Why the Raw Milk Movement Is a Different Sort of Movement; Using Children to Push NAIS
Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 03:36PM 
At the California Assembly’s Health Committee hearing Tuesday, several legislators allowed as how their offices had been inundated with calls on SB 201. The legislators didn't say it, but presumably there were few or no calls against the proposed legislation. Even the conventional dairy industry supported it, and it passed unanimously.
Then yesterday, SB 201 passed the Assembly’s Agriculture Committee, again unanimously.
Now it goes to the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, which earlier this year de-railed AB 1604, which was designed to rescind AB 1735 and its 10-coliform-per-milliliter standard. Not to worry, says Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., in his comment following my previous post—“the greatest hurdles have been passed…”
It’s easy to experience wild mood swings in watching the raw milk issue evolve. Today, it looks like easy sailing. Next week, another raw-milk dairy could be raided or another judge could throw a monkey wrench into efforts to expand availability of raw dairy products.
But what’s becoming clear is that not only has a movement taken root here (see the photo above of SB 201 proponents outside the legislature on Tuesday), but there’s no counter movement to oppose it (as in pro and anti abortion, or pro and anti gun rights). The government bureaucrats and public health experts who want to ban raw milk don’t count as a movement. They oppose food rights because it’s their job and they value their job security, but they don’t go home at night and post on blogs and write their representatives to oppose raw milk (except maybe for C2).
That’s not to say that the opposition isn’t serious, just that it’s difficult over the long term for a non-movement headed by paid professionals (a mercenary army) to defeat a passionate movement of real people. It’s why the non-movement prefers to operate in secret, in the shadows. The light of open debate and discussion is its worst enemy.
The Internet has made it ever more difficult for them to operate in secrecy. The nearly-real-time posting about legislation enables ordinary people to stay abreast of the details of legislative moves, as we see in the excellent recap and background about SB 201 from the California legislature (also posted anonymously following my previous post). (By the way, it’s interesting that, according to the legislature’s summary, three children became ill from pathogens in September 2006, not five or six.)
One of the outgrowths of the emergence of a movement is that the media are slowly but surely changing their approach to coverage of raw milk. A case in point is a National Public Radio segment on the growing popularity of raw milk.
It’s well balanced and informative, and reinforces yet again how rapidly the demand for raw milk is growing, how hungry people are for it, so to speak.
***
While the raw milk situation has been getting lots of attention, it seems federal authorities are cleverly creating “incentives” for expansion of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). They have pushed requirements in a few states to require 4-H participants to have their premises registered. Now, two Congressmen are pushing agriculture legislation that would require all providers of meat to school lunch programs have premises identification, which is the preliminary step before full animal identification.
Debra Eschmeyer of the National Farm to School Network who also raises organic fruits, vegetables, and chickens on her farm in Ohio, put it well when she states. "I respect Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and David Obey (D-WI) for championing food safety, but I am not clear that this provision to require the School Lunch Program to purchase meat products from NAIS registered premises is not about food safety. The downer cow that instigated the Hallmark/Westland beef recall was tagged and identified, but that did not make our school lunches safer. Farm to School programs are focused on children knowing where their food comes from and actually putting a face to the farmer—the ultimate traceability—by actually visiting the farm, not by putting a tag on each of my chickens."
Why is it that these people do their dirty work through the children?
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Reader Comments (30)
"Think of the children" is the ultimate root password to the rule of law.
The idea that NAIS will keep the meat in the school lunch program 'safer' is a joke. Did anyone see the article in the Chicago Tribune last November saying that there's a little-known loophole in USDA regulations that states if meat is found contaminated with e-coli in the slaughterhouse, it gets moved to a 'cook only' line? 'Cook-only' is the pre-cooked hamburgers, taco meat, etc. you buy in the freezer section or in processed foods (like pizzas and burritos). It also goes to the School Lunch Program!
I couldn't find the link on the Chicago Tribune website, but here's another. Please read it, and then ask yourselves, what is the REAL agenda of NAIS if not food safety?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2004007285_meat11.html?syndication=rss
Unfortunately many fall for it as they are falsely led to believe it's a great safety feature for children (or whatever the reasons they are pushing).
Ms. Eschmeyer is very right, the downer cows were tagged and identified and still was of no service to "the children". The system failed.
http://www.farmandranchfreedom.org/content/follow-the-money (I don't know how accurate the site is)
Could the 4-H participants who opt out of the NAIS, form their own organization?
