Food & Agr. Code, § 62708

“Producer-handler” for purposes of this chapter is any person that is both a producer and a handler of fluid milk or fluid cream. For the purposes of this chapter, a producer-handler is a producer in any transaction which involves the delivery of bulk fluid milk or bulk fluid cream which was produced by him to a handler, or any nonprofit cooperative association of producers and is a handler in any transaction which involves the purchase by him of fluid milk or fluid cream, the pasteurization or packaging of fluid milk or fluid cream, or the sale or delivery of packaged fluid milk or packaged fluid cream to any person.

A producer-handler, including partnerships or corporations with common ownership, where the ownership of the producing entity is substantially proportionate to the ownership of the handling entity, shall have the option, at the time of the adoption of the initial pooling plan under this chapter, to have a production base and pool quota established as a part of the pooling plan provided for in this chapter, or to elect to operate entirely outside of the pool for producer payment purposes. This option is available only in such cases where the producer-handler on January 1, 1968, exercised complete and exclusive control over the operation and management of a plant at which he processes milk received from his own milk production facilities, except for purchases in bulk or packaged fluid milk, fluid skim milk or fluid cream which do not exceed an annual average of 50 gallons per day or 5 percent of his total fluid milk sales, whichever is greater, and only in such case as the producer-handler had retail sales for its own account of not less than 66 2/3 percent of its total class 1 sales.

Any producer-handler electing to be excluded from the pool may at any later time be admitted to the pool, but with only the production base and pool quota to which he would have originally been entitled or his average daily production and class 1 usage during the 12 months preceding his entry into the pool, whichever is less.