The National Milk Producers Federation issued the following statement from President and CEO Jim Mulhern on Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy’s veto of legislation banning chocolate milk from Connecticut school lunchrooms:

“It’s encouraging to see reason and common sense returning to the debate over chocolate milk in schools. As a recent university study made clear, schools that remove chocolate milk from the cafeteria are simply throwing the nutritional baby out with the bathwater. They deprive kids of calcium, protein and other needed nutrients while they increase waste and boost costs. Certainly, obesity is a serious problem among today’s youth. But the answer isn’t to ban chocolate milk. Connecticut is not required to pass this legislation to keep its federal school meals funding. Federal nutrition standards specifically allow schools to serve fat-free chocolate milk as part of reimbursable meals and in cafeteria a la carte lines. Governor Malloy is to be congratulated for thinking this through, and not opting for the quick, easy but wrong solution.”