The Complete Patient

We really are nice people here at this blog. Here these regulators in New York, and elsewhere, are crapping all over dairy farmers, and Amanda Rose is wondering if absolutely positively every step in the lab test done for Lori and Darren McGrath is the same as that done for the state.

Take it from me, the tests are the same—based on long-established public health and government guidelines. The regulators, if they are reading the exchanges here, are laughing themselves silly at such a focus on the tests themselves.

How do I know they take us for fools? For starters, I know they won’t talk about their tests in any meaningful way. I requested explanations from Will Francis, head of the Ag & Markets Division of Milk Control, and Jessica Chittenden, the Ag & Markets PR person, as to why the state’s test of the Autumn Valley Farm might have come out differently from a private lab’s tests following the same procedures, and they ignored my request. (You can go to their site and send your own emails to Francis and others at the division.)

Okay, nothing new there. They have made clear on any number of occasions they don’t like the discussions that go on here, and have no intention of answering questions.

However, Chittenden did speak to one of the media that is more sympathetic to the Ag & Markets cause, The Oneonta Daily Star. It reported on the listeria finding at Autumn Valley Farm, just like I did, and it even contacted the McGraths, which is a huge step forward for a small-town rag like the Daily Star.

But true to its role as a government mouthpiece, it buried that important piece of information. So Chittenden talked to that paper, and essentially said the Ag & Markets test is right because, well, it’s the Ag & Markets test. Not only did Ag & Markets follow federal protocol, which all major labs doing such testing do, but, “We have all the confidence in the world in the nationally renowned testing laboratory.” So what the hell are these stupid farmers making such a stink about?

Actually, if you want to know more of the underlying motivations here, just read a recent blog posting by Chris Galen, the marketing vice president of the National Milk Producers Federation. This is the organization that represents most of the nation's milk cooperatives, which handle much of the nation’s milk processing and distribution. He argues that this whole raw milk movement is going to be harassed out of business by legal actions against farm producers of raw milk. Aggressive suits “represent the beginning of the end of the movement,” he predicts.

When I challenged him on his blog about the seriousness of the public health problem posed by raw milk, he said I was missing the point. Which is?  “...the point is that there is now much greater financial incentive for them (victims) to come forward and through the tort process seek redress for their illnesses.”

What we are seeing with these fraudulent listeria cases by New York’s Ag & Markets is an example of legal harassment.

The regulators’ rationale is simple: We’ll go after a few producers, make their lives miserable, and make sure the word gets around to other producers, as well as conventional dairy farmers who may be thinking about getting in on the raw milk action. (As Lori McGrath states in her comment, many of these would-be producers have already gotten the message.) And we’ll be providing lots of evidence to the ambulance chasers, who will do more of our work, and extract financial penalties from the farmers.

Let