireland.
Crucially, it will be graded by their team in the US; something that Kerrygold failed to have done and ultimately resulted in the state’s controversial ban on the product.
“This will be a big day for Wisconsin residents who love the rich taste of Irish butter,” the company announced in a press release. And although the announcement comes just in a nick of time for butter starved Wisconsinites, the company’s deal with Irishgold was planned prior to the state’s dramatic ban on their rivals, Kerrygold.
Read More: Lawsuit over Kerrygold butter ban filed by outraged Wisconsin residents
But the Old World Creamery might not have a monopoly on Irish butter in the state for long; angry devotees of Kerrygold are suing the state in a bid to have the “irrational” ban overturned.
“This story illustrates the extreme measures retailers have to go through,” their attorney Jack Curtis insisted. “Only in Wisconsin.”
Although $1,000 fines and even six months in jail were mooted when the ban originally came into force, Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protections spokesman Bill Cosh told reporters no retailer had yet been fined or throw in prison for selling the illicit dairy product. Instead, his department had simply notified shopkeepers that the product was banned.
The saga continues.
H/T: Fox News
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