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Criminalizing raw milk makes Canada look ignorant — even to Americans

Here’s an editorial by Kimberley Hartke, writing from the United States. Believe it or not, even the Americans take a more enlightened attitude to raw milk that do we in Canada. Thanks to Pam Killeen for passing this along to The Bovine:

“Dear Canada: Michael Schmidt is Not a Criminal

There are three compelling reasons why Michael Schmidt’s cow-boarding program is not wrong and why all 20 charges against him, including the recent contempt finding, should be dismissed.

Number one: The raw milk he produces has made no one sick—in twenty years. Claims by his health officials and competitors that his product is ‘dangerous’ are just that– baseless claims designed to scare the public, with the end goal of preventing the increasing popularity of raw milk. The Milk Marketing Boards are right, modern, industrial dairy products from factory cows need to be pasteurized. In contrast, Schmidt’s raw dairy is inherently safe because the cows are not confined, and they are raised in their natural habitat, on green grass pastures in plenty of sunshine.

Of course, a product produced on a mass scale, for mass consumption needs strict safety measures and controls. But a small-scale producer has quality controls of a different sort, high standards for animal husbandry, plus, face-to-face contact with the end consumer—all of which mean effective accountability and transparency.

Number two: Across the border into America, hundreds of cow boarding programs, and cow leasing programs are operating legally. Many of them are in states where it is illegal to sell it. (In no state is it illegal to purchase, possess or consume raw milk.) Twenty-eight U.S. states currently allow the sale of raw milk, and eight states allow retail sales. In all but a few US states, buying a share in a herd, farm or cow is recognized as a legal private contract.

When Judge Boswell acknowledged that the Schmidt ruling, “had nothing to do with whether or not people have the right to consume raw milk,” he actually touched on the heart of the issue. Consumers will naturally seek legal and ethical means of exercising their rights in a free society. When sellers are forbidden to sell, and owners are the only ones able to consume, more people will strive to become owners.

Which brings us to Number three: Michael Schmidt is not selling milk. He is providing boarding services, grazing lands, and delivery services to the shareholders who own the cows. He is a service provider, not a seller. It is a stretch of the Ontario Milk Act to say he is selling raw milk.

This man is not a criminal.

Convicted Oct. 20, 2008, sentenced Dec. 2, 2008 -- is this man a criminal?

The fact is many raw dairy consumers have serious health reasons for choosing this unconventional food. I have a painful knee condition, chondro malacia patella (runners knee). The only medical option is knee replacement, and yet, I am too young to have the surgery. My family now owns a share of a cow named Aster, and my knee pain has been greatly alleviated by adding raw dairy to my diet. I am very grateful that the Virginia Department of Agriculture helped a local dairy farm draw up plans for a legal cow-boarding program.

The Washington Post ran a story of how this same farmer’s raw milk saved the life of a baby who was failing to thrive, who was literally dying. In their desperate search for answers, the parents found a recipe for a therapeutic formula, made with raw milk. They bought a cow share and the formula saved their child’s life.

I would hate to see Canadian courts cut your citizens off from a potentially life-saving option.

Kimberly Hartke of Reston, Virginia is the publicist for the Weston A. Price Foundation www.westonaprice.org , a nutrition education non-profit, based in Washington, DC. Their Campaign for Real Milk www.realmilk.com inspired her purchase of a cow share. Visit her blog, Hartke is Online at http://hartkeisonline.com/ .”

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Hartke is Online!

Government Regulations create high hurdles for small farmers
« Money Saving Tips from a Farm Market Manager
Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund Puts Out Action Alert on HR2749 »
Government Regulations Create High Hurdles for Small Farmers
By Kimberly Hartke | Published: July 16, 2009

John Coles Gives Away his Cheese
My Goat Cheese Giveaway

by John Coles of Satyrfield Farm
How my troubles with the law began

In January 2005, Virginia began to require permits for all mammalian milk (including goat milk), except for one species, Homo sapiens. Is someone going to make cheese from mouse milk?

For a farm to comply with this regulation it would cost approximately $50,000, the pasteurizer alone would cost $10,000. Our operation is very small. When selling directly to the final consumer (not through restaurants or stores), a farm store, farmers market and a home kitchen is all that is needed.
An Unwarranted Attack on a Wholesome Product

Most of the cheese that I make is a fresh soft cheese from our raw goats’ milk. I don’t believe in pasteurizing milk to drink or to make it into cheese or other cultured milk products. The reason is that it is nutritionally superior with the natural enzymes and lactic acid bacteria intact. Adding a culture to pasteurized milk does replace the missing bacteria, however, I consider the pasteurization process an adulteration of my product. As an artisan cheesemaker, I believe in working with nature and keeping my cheese as natural and whole as possible.

Most of my customers want my cheese because it is not pasteurized.

The Progress of the Cattle Industry in Ontario during the Eighteen Eighties
Note the number of independent cheese factories which grew up.
RUMINATIONS - The old milk route
Cheese and Cheesemaking

Food Safety Enhancement Act HR2749
After thoroughly analyzing the text of H.R. 2749, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund reports that small farms and local producers and small business would be forced to endure “a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme” that would “disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.”
Under H.R. 2749 the FDA would require any such producer or holder of such products to develop a food safety plan to be submitted to the FDA for scrutiny. If the small business or farm can devote the time and resources to such a bureaucratic requirement, and if granted approval by the FDA, they then can be subject to “risk-based inspections” at any time for any reason or no reason, which in laymen’s terms are better labeled warrantless searches.
The nail in the coffin for any independent producer would be provisions in H.R. 2749 empowering the FDA to dictate farming practices. In fact, organic- and sustainable-farming practices could be eliminated outright under a scheme to regularize farming practices under the heading of safety standards. Raw meat may be subject to irradiation, and no one would be allowed to drink raw milk….”
pete
June 20, 2009 at 8:29 pm

geographic quarantine. Those words should strike fear into everyone. One of the most common tools for genocide, one used to kill over a 100 million people in the 20th century, is food. You control food you control the people. The power to stop the transportation of food is the power to cause starvation and death.

Most scoff at this, it would never happen they say. But it has happened repeatedly, often by regimes the US government or US media supported. But this is the power they are claiming. And I posit that no sane, trustable person would want that power for fear they or someone else later would abuse it. That this government wants that power alone proves they cannot be trusted with it.
opit
June 30, 2009 at 1:50 am

I’m reminded of when Ault Foods ( Kraft ) sponsored a drive for ‘higher’ standards in Ontario. Over 100 cheese plants were closed as a result of regulation disguised as safety concerns.

( I guess we know which ex cheese plant employee wrote that note. The principles which are used to drive small farmers and manufacturers bankrupt are the same as are used against countries, kill independent journalism and independent political parties : the game is rigged using lawyers and bankers.
Now you know the true extent of Big Business' avarice - and why 'communism' was the threat they feared so much, regulating the size of private businesses...along with trade unions. Never give a sucker an even break or a chance to get one.)