From Joel Salatin’s foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert.
I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the
underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that
our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and
cottage cheese. All through high school in the early 1970s, I sold our homemade
yogurt, butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese at the Curb Market on Saturday
mornings. This was a precursor to today’s farmer’s markets.
In those days, the Virginia Department of Agriculture had a memorandum of agreement with the Curb Market that as long as vendors belonged to an Agricultural Extension organization such as Extension Homemaker’s Clubs or 4-H, producers could bring value-added products to market without inspection and visits from the food police. The government agents assumed that anyone participating in the extension programs would be getting the latest, greatest food science and therefore conform to the most modern procedural protocols, which created its own protection.
As the Virginia Slims commercial says, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” These conciliatory overtures to maintain healthy and vibrant local food economies exist no more. Today I can’t sell any of those things at a farmer’s market, and even if I take eggs some bureaucrat will come along with a pocket thermometer and, without warrant or warning, reach over and poke it through my display eggs to see if they are at the proper temperature. If they aren’t, no amount of pleading that those are for display only can dissuade the petulant public servant from demanding that I dump those display eggs in a trash can on the spot. I don’t sell at farmer’s markets anymore.
In 1975, when I graduated from high school and began plotting my farming career, I figured out that I could hand-milk ten cows, sell the milk to neighbors at regular retail prices, and be a full-time farmer. This was before most people had ever heard the word organic. But selling milk was illegal. In those days, we didn’t know about herd shares or Community Supported Agriculture or even limited liability corporations.
As a result, I went to work for a local newspaper and became the proverbial part-time farmer—working in town to support the farming passion. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the fact that the government arbitrarily determined to make it very difficult for me to become a farmer. That seems un-American, doesn’t it?
Isn’t it curious that at this juncture in our culture’s evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be “science-based,” I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee. I do not believe that is an overstatement.
Make no mistake, as the local, heritage, humane, ecological, sustainable—call it what you will (anything but organic since the government now owns that word)—food system takes flight, the industrial food system is fighting back. With a vengeance. By demonizing, criminalizing, and marginalizing the integrity food movement, the entrenched powers that be hope to derail this revolution.
This industrial food experiment, historically speaking, is completely abnormal. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t spell or pronounce. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t make in your kitchen. Indeed, if everything in today’s science-based supermarket that was unavailable before 1900 were removed, hardly anything would be left. And as more people realize that this grand experiment in ingesting material totally foreign to our three-trillion-member internal community of intestinal microflora and -fauna is really biologically aberrant behavior, they are opting out of industrial fare. Indeed, to call it a food revolution is accurate.
But revolutions are always met with prejudice and entrenched paradigms from the about-to-be-unseated lords of the status quo. The realignment of power, trust, money, and commerce that the local heritage-based food movement represents inherently gives birth to a backlash. By the time of Wounded Knee, Native Americans no longer jeopardized the American reality.
But to many Americans, these Natives had to be crushed, extinguished, put on reservations. Would America have been stronger if European leaders had listened to wisdom about herbal remedies and consensus building? The answer is yes. But to Americans, the red man was just a barbarian because he didn’t govern by parliamentary procedure or ride in horse-drawn stagecoaches along cobblestone streets. In fact, he was considered a threat to America. Just like giving slaves their freedom in 1850. Just like imbibing alcohol in 1925. Just like homeschooling in 1980.
The ultimate test of a tyrannical society or a free society is how it responds to its lunatic fringe. A strong, self-confident, free society tolerates and enjoys the fringe people who come up with zany notions. Indeed, most people later labeled geniuses were dubbed whacko by their contemporary mainstream society. So what does a culture do with weirdos who actually believe they have a right to choose what to feed their internal three-trillion-member community?
The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed. At the time, such a thought was as strange as levitation.
Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don’t have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?
How would we feel if we had to get a license from bureaucrats to start a church? After all, beliefs can be pretty damaging things. And charlatans certainly do exist. Better protect people from those charlatans—bad preachers and raw milk advocates.
But what does a society do when the charlatans are in charge? In charge of the regulating government agencies. In charge of the research institutions. In charge of the food system.
That is a real conundrum, because if health depends on opting out of what the charlatans think is safe, we are forced into civil disobedience. When the public no longer trusts its public servants, people begin taking charge of their own health and welfare. And that is exactly what is driving the local heritage food movement.
