Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON – Wisconsinites demanded their Irish butter this St. Patrick’s Day.

A specialty grocery store and frustrated consumers, backed by a conservative legal group, sued the state this week over a law that bars the sale of Kerrygold butter and other European brands.

Wisconsin bars the sale of Irish butter from grass-fed cows — a product widely used in the Bulletproof Diet — because it does not bear a label that grades its quality. Wisconsin law requires butter to be marked as “Grade A” or another grade as determined by the state or federal government.

Every other state allows the sale of Kerrygold and other ungraded butter brands.

“Wisconsin businesses and consumers are more than capable of determining whether butter is sufficiently creamy, properly salted, or too crumbly,” attorney Rick Esenberg wrote in the lawsuit. “To require a government taste test simply serves no rational public purpose.”

The lawsuit was brought Thursday in Ozaukee County Circuit Court by Slow Pokes Local Food of Grafton, along with four people from around the state who want to buy Kerrygold butter. They are being represented by Esenberg and other attorneys from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

Kerrygold is not bankrolling the lawsuit, Esenberg said Friday.

He acknowledged that the ability to buy a particular type of butter may not be the most pressing issue of the day, but said the case embodies important principles about limits on the government’s ability to decide what people can buy.

“While you might not think of economic liberties as a civil rights issue, I would disagree with that,” he said. “It is a civil rights issue.”

He likened the grading law to one repealed in 1967 that for decades barred the sale of margarine that was colored to look like butter. That led to Wisconsinites going on “oleo runs” to Illinois or Minnesota to stock up on margarine.

The law affecting Kerrygold butter is overseen by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

“This is the law of the state of Wisconsin and we have an obligation to administer the law," said department spokesman Bill Cosh. "DATCP enforcement action has been limited to notifying retailers of what the law says.”