The Complete Patient

When I spoke at the Weston A. Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference a couple weeks ago, I recounted the mixed bag of legal and legislative results on the raw milk front. Here, briefly, is what I described:

• Legal actions. There have been a couple of important victories in Ohio advancing the cause of herdshares and allowing the use of raw milk as pet food. But the effort to fight California's AB 1735 in court didn't work well--the judge, after issuing a temporary restraining order, eventually refused to extend it and told the parties to work it out legislatively, which resulted in the SB 201 effort. In New York, the judge in the Meadowsweet Dairy case has just ruled that herdshares are illegal and all dairies producing raw dairy are subject to oversight by New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets.
• Legislative actions. The most intense legislative action has involved the California push for SB 201, to replace the onerous AB 1735's strict coliform standard. That push had support from a prominent legislator--an important first for any state--and moved right along, with almost no opposition, until it reached the governor's desk, and was vetoed. Other legislative actions, such as in Maryland, have made some progress, but died in the end.
• Civil disobedience. Civil disobedience works best when lots of sympathizers join in and the government is forced to re-examine its approach. The two main actors in this arena are Mark Nolt in Pennsylvania and Michael Schmidt in Canada. Both these farmers have stood valiantly and bravely, but ultimately alone in the farmer community in trying to establish their right to distribute raw milk directly to consumers.
• Publicity. This area has experienced probably the most progress. The media used to be totally one-sided in reporting on raw milk, accepting government press releases about milk contamination and illnesses at face value. There are now other blogs reporting on raw milk, and major publications and television networks have joined in—not always favorably, but certainly less unfavorably than was once the case.

It's in the publicity that we gain the most important benefit, which is education. It is only through education, not only of consumers, but of legislators and judges, that progress will quicken, and rights expand.

However, it is clear that the education will only work if consumers are walking the walk. As the double whammies of the federal court case against Mark McAfee and the New York court decision against Meadowsweet Dairy make clear, we are dealing with people who are desperate--perhaps more desperate as time goes on and they see public attitudes shift--to carry out the agendas of Big Ag and Big Pharma, and will stop at nothing to accomplish their agendas, including:

• Dishonesty, when they say that all raw milk contains pathogens, and they know it doesn’t;
• Misrepresentation, when they say people have been dying from drinking raw milk, when they know the only deaths came from imported bathtub cheeses made from raw milk, which serious raw milk producers disavow;
• Interfering in private transactions between consenting adults when they argue, and a judge agrees, that groups of individuals can’t buy whole food directly from farmers;
• Engaging in censorship by ordering small sellers of nutritional products not to post links to web sites that provide information on the benefits of real food.

I think Mark McAfee said it best following my previous post, as one dairyman to another, when he advised Barb and Steve Smith to stay the course. I can’t tell people whose business has been badly damaged what to do, but I can encourage the Meadowsweet Dairy LLC Ithaca shareholders to get off their butts and make the trip to Meadowsweet and buy more milk than they ever bought from the Smiths. If the Smiths decide to get out of the raw milk business, these consumers need to find other raw dairy farmers and head to those places, or else the court case really does become a victory for the authorities. The same goes for consumers elsewhere. I know it’s a pain to travel an hour or two to farms and buy raw milk and pastured eggs and grass-fed meat, but it needs to be done. Organize carpools with friends. Put a dent in the businesses of the Wal-Marts and Krogers and Pfizer and Novarta.

They want us to be sick and dependent and in debt...and under their total control. But as Blair McMorran describes in a comment on my previous post, it's not just a matter of standing up to injustice, intimidation, and morally shameful behavior. It's a matter of our health and the health of our families. When we're healthy, they lose.