Lots of folks realize they don’t want industrialists fooling around with something as basic as food. People like me don’t trust Monsanto. We don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration. We don’t trust the Department of Agriculture. We don’t trust Tyson. And we don’t think it’s safe to be dependent on food that sits for a month in the belly of a Chinese merchant marine vessel.
This clash of choice versus prohibition brings us to today’s Wounded Knee of food. The local heritage-based food movement represents everything that is good and noble about farming and food culture. It is about decentralized farms. Pastoral livestock systems. Symbiotic multi-speciation. Companion planting. Earthworms. It is about community-appropriate techniques and scale. Aesthetically and aromatically sensual romantic farming. Re-embedding the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker in the village. And ultimately about health-giving food grown more productively on less land than industrial models.
Certainly some of this clash represents the difference between nurturing and dominating. The local heritage food movement—the raw milk movement—is all about respecting and honoring indigenous wisdom. The industrial mind-set worships techno-glitzy gadgetry and views heritage food advocates as simpletons and Luddites. Or dangerous criminals.
In this wonderful exposé The Raw Milk Revolution, David Gumpert employs the best journalistic investigative techniques to examine this clash from the raw milk battlefront. Be assured that the same mentality exists toward homemade pickles, home-cured meats, and cottage industry in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the food system, but it is harassed out of existence by capricious, malicious, and prejudiced government agents who really do believe they are doing society a favor by denying food choice to Americans.
The same curative properties espoused by raw milk advocates exist in a host of other food products, from homemade pound cake and potpies to pepperoni and pastured chicken. Real food is what developed our internal intestinal community. And it sure didn’t develop on food from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and genetically modified potatoes that are partly human and partly tomato. Long after human cleverness has run its course, compost piles will still grow the best tomatoes and grazing cows will still yield one of nature’s perfect foods: raw milk.
One of our former apprentices has just started a ten-cow herd-share arrangement with our customers. Here is a young, entrepreneurial, go-get-‘em farmer embarking on his dream, serving people who are enjoying their dream of acquiring unadulterated milk. Can any arrangement, any relationship-between farmer and cow, cow and pasture, customer and producer be more honorable, respectable, open, and trusting? Everything about this is righteous, including respecting the individual enough to let her decide what to eat and what to feed her children.
Let the revolution continue.
Feed the world sustainably by 2050? Yes, we can!
While scientists fight over BPA studies, Congress could just act
Consumer Reports finds BPA traces in common canned foods
Comments
View as Flat
Jason D Scorse Posted 8:54 pm
03 Nov 2009
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 10:05 am
04 Nov 2009
Right arm Joel, keep up the good fight for real free markets. Is there any sort of test kit for milk safety that indivuals, farmers or consumers could use?
It would behoove ag extention programs to check into this and work on developing random testing regimens for raw milk supplies. The ridiculous, nearly non-existent testing procedures employed now in the food industry in general aren't even random in nature, insuring fatally (well publicized fatalities at that!) flawed results.
People who at least understand rudimentary statistics and quality control methods need to step forward from our state university ag programs. Without random testing quality control is non-existent, a total sham.
What is more dangerous, untrained, poorly unsupervised minium wage employees preparing your fast food, thawed and frozen who knows how many times on the way to your palate..or responsible farmers selling raw milk to their customers, family and friends directly? The best scenario, random testing of all food in the system, raw or processed.
There's your freed up market.
Permalink
Javaman Posted 7:01 am
04 Nov 2009
Just like anything else, ignorance on the topic of raw milk is driving it's critics.
Just make sure your milk is inspected. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.
Permalink
sasquatch Posted 11:47 am
04 Nov 2009
I hear the vegetarian perspective, but as Mr. Salatin has demonstrated, a holistic approach to farming (including cows, chickens, pigs, etc) can increase the health and productivity of a farm in ways that a factory farm cannot.
I echo Amazingdrx and Javaman, in that inspections should be conducted in a manner consistent with a healthy food system, not one dominated by the Tyson/Monsanto/Cargill subsidized US government.
IS there any program using ag extensions to conduct decentralized testing? What about DIY test kits? That seems like a useful piece of ammunition in this war.
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 12:07 pm
04 Nov 2009
Do I trust raw milk? No.
Pasteurization is simply the heating of milk to a moderate temperature for a breif period in order to slow the growth of pathogens. Pasteurizing milk has saved a lot of lives; it's a public health measure.
What on earth has this got to do with junk food, tyrrany and the Bill of Rights?
