Could the Raw Milk Insurrection in PA Blow a Hole in the Ag Bureaucracy’s Raw Milk Chokehold?
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 08:33AM There’s a lot of legislative and regulatory activity going on around the country concerning raw milk.
There’s the California situation, which has occupied a lot of attention here. In addition, there are legislative initiatives either just completed, in process, or under discussion, in Vermont, North Carolina, and New York.
On the surface, they seem very different from each other. In Vermont, per Henwhisperer’s comment following my previous column, dairies can now sell up to 50 quarts a day of raw milk versus 25 previously. In North Carolina, legislation is moving along to prevent agriculture officials from coloring raw milk with dye. And in New York, there are apparently some discussions going on about making raw milk available in retail stores.
As different as these various initiatives sound, their commonality is that agriculture officials maintain strict control. California’s agriculture officials will have wide discretion, per my previous comment. The Vermont farmer who can now sell 12.5 gallons a day of raw milk each day can’t even run a bare subsistence operation. The fact that North Carolina residents keep the right to obtain milk without adulteration doesn’t make me want to set off extra fireworks on July 4. And in New York, according a recent article profiling an activist raw milk producer, the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets supposedly wants strict control over any retail sales—consumers must order their milk in advance, no displays of raw milk allowed, sign affidavits, etc.
I don’t want to disparage the important consumer initiatives that underlay these efforts. Without the tireless work of many individuals, our food rights would continue to erode. I just want to point out how tenaciously the agriculture people will hold onto their powers, and fight tooth and nail each effort to relax their chokehold on raw milk supplies.
And then there is Pennsylvania, where we may wind up with a real court test of the fundamental rights issue that underlies disputes about raw milk. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has sent warning letters to 44 dairies that are selling raw milk products without a permit, trying to intimidate them into coming under the agency’s thumb, according to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
But the FTCLDF is warning that the agency’s intimidation effort could lead to a test of the state’s unique constitutional guarantee of an individual’s “right to engage in a profession of one’s choice, related to the right to use and acquire property…”
According to Taaron Meikle, head of FTCLDF, “Usually, the ‘police power’ of a state is used to regulate in the area of the public's ‘health, safety and welfare’ and accounts for such regulatory programs as food safety, environmental protection, natural resource protection, etc. However, Pennsylvania's Constitution suggests that if there is a conflict between an individual's inalienable rights and the police power, the individual's rights win out. This issue may have to be decided in a Pennsylvania court if the Department continues to insist that it can regulate private conduct between a farmer and his/her consumer(s).”
The simple fact that Pennsylvania has at least 44 farmers defying the Department’s will is an indication of the resistance currently under way there. Wouldn’t it be interesting if what the raw milk producers are doing is entirely legal—and that a court might back the notion that farmers have the right to sell whatever foods they want directly to willing consumers.
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Reader Comments (10)
They are doing what they can to maintain what little control they can salvage.
They are not desperate yet...but will be soon....once the tide starts rolling in like we know it will.
The more they ramp up the pressure...the quicker we will win (although the more painful the victory will be).
They can only win by deceit, or abuse of power...this we've seen time and time again....
The Truth will prevail.
Now that would be a good day.
But it will always be lawful, and no amount of legislation or guns pointed at them can make it unlawful.
DJ out.
What bothers me about the tomato scare is that just about every article I read included words to the effect of "since tomatoes don't have bar codes". And since the FSIS discovered to their horror that 90% of the tomato packers use whatever tomatoes they happen to have on hand to fill orders, even if they were, as was mentioned in one article, grown in the US, shipped to Mexico for packing, and then reshipped back to the good old USA, I would imagine a bar code on a tomato, National Tomato Identification System, if you will, is not too far in the future. I remember a year or so ago reading about two chaps who had invented a RFID ink.
Personally, I think <dons tin foil hat> that this tomato scare is a biological weapons test just to see what would happen. </tin foil hat>.
Back to raw milk, and I just discovered this, The State of WI Dept.of Administration was on my blog today coming from a google search for "wi raw milk laws datcp". Might Wisconsin be next?