Content of Letter to Appropriations Committee and Signatories:
http://farmandranchfreedom.org/content/files/SignOnLetter080625.pdf
I think this should be left up to people over 18!
"They oppose food rights because it’s their job and they value their job security, but they don’t go home at night and post on blogs and write their representatives to oppose raw milk (except maybe for C2)."
Not really the motivation (opposing food rights), but agree that there could be a deeper analysis of the issues by the scientists and regulators alike. No letters written on C2's part for either side--still researching the topic beyond the office/lab point of view.
"The nearly-real-time posting about legislation enables ordinary people to stay abreast of the details of legislative moves, as we see in the excellent recap and background about SB 201 from the California legislature (also posted anonymously following my previous post)."
I also read the assembly analysis--they don't always get every fact straight (especially if the state analyses have not yet been submitted), but agree it is great for *everyone* to have real-time information. Discovered you can subscribe and get regular updates to follow SB 201 in California (all states should provide this valuable service to the public). Go to the bottom and click subscribe on the bottom left, if interested.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_201&sess=CUR&house=B&author=florez
Hear, hear!!! Judith rocks! I've met her and talked on the phone with her (asking stupid questions, and she never makes me feel dumb).
She's smart, committed, and if we prevail against NAIS, it will be largely due to Judith's tireless,perceptive and 'leave no stone unturned doggedness. They're huge, but she won't give up.
She has sliced up NAIS into pieces I can understand. Get on her mailing list, answer her calls to action.
It's high time to put the raw milk movement on autorun, and fight NAIS with the same passion focus and commitment as Judith's.
Otherwise, you can probably kiss your raw milk goodbye.NAIS will kill small farms.
Blair
-Blair
All that nice stuff said, Blair. I must stay true to my sarcastic, darthly nature about food safety: so based on the German study, would you call raw milk mixed with differnt amounts of cow (or goat, camel) feces brown, semi-brown, or chocolate?
Take care!
We are the decisions-by-research culture. It is the ethos of our time. Layperson, bureaucrat, and of course scientist, find research to be the only reliable basis for decision-making. To buck that trend is to risk ridicule and worse. But we can do better.
I am not opposed to honest research by any means, but we have whittled our decision-making process down to such a fine nib we can longer see the forest for the trees. Today EVERYTHING must be justified by a controlled-variable, double-blind study, and we have come to love our studies so much that we no longer acknowledge their limitations, which are deep and many, especially in the regard to human and other biological systems where it is truly impossible to control all significant variables even if we could identify them, which we emphatically cannot. Yet we press ahead anyway, determining this or that action based on this or that hyper-focal study; often wrong, never in doubt.
What we so desperately need now is to balance our western research with a broader, more human viewpoint. We need to accept that a narrow study is just that—narrow—and we must be far more skeptical of the value of study-based knowledge. And we must, absolutely MUST, begin to pay attention to anthropological and demographic data. If we see, for example, that a certain culture eats saturated fat and has little to no heart disease, we ought to acknowledge it and look into it, instead of our habitual reaction of tossing it off as an anomaly or a “paradox” (there’s a word that should have no use in western science) since we’ve already “proven” the opposite.
That is, by the way, how I was first drawn to the Weston A. Price Foundation. Price’s anthropological data was, I discovered, extremely good. Price was clearly an exceptionally diligent scientist—an obsessive and careful observer and documenter as well as logical in process—but more important he knew where to look for truth. He sought out health, and worked backward from there to discover its underpinnings. Such anthropological study is extremely potent if the study groups are segregated (i.e. isolated) population units, and Price’s subjects were just that.
I am content to rest on the traditions of natural, raw foods, very much including raw dairy, while the food safety experts fumble through their details. And I would prefer to be left alone while they do it.
I should note that the farmer takes great care with his milk, as he does his cows, and their grass. I meant to say "not that he would (add manure to the milk), but he could", and feel perfectly safe,
I am sure this is shocking to germophobes, but my perspective is no longer governed by fear. That makes a huge difference in how you read this.
-Blair
"Of 1,700 domestic and international tomato samples collected so far, none has tested positive, said David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods with the Food and Drug Administration.
Officials would not divulge if, or what, other produce was being seriously investigated, only saying that they would "continue to keep an open mind about the possible source."