Next are we going to be told that sewage collection and treatment works are part of a socialist plot to destroy America?
This article is loaded with non-sequiteurs and OTT exaggeration. It reads like some sort of paranoid conspiracy theory. Was it copied from a Heritage Foundation blog?
Permalink
jojo123 Posted 9:08 am
10 Nov 2009
I believe there are other heat senistive vitamins lost, but since I don't know that much, I don't throw out blanket statements as you did!
My dairy does sell raw milk, and we are inspected regularly and randomly!
The farmer would prefer to not deal with all the extra red tape, but so many people asked for it he does it.
By the way, listerium, one of the potentilly killer bacteria found in milk has been found in pasteurized milk, did you ever think about that?
Pasteurized milk became safer when milk started being produced large scale by animals kept imprisoned in thier own filth. So huge dairies started pasteurizing. Making raw milk illegal was a great way to eliminate the competition with small dairies.
By the way, many soft ripened cheeses (aged 2 - 4 weeks) are better when produced from raw milk- bries, camemberts, etc. The penalties for importing such cheeses are small, and so these exquisite Europeon cheeses are available fromm importers.
American artisan cheese makers can't compete, because the penalties for producing such cheeses are huge. The American public wants these cheses from local dairies, markets ask us to break the laws, they tell us they'll buy the illegal product. The farmer could lose everything if caught, the marketer just a small fine.
There's a lot going on in this debate, saying pasteurized is safe and raw is not safe, that is just not researched or thought out.
Permalink
jojo123 Posted 9:08 am
10 Nov 2009
I believe there are other heat senistive vitamins lost, but since I don't know that much, I don't throw out blanket statements as you did!
My dairy does sell raw milk, and we are inspected regularly and randomly!
The farmer would prefer to not deal with all the extra red tape, but so many people asked for it he does it.
By the way, listerium, one of the potentilly killer bacteria found in milk has been found in pasteurized milk, did you ever think about that?
Pasteurized milk became safer when milk started being produced large scale by animals kept imprisoned in thier own filth. So huge dairies started pasteurizing. Making raw milk illegal was a great way to eliminate the competition with small dairies.
By the way, many soft ripened cheeses (aged 2 - 4 weeks) are better when produced from raw milk- bries, camemberts, etc. The penalties for importing such cheeses are small, and so these exquisite Europeon cheeses are available fromm importers.
American artisan cheese makers can't compete, because the penalties for producing such cheeses are huge. The American public wants these cheses from local dairies, markets ask us to break the laws, they tell us they'll buy the illegal product. The farmer could lose everything if caught, the marketer just a small fine.
There's a lot going on in this debate, saying pasteurized is safe and raw is not safe, that is just not researched or thought out.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 12:12 pm
04 Nov 2009
Permalink
jporchanian Posted 7:25 pm
04 Nov 2009
Permalink
sasquatch Posted 12:45 pm
04 Nov 2009
Yes, pasteurization is a healthy option for mass produced milk. I imagine almost everyone can recognize that signing off on raw milk from a CAFO would be a monumentally stupid. The question is whether it is appropriate at the scale that Mr. Salatin is talking about. Government entities aren't capable of regulating at that scale (due to lack of funds, and a lack of will), so again, it seems appropriate to work with ag extensions and/or develop some sort of DIY kit, so that your local dairy farm can test its product with total transparency in front of its customers. Hell, get the customers involved in the process if they'd like to (I'd sure as hell join in if that was an option).
I also think that voices like Mr. Salatin's are necessary to balance out the far right. Mr. Salatin won't win... So don't worry fellas. BUT, without people arguing for regulations that encourage healthy people, food and farms, and since the general population is worse than ignorant, only the people who have the most money and power will dictate food regulation.
Permalink
Farscape Posted 1:35 pm
04 Nov 2009
Permalink
memeri Posted 9:05 am
05 Nov 2009
http://www.eatwild.com/articles/superhealthy.html
Make sure your milk is from cows that eat grass, not simply organic grains on organic feedlots.
Permalink
Aaron Lucich Posted 4:30 pm
04 Nov 2009
Permalink
brain Posted 5:22 pm
04 Nov 2009
Would I buy raw milk from a local farmer? No.
Aaron - your statistics are neat. And like all statistics, they can be misused. I'll take as read that raw milk causes 100 cases of food borne illness per year. What is the market share of raw milk, out of all milk sold? Scale that rate of illness up to the size of the whole market, and raw milk doesn't look so safe.