So now we have immunization, fluoridation, and pasteurization in widespread practice and growing consumer resistance to these practices.
The idea of "fighting" against disease (rather than cooperating with nature) is deeply ingrained in health professionals of all sorts. In addition, milk regulations currently on the books reflect a longstanding belief that we must constantly be on guard against pathogens by every means at our disposal. What health professionals fail to appreciate is that food quality determines the health of plants, animals, and humans. Both animals and humans can thrive under the most unsanitary of conditions if food quality provides adequate protection. Conversely, a pristine environment does not guarantee health if food quality is poor.
It's interesting that there is a double standard for humans and animals where sanitation is concerned. Our pets and livestock can roam about eating and drinking whatever suits their fancy and we expect them to remain healthy. We humans, on the other hand, are expected to wash after each visit to the toilet to keep from contaminating our food with bacterial pathogens.
Realistically, we should concentrate on improving the quality of the food supply and the quality of nutrition instruction. This would do far more to prevent disease outbreaks than over-sanitizing the human food environment.
Ironically, current milk regulations were developed in response to an under-sanitized, poor quality food environment. Growing consumer awareness of the need to consume higher quality food (and avoid consuming junk) makes it possible to dramatically improve the public health by increasing the availability of raw milk dairy products. Hopefully, legal challenges in Pennsylvania and elsewhere will give consumers the tools needed to convince state lawmakers to alter milk regulations as desired by consumers.
Beware if the germs in beef dont get you the germs in tomatoes will or the germs in raw dairy will get you or maybe the terroist behind every bush will get you. BOO
How can one believe anything TPTB tell us? US grain reserves fall to zero, even they report US grain exports "strong" for May. There are millions of Americans losing their homes and needing food assistance, while no needy Wall Street firm is allowed to fail. Real inflation is in the double digits but they say its contained and they back a strong dollar. The list is ENDLESS.
Again I ask can you or I believe ANYTHING TPTB publish or state?
In the 1960's, while visiting an uncle's farm, we ran out of milk during dinner. I was dispatched, with adult supervision, to get more. We went to barn and milked the cow... the bucket was placed on the counter in the kitchen. I've never tasted better milk since.
For several generations, all the folks on that side of the family drank milk "fresh from the cow". Dad was one of 13 children. I figure I've got about 400 cousins and second cousins, but that's a rough estimate. That's one healthy tribe!
In the '60s and '70s, my dad raised a few cows on 5 acres outside of town. Every so often he would pick up the butcher and they would haul a steer up the rack on the back of the pickup... a few days later the freezer would be full. Dad liked to take 'milk vealers" and finish them on rolled oats and molasses for two weeks. You could taste some of that in the meat. Better than veal. Better than beef. Something you will never find in a store.
Hand made beef, hand crafted to personal preferences.
My family drinks non rBST milk and eats real butter. Dad couldn't stand the taste of margarine and frequently said something like "We ate eggs, bacon, and toast with real butter and nobody got sick or had heart problems on the farm." As a result, my family eats real foods. Real butter. Real eggs. etc.
In an era when autism, ADHD, et. al. have ballooned by 10 to 100 fold, my children are healthy and one is on a merit scholarship to U. of California. Anecdotal? Yup. Statistically valid? Not a chance. Yet there is merit to personal observation.
I've observed that those folks in my tribe who live closer to the land, who's foods are most fresh (and raw), and who's hands are most calloused and most likely to have dirt under their fingernails are the ones with the fewest problems with health and emotional status.
Those eating the most processed sterilized foods and living in the most industrialized societies are the most likely to be unhappy and unhealthy.
Just an observation from an Amish wannabe with a kitchen garden in the backyard, home canned foods, and a Doctor who keeps asking why I never come in...
The Amish are sometimes called "Pennsylvania Dutch". Some of those folks in PA are undoubtedly my family, at some degree of removal, since grandma was Pennsylvania Dutch. I wish them well in the struggle to remain free of "The English"...