This week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb indicated at a Politico event that the FDA would enforce its definition of the term “milk” and saying that “the question becomes, have we been enforcing our own standards of identity?”

The problem with Gottlieb’s stated interest in regulating the definition of milk, however, is that the FDA’s standards of identity are bad. The definition is overly narrow. This is the agency’s definition: “Milk is the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.”