*EDIT* Found this: http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/10/articles/lawyer-oped/comparing-the-food-safety-record-of-pasteurized-and-raw-milk-products-part-3/
It's a bit long, but if you scroll down to Figure 2, you'll see a clearer picture of how much food-borne illness is caused by raw milk vs pasteurized milk.
Note that this guy makes his money taking food companies to court.
Here's the thing. Mr. Salatin's fondness for broad declarations notwithstanding, the government does not deny us "food choice". Nobody goes around to every porch in my neighborhood to ensure that nobody is growing a couple of tomato plants for their own use or to *give* to friends & neighbors. If you want to keep a cow or two and a garden, and maybe a small field of wheat, and maybe a couple of apple trees, you're free to do so.
What the government IS restricting is the right to *profit from* unsafe food products. Would you like them to stop doing that? I mean, isn't it unAmerican to not let people make money by whatever means they can devise? Surely we can all agree that deregulation of the food industry is best for all involved. Joel, I'm counting on you to back me up on this.
Here's the thing. People are making choices. They're making choices about where they live and what type of career they pursue (more or less), and what leisure activities they participate in. And that means they don't have the time that my stay-at-home mom and grandmother did to spend on food gathering and preparation. So they are forced to get food using some medium of exchange (in this case, American dollars). And there are a lot of people who need to eat.
Am I defending conventional industrial agriculture? Not even close. My point is that this is a more complex problem than most people seem to realize. Throwing a hissy fit about raw milk and spouting conspiracy theories doesn't really help solve the problem.
On second thought, let's do this raw milk thing. It could be a first step toward thinning the ranks a bit & easing up on our collective national carbon footprint.
Permalink
Darwin Posted 7:35 pm
07 Nov 2009
http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/11/articles/lawyer-oped/comparing-the-food-safety-record-of-pasteurized-and-raw-milk-products-part-4/
Permalink
jojo123 Posted 9:23 am
10 Nov 2009
This varies state by state.
And, Raw milk is inspected more frequently and the farmer must pay for certification which covers the cost of those inspections. A label is on the milk clearly stating it is not pasteurized, and pasteurization kills orgainsims known to be fatal. All we're saying is give the consumer the choice, which will allow more small farms to exist.
Permalink
CatSue Posted 7:05 pm
04 Nov 2009
I agree we need to be destructive rather than constructive when it comes to food safety regulations.
Small farmers need to be deregulated immediately....as even more authority is being handed to the FDA with HR2749 and S510 looming. If we don't stop the tide, we'll all "buy the farm", so to speak, being at the mercy of BigAg antibiotic, hormone, pathogen ladened food.
We'll be no better off than those cows, pigs and chickens in concentrated confinement camps, forced to eat what the corporate farmer thinks is best for the bottom line. I'm glad Joel, my farmer, looks after my health, as he considers the rotation of his livestock, the pathogenic cul-de-sacs, and the humane treatment of his animals.
I’ll add my own alarm. Many of my fellow arm-chair farmers likely don't know about Farm Raids, where SWAT teams invade small farm homes, confiscate computers, records and pour bleach all over their perfectly fine food, just because they have the audacity to sell raw milk or meat not processed in a federally inspected plant.
Just weeks ago Georgia Ag Department kept its citizens safe from the raw milk they legally bought, and had dump it all out, under supervision. Meanwhile, who was minding the peanut factories? By the way, nothing wrong with that milk, except that it was bought across state lines.
I wonder what would happen if beer, broccoli or bread needed a passport to cross state lines?
Why would anyone need a permit to sell food to folks that want to buy it directly from the farmer? Do you need a permit to fix your friend's computer, mow their lawn or drive them to work? Only if money is exchanged? What does the money passing between hands make it the gov’s business?
Direct to consumer sales customers know where their farmers live, if I have a problem with Joel’s chicken, I’ll just call him. “Joel, I don’t have enough chicken to go around, my guests love it.” If we want to complain about Ecoli ladened ground beef, who would we call? Is there a Mr. Cargill? Who knows! Those folks hide behind plastic wrap, supermarkets and processors. His cell phone number should be on every package, then, we’d see some changes in food safety and humane animal care.
So, what to do about testing? Who is going to develop the first AT HOME testing kit for Ecoli O157, Salmonella and Campylobacter?
Let’s all get off our hinnies, waiting for the gov to keep us safe!
