PRESTON, Idaho — Steve Cann, a determined northern Cache Valley dairyman, is waging a sort of war against the U.S. military: He wants the milk he and other Idaho and Utah dairies produce to be available to soldiers and other military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cann's son Benjamin was an Army medic for the 327th Infantry Battalion and served two tours of duty in Iraq.

"If my son is good enough to go to Iraq, shouldn't my milk be good enough to go also?" Cann asked.

Cann, a Fallon, Nev., native, came to Idaho's Franklin County, just north of the Utah-Idaho border, in 1990. He was herdsman for an area dairy beginning in 1998. Three years ago he bought his own dairy. From early on he contracted with nearby Gossner Foods, in Logan to buy his milk.

Dolores Wheeler, the current president of the dairy company and daughter of founder Edwin Gossner, "picked us up, even though she didn't have to. She does a lot for the farmers she contracts with. If we could get the U.S. military to buy Gossners milk, it would be a boon to Gossners and also this area," Cann said.

"Every dollar spent in this community will be spent seven more times. Think about that," Cann said, referring to what is called the economic "multiplier effect."

The Cache Valley company, best known for its cheeses, buys about 45 percent of its milk from small dairies in southern Idaho and northern Utah, said Kelly Luthi, Gossner Foods' general manger.

In 1982, Edwin Gossner began working on producing a fluid milk product that utilized ultra-high temperature, or UHT, packaging technology.

The company, headquartered in Logan, has a sister plant in Burley, Idaho. Gossner Foods decided to pursue the UHT shelf-stable milk market instead of Grade A milk, allowing the firm to open up new marketing avenues. Gossner UHT Milk can be kept unrefrigerated at room temperature for months — an asset to the military community.

Today, Gossner milk is sold on military bases in Puerto Rico, Panama and as far away as Korea, where milk supplies and refrigeration is limited.

Although the product is used on some military installations, it is not available in Iraq to the 137,709 active-duty soldiers and 23,000 military-support personnel there, or in Afghanistan, which has nearly 21,000 active military personnel and 5,667 members of the National Guard and the Reserves.

Most of the milk consumed by Americans in the Middle East is reconstituted or powdered, coming out of Kuwait, and some from a dairy in Bahrain as well.

The Defense Department says it performed a taste test, and the results showed the milk from the Saudi peninsula was preferred by the test panel, which included fewer than 30 people. The department also questioned the $2 million annual cost to ship the boxed American milk to the Middle East.