This story alludes that the FDA hasn't a clue and shows incompetence. Over 800 (of lab confirmed Slamonella) and growing.
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20080627/salmonella-tomato-outbreak-biggest-ever
I wonder why they didn't specify that the 1985 outbreak was from PASTEURIZED milk? I would bet they would specify raw had the milk been unpasteurized. Both articles mention "repacking" along the processing chain; This only gives emphasis to the need for local-less packaging, less handling and hopefully no added chemicals or alterations to the foods.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/27/salmonella.outbreak/
"The true incidence is probably much higher, because the agency has estimated that about 30 cases occur for every one that is reported."
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/06/27/tomatoes_salmonella.html
"Other produce eaten along with tomatoes is being looked at"
Does that mean they didn't look at the whole picture to begin with?
"We are the decisions-by-research culture... find research to be the only reliable basis for decision-making" "I am not opposed to honest research by any means...."
This critique is confusing. I'm researching food safety and cultural/social/demographic data among other things. Your comment suggests that you made some "decisions by research" too about WP. Are you saying that research should not include the science data, especially if it relates to food safety?
Blair,
Thanks for your sense of humor and clarification. I thought the poo would be added during the final stage of processing thereby cause a change in color :-) Filtration makes sense to get rid of the chunks. And, I'm not a germ-a-phobe, but have concerns about the pathogens and naive populations being exposed...and how to best address this risk...
There isn't supposed to be a "naive population". That's the whole point.
People living in Asia and Africa have a diverse population of commensal beneficial bacteria living in their bodies. These microorganisms help control hypertension, modulate the immune system, and protect from pathogens, among other things.
Once upon a time, Clostridium dificile was thought to be part of the natural gut flora of newborns. In the 1980's, it was found in elderly people who received treatment with clindamycin. Now it is a community-acquired disease that can be contracted at any age after just one dose of almost any antibiotic.
We in America are crafting these "superbugs" with our formula-fed infants, antibiotic-laden foods and our over-medicated populace.
Thanks for asking for a clarifier...
My point is that there's a hundred miles between a research-is-god attitude, and a research-is-good attitude (perhaps I should say good-research-is-good attitude) and we, unfortunately, are locked into the former. The results have been dreary to say the least. We’ve lost our health, lost our understanding of the natural world that sustains us, and lost the traditions that ground us, all at enormous expense.
Now in disclosure I will admit to being a medical provider who from 8 to 5 lives in the research-is-god world. As you are probably aware, virtually all medical care is verified by research, from the overall themes to the tiniest protocols that support them. That the protocols often change, and that America's overall health is degrading as we employ them, creates no wonder at all about the legitimacy of the system.
We would do well to recognize two basic facts. 1. Complex biological systems function optimally in their natural state, and 2. Manipulating the macro-biological world because of compartmentalized microbiological research is likely to degrade those systems.
In the case of raw milk, the powers that be are acting in classic modern form. Look into the microscope, see a microbe, note that an individual or group became ill after contacting that microbe, kill the microbe. Case closed, fee collected, go home. But the natural system has more to say about it! That’s what the immune-huggers and the enzyme-huggers and the soil-huggers and others have been getting to on this blog and elsewhere. We are missing something critical with our narrow, self-congratulatory, “evidence-based” viewpoints, and our systems are degrading because of it. Problem is, of course, that the narrow-view folks have established the official themes, written the rules accordingly, and quit the case.
On the other side of the modern raw milk research is a long tradition—thousands of years—of humans living well in close contact with their natural environment. That information does not fit well into the modern-science view (though Weston Price did a fine job of blending the two) so those of us who do not accept the modern party line must fight for our rights to ignore it (or spend mornings and evenings tending a family cow and garden).
C2, in your last comment you mentioned concern about “naïve populations” (interesting use of the word) being exposed to pathogens. I immediately thought about my hospital, which is full of weak, “naïve” patients for whom we maintain a hyper-sanitary environment and liberally apply anti-microbial agents. Unsurprisingly, the hospital format for health protection long ago leaked into the “healthy” world, with promotion of a kill-the-microbe prophylaxis—everything from anti-microbial soaps to ultra-pasteurized milk. There is, indeed, your naïve population.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation. Hope I got closer this time.
A massive amount of the American population, including children, voluntarily take these medications with the blessing of our regulatory system.