When folks started taking their own insulin, blood pressure and pregnancy tests, the world of medicine shifted. Let's innovate our way out of this mess. Joel has part of the solution, we need to do our part.
Anyone with a home testing kit would know, without government's help, if their food was fit to eat. Joel will have customers flocking to the farm when they read the salmonella counts on supermarket chicken.
Confinement foods from folks like Cargill make up 99% of the food supply, so I’m told. Let’s not let them get the other 1%. Our small family farms should be added to the top of endangered species list. No joke.
Why is raw milk important? Raw milk sales are driving the customers to the farm, which is helping many farms stay afloat. It’s also resolving asthma, allergies and lactose intolerance in the people who drink it. Why else would someone drive 3 hours to get milk?
Why all the talk about raw milk dangers? More danger in drinking pasteurized milk, if you look at the data. Every day 15 people die from asthma. Now, that’s a REAL food safety issue.
Let’s get real about what happening on small farms, and get real about our food. Real food heals – people, the planet and hopefully politicians, lobbyists and regulators and arm chair farmers like you and me.
Permalink
robingers Posted 7:01 am
05 Nov 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization
http://ssh.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/31/3/411
Below is an excerpt from the above article from Duke University on the history of milk pasteurization in the United States:
"Evans’s (Chicago Health commissioner in early 1900's) ambivalence to the procedure confirms this interpretation. In conference speeches for the AAMMC,8 Evans promoted pasteurization as allowing the poor to afford “safe” milk (AAMMC 1909: 56; Halpern 1988: 60) but also suggested that city officials “are up against a practical question. . . . we would like, of course, to have a perfectly produced milk [but] . . . [p]asteurization does not put anything into milk that is not there” (Chicago Tribune 1909e). Evans’s support for pasteurization in the early years of the ordinance thus appears tepid, even though the city eventually succeeded in pasteurizing over 50 percent of the milk supply in 1909 (Chicago Depart‐ ment of Health 1919)."
The adoption of milk pasteurization, as accounted by most researchers, was simply an attempt to certify that milk was safe and affordable to most people. There was a lot of poverty in the early 1900's, and many small local farmers were not able to provide the best care for their animals. This resulted in cows getting sick and passing on pathogens in their milk. Pasteurization provided the easiest, most efficient and cheapest way to get safe milk to the masses in the early 1900's. But as the quote above points out, they recognized, even then, that it wasn't the "best" milk, but it was a pretty good alternative.
Now, fast-forward 100 years. I think we would all agree that science has been progressing over the past 100 years, and we might possibly know a few more things now than we did in the early 1900's. We now know that when we pasteurize milk, it degrades the nutrient content of the milk, as well as destroys certain healthy bacteria that really supports much of our immune system. There is also science emerging that says that heating certain proteins found in milk to a high degree can actually distort them to the point that they trigger autoimmune responses from our bodies.
So, with this knowledge, combined with the fact that we had ingested raw, natural milk for thousands of years, and hence our bodies have imprinted the chemistry of raw milk into our DNA, it would seem that raw, natural milk from healthy animals would be our best option. We also have the technology today to ensure that our farmers provide safe and healthy milk without needing to pasteurize it. But here is where the conspiracy comes into play. We now have huge agribusinesses that produce most of the dairy products in this country and pasteurization definitely offers the cheapest and most efficient way for them to provide safe milk. They would have to spend a lot of money converting their systems, and of course they are not going to want to do this. It also affords an easy check point for agencies such as the FDA.
And as the consumers are becoming more proactive in their health and choosing more "natural" foods, the dairy "industry" is very nervous and will fight to the death to ensure that the smaller farmers do not take away their business. And standing behind long-held beliefs such as the supposed life-saving methods of pasteurization is the scare tactic they use as their biggest defense. But the "food revolution" is gaining strength and people are realizing that the reason they are getting sicker, and fatter is due to the industrialization of food. I guess it comes down to who is more trustworthy: a group of people questioning the health and safety of pasteurization or the people who are profiting from it? I am betting on the side of the heretics.
Permalink
brain Posted 12:04 pm
05 Nov 2009
If I were the head of an agriglomerate, and I owned dairy facilities, wouldn't it be cheaper for me to cut one step out of the process? I wouldn't need to spend the money to operate a pasteurization facility (including maintenance of equipment and employment costs). Sure, I'd have to make some initial investment to change the process, but the demand for milk isn't going anywhere. And folks are nuts about raw milk, so I could probably even charge a little extra for that, at least initially. Where's the downside? Yeah, I'm still separating the cream & testing for butterfat levels in the various grades of milk (skim, 1%, etc), and I still have to get it into retail-ready containers, but that's a given either way.
