At high noon on Wednesday, June 10, the North Carolina Senate and North Carolina House of Representatives faced off in the Annual Legislation Milk Chugging Contest. Defending their four-time win streak, the Senate calmly claimed its fifth consecutive win against the House of Representatives. This event was sponsored by the N.C. Dairy Producers Association to help spread awareness about the dairy industry across the state of North Carolina.
Held at the back entrance of the legislative building, this friendly contest included four members from the House and four from the Senate. The members of the House present were Representatives Jeffery C. McNeely, Ben Moss, Allen Chesser and Mike Schietzelt. The members of the Senate present were Senators Danny Earl Britt, Jr, Ralph Hise, Eddie D. Settle and legislative assistant James Von Canon.
The contest was a milk relay race, with each team member depending on the other. Once the first person finished their bottle of milk, then the next teammate could start theirs. This process continued until one team finished and was deemed the winner. Although a close call this year, the Senate team was ultimately declared the winner after one bottle was judged to be not completely finished. That secured the Senate’s bragging rights for another year.
The milk chugging event has been held annually since 2009 as a fun way to highlight the importance of dairy farming in North Carolina. With June being National Dairy month, what better time could it be to bring awareness to dairy? N.C. has 95 dairy farms, each of which has around 368 milking cows. That’s around 35,000 dairy cows, producing about 8.91 gallons of milk per day. The total amount of milk produced in 2025 equaled 95.1 million gallons. That’s a lot of cheese, ice cream and drinking milk.
After the chugging event, the crowd enjoyed Howling Cow ice cream. From cookies & cream, cherry vanilla and Tuffy’s Toffee, a crowd favorite, was served. In fact, following cheese, ice cream is the second most consumed dairy product in North Carolina.
Both sides of this competition had a great time this year in chugging milk and both sides are looking forward to the competition next year.