The Complete Patient

We are rightfully absorbed in the immediate legal challenges to the availability of raw milk in California and New York.

But when I read recently that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will declare any day now that milk and meat from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to consume, I got this uneasy feeling we will be the victims of an end run.

The Wall Street Journal’s article predicting the approval pointed out that, while there may be initial resistance to such milk and meat, it can be expected to fade as consumers get used to the idea. “Consumers…have a long history of turning up their noses at technological innovations in food. It took years for consumers to accept pasteurized milk as safe.”

Those two sentences clarify a few things for me. They begin to explain why the U.S. Department of Agriculture and agribusiness are so relentless in pushing the National Animal Identification System. NAIS will enable agribusiness to document each cloned animal’s (patented) genetic strains, and make farming untenable for smaller farms that aren’t part of the cloning/transgenics "revolution."

The officials know from their experience with milk that gaining acceptance from farmers for a practice that will create financial ruin for many could take a number of years. After all, who wants to put themselves out of business?

But think about it. The effect of pasteurization, aside from likely undermining our society's overall health, served to put many thousands of dairy farmers out of business by continually eroding their margins. Once people realized what was going on, it was too late to reverse the situation.

Not only that, once consumers finally do knuckle under, they wonder how things could have been otherwise. Isn’t that the way it is with milk? Now that we are three or four generations removed from the days when certified raw milk was easily available, most consumers wonder that anyone could be so kooky as to prefer unpasteurized milk.

The vision the regulators and agribusiness execs have today is that a few years down the road, few people will remember, or care, whether their milk and meat come from real animals or cloned animals. Sure, a few kooks might head out to real farms for the real stuff, but who cares about them? 

There is something else that worries me about the coming cloning revolution—something I haven’t seen written about yet. I’ve read in a number of places, including the WSJ article, that the animals being cloned so far may be great milk producers or providers of tender meat, but that they are more prone to health problems than conventionally-bred animals.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if cloned animals, with their limited genetic diversity, were prone to outbreaks of diseases we don’t even know about yet? Then the authorities really would need to make use of NAIS, as the basis for eliminating much of the country’s entire milk and meat supply.

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Thank you, Kathryn, for updating us on the story of your destroyed barn. It’s wonderful to learn that so many people responded in such giving ways, though I must say I’m not surprised. There are lots of people out there who truly care. As you say, we shouldn't underestimate "the power of strength of conviction and community." And with the insurance company showing signs of giving as well, the story could actually have as happy an ending as is possible in such a situation.

On the subject of the illnesses blamed on Organic Pastures Dairy Co., I’m not sure what else there is to say that hasn’t been said. This situation, more than any other, seems to stimulate the kind of negative emotions leading to the Internet misbehavior that is so offensive to most people here. Hopefully Mary and Melissa will return to trying to work the situation out with lawyers and other professionals, and not on this blog.