Of course, I'd want to know that raw milk can be produced and distributed safely, because if a bunch of people get sick, I'm out of business. So until the technology catches up with the granola crowd, I'm going to keep my pasteurizer running.
As a consumer, I feel the same way: I'm happy to support efforts to improve the technology to a point where pasteurization is no longer necessary to prevent sickness and death. But until that time, I'll only drink raw milk if I personally know the producer and trust them to keep their barn clean and keep cow shit out of my milk.
Permalink
mauryh Posted 2:26 pm
11 Nov 2009
There's an old joke about two Aggies (graduates of an "agricultural" college in Texas) who stumble upon a "cow pattie". The first one says, "I think that's a cow pattie." The second one says, "Sure smells like a cow pattie." The first one kneels down and takes a taste, "sure tastes like a cow pattie". The second one says, "Boy, sure glad we didn't step in it!" The funny thing about industrially-raised cows is that their excrement is no "cow pattie", but a squishy, nasty diarrhea full of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant super bacteria. Even if the number of bacteria is reduced, it's a more deadly bacteria.
Permalink
mtvyfan Posted 12:47 pm
05 Nov 2009
I don't want to see the USDA or FDA eliminated, because that would not solve anything, but I really wish that the industry lobbyists would be barred from Washington, DC, because our decision makers tend to listen to them more than to their own citizens. Of course, they have way more money than any of us have and as the saying goes, "Money talks." But is the lobbying bullsh*ters would be forced to walk, I would be much happier. Then we would finally be closer to having a country made for and run by the people, which is what our founding fathers tried to make it.
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 1:19 pm
05 Nov 2009
(likewise with Canada of course)
Permalink
mach37 Posted 1:13 pm
05 Nov 2009
Permalink
liz-hearts-Earth Posted 9:07 pm
05 Nov 2009
Having unsafe products is never ok, but local being what it is, no one would buy raw milk from a bad farmer who sold bacteria ridden milk that made his customers sick. At least, no one would do it more than once. But milk really isn't the issue; the issue is whether or not there can be farmer-direct-to-consumer relationships. As Joel has said many times, when you have no walls, you have nothing to hide, and that is true for all local farmers. If people can come see your cows, see your crops, see your chickens - do you really need a bureaucrat from the USDA telling you whether you can sell your product or not? My thought is: no. And we need a food system that supports the Joel Salatins of the world, not crushes them under layers of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.
Permalink
Bob Ehrler Posted 6:28 am
06 Nov 2009
I don't know Joel. I don't know his politics - I suspect they aren't the same as mine; I don't really care about that. But I have to say that much of his message resonates with me. Of the hundreds of dairy farms in the county where I grew up, only a handful are left. Those 30 to 50-cow herds have been replaced by 500 to 1,000 cow herds located 100 plus miles from the city for the simple reason that small farmers can no longer make a living on the land. People like me who live in large cities don't need those small dairy farmers - we get our milk from factory farms located at great distances. And the former dairy farms located 30 miles outside the city have been consumed by urban sprawl - subdivisions and "McMansions" on 5-acre tracts. I think we are all the poorer for it. While I choose to live in the city, I recognize that it is in everybody's interest to find ways for small farmers to make a living on their land.
I don't have a particularly libertarian viewpoint, but if eliminating unnecessary restrictions (not ALL standards) on the sale of raw milk facilitates small dairy farms, I'm all for it. Some of the commenters appear to be laboring under the misconception that if sale of raw milk would be legalized, it would ultimately be produced on factory farms. It seems to me that raw milk would be a niche market incompatible with the economics of a factory farm, but perfectly suited to support a small farm. And if I could buy raw milk from a farmer excited about providing me with that choice, see where my milk comes from (and perhaps know that his own family consumes that milk), I would drink raw milk without worry. Because my experience growing up on a farm tells me that raw milk can be safe. And, as a lawyer, I know that regulatory programs - over long periods - can evolve into an impenetrable thicket of rules that preserve the status quo and stifle change, while bearing little relationship to their original purpose. I don't suggest that raw milk be totally deregulated, but it makes sense to me to replace the outright prohibition on sale of raw milk with a reasonable inspection and licensing program that would allow small farmers to occupy this niche. Joel may use the rhetoric of a "true-believer" that some may interpret as too conservative and others as too liberal. Who cares? I just applaud his commitment to work to give us the choice to purchase food from a source other than a factory farm - a choice that might connect us more closely to the food that we consume and leave a lighter footprint on the land that sustains us.
Permalink
ljc4918 Posted 11:15 am
06 Nov 2009
Permalink
jojo123 Posted 11:36 am
10 Nov 2009
You can check with your state ag dept to find out what these requirements are. Most states don't make it easy to sell raw, as I dream of starting my own small goat diary I have been researching the different state requirements.
It's interesting that the public feels they can't trust their local farmer (that would probably let them watch the process if they asked) but does trust big business so blindly.
Permalink
biofarmer Posted 7:31 pm
06 Nov 2009
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 2:56 pm
07 Nov 2009
And why not give people the right to refuse to wear seatbelts or motorcycle helmets? And the right to blow their brains out with guns. And let's legalize heroin, crack and meth, while we're at it, right?
And of course, we don't have to worry about the costs imposed on anyone else, like the kids of the people who die. Or the social services or law enforcement costs of dealing with those kids.
And of course we don't have to worry about people buying raw milk and giving it to their kids, and the odd kid dying. I mean - the parents own the kids, right?
C'mon people, get with the program. This is liberty, right? This is what the Constitution is all about. Right?
Permalink
memeri Posted 3:20 pm
07 Nov 2009
Permalink
mach37 Posted 3:58 pm
07 Nov 2009
You want the government to make every decision for you in your life! You don't believe in Free Will? Or that you or anybody else has any responsibility for their actions - demand the government control what you can and can't do?
I happen to believe in survival of the fittest. Everybody dies sooner or later, and hopefully the unfit ones will die before they can propagate their unfit genetic heritage to the human population. At least that was the way it was until the 20th century. The trouble with the currently living generation is that they are helping the unfit to propagate and soon humanity will implode because the Earth is not big enough to sustain a growing population of non-producers.
I'd like to enjoy what life I have left, including raw milk. I must be one of the 'fit' ones, as I drank raw milk as a child and I made it to age 74.
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 4:11 pm
07 Nov 2009
Tuberculosis, diphtheria, polio, salmonellosis, scarlet fever, meningitis, encephalitis, septicemia, endocarditis, spontaneous abortion, and typhoid fever - all of which have been caused by raw milk - none of these are serious problems.
Let's go back to the good ole' days - buggywhips, unpasteurized milk, and a 15% infant mortality rate. Screw history, screw science; it's what we feel that matters, right?
You've convinced me!
Permalink
robingers Posted 5:11 pm
07 Nov 2009
Sorry, but many of the diseases you state we can get from drinking raw milk are not totally accurate. And the ones that are, can only occur with sick cows and/or unsanitary conditions. So, yes there is a risk with unpasteurized milk, but shall I name the risks many of us take every day with FDA approved or government regulated products? OK, how about we start with the side effects from the birth control alone? Next let's move into over-the-counter analgesics, and how about hormone-replacement therapy and cholesterol-lowering medication? And in the food arena we could talk about e coli and salmonella and mad cow disease. All are found only in "non-organic", agri-farms that abuse and mistreat their animals. So, please, think a little deeper about this topic, and read the history. Pasteurization was simply an inexpensive, safe and efficient way to guarantee milk would be free from any pathogens at all intended mostly for poor people in large citie, and was started in the early 1900's. We have much more technology and understanding now on how to protect ourselves from pathogens in milk, while still being able to offer the most nutritious form of it- raw.
Permalink
biofarmer Posted 5:59 am
08 Nov 2009
Permalink
mach37 Posted 11:31 pm
06 Nov 2009
Permalink
CatSue Posted 5:41 pm
07 Nov 2009
Traffic accidents are the LEADING cause of death for children, and no one is telling parents that they can't take their children in the car.
If raw milk was as bad as they say, then little Georgie Washington and Tommy Jefferson wouldn't have survived the breakfast table to grown an lead this nation. Our forefathers and mothers drank the stuff.
Somewhere up your own family tree there were many, many, many raw milk drinkers. Back then, they didn't even have refrigeration. Still think it's dangerous?
Permalink
brain Posted 6:17 pm
07 Nov 2009
This is such a great forum for a rational and intelligent fact-based discussion!
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 10:48 am
08 Nov 2009
As for kids in cars, you're right they are dangerous. And we do require kids to be in car seats and wear seat belts.
Permalink
Darwin Posted 7:37 pm
07 Nov 2009
http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/11/articles/lawyer-oped/comparing-the-food-safety-record-of-pasteurized-and-raw-milk-products-part-4/
Permalink
memeri Posted 9:45 pm
07 Nov 2009
Wash.
But you can't just wash. You have to do the other things too. Don't feed cows food they can't digest, that turns their rumens into cozy incubators for pathogens and sickens them so that you must then feed them a steady diet of antibiotics, now selecting for drug-resistant bacteria. Don't let those same cows muck around in their own poop for months and then hope you can wash all that off at milking or slaughter time. But we know all that. It's been covered.
It is not a bad idea to ensure that the people who produce our raw food do in fact know what they should be doing, and that they are in fact doing it. That should suffice because, as has been pointed out time and again, fresh milk from a healthy cow is not dangerous; only poor handling makes it so. I believe the correct focus for regulation is in ensuring transparency -- Joel's mantra (OK, one of them) -- so that we can verify that the people in charge of our food are following best practices. Do we really have to legislate that experts cook our milk? Talk about a nanny state. We don't require that they cook our fish. Why are Japanese not keeling over, abandoning their children left and right, Sashimi orphans? People do get sick, but it's not a public health crisis because the producers care for their craft as well as their bottom line.
So much of what we're dealing with here -- the periodic massive, nationwide recalls of food, blasted over their cable news amplifiers, the animal diseases migrating to spinach and tomatoes (must we sterilize these now?), brain dissolution thanks to feeding cows-fed-other-cows to blissfully uninformed people -- comes from the way in which we have allowed our agriculture to dislocate from the food web, centralizing production and concentrating the profits and virtually all control into the hands of the few who manage it. Joel is saying that through distributed, small-scale production by people who care about what they're doing, who are each responsible and responsive to their several customers, we can all manage our own food. Not perfectly, but responsibly. (This means many, many more farmers than we currently have, working about the same total acreage).
We can look back with pity at the poor victims of cholera in Victorian England, tragically ignorant of what they needed to do to prevent the spread of the illness. But we should learn the right lesson from that. To judge from current agricultural policy, the best treatment is antibiotics. Let the people go on mixing their sewage with their drinking water. That's not a problem in these enlightened times because we have antibiotics. Well, we can do even better: tell them they have to boil their drinking water to kill those germs. Done. Now we don't have to spend the money to dig those sewers, and we can sell them drugs to boot.
Step one that we must follow today is the same as it was then: separate the sewage from the consumers: the cows, the people. Keep 'em separated. This actually costs money! and that is the only impediment to this and the other steps. Properly spent, this is money that we won't have to give to drug companies, and will pay us dividends in fertile soil. Arguments about efficiency are red herrings. Joel runs a very efficient farm.
In Monty Python's "The meaning of Life" a doctor scolds a woman, saying she's not qualified to give birth. Now there's a hazardous undertaking, a true endangerment to the child and the mother. There should be a law.
Permalink
CatSue Posted 8:07 am
08 Nov 2009
Prehistoric man drank fermented mare's milk. http://bit.ly/2pt3tB
Permalink
Dave from Canada Posted 10:51 am
08 Nov 2009
Enjoy.
Permalink
memeri Posted 11:04 am
08 Nov 2009
Permalink
mach37 Posted 2:52 pm
08 Nov 2009
Permalink
memeri Posted 5:30 pm
08 Nov 2009
Permalink
Ex-FarmGirl Posted 9:17 am
10 Nov 2009
Permalink
jojo123 Posted 11:23 am
10 Nov 2009
The reason farmers pay for raw dairy certification is that this covers the cost of the frequent inspections. Regulations are very strict and farmers would find themselves closed down if they don't adhere to the requirements. I've checked out quite a few small dairies, never seen anyone not go through the same basic prodedures to keep things sanitary and legal.
Also, it's not at all challenging to pasteurize the milk yourself if only raw milk is available to you locally, and you fear what could be in it, heat it to 145 and hold at that temp for 30 minutes. Dairies are required to keep an air space temp of 150 in CT.
And it's homgenization that keeps the cream from separating, so pasteurized milk will still have the cream rise to the top.
Permalink
mach37 Posted 3:28 pm
10 Nov 2009
Permalink
Aaron Lucich Posted 6:14 pm
10 Nov 2009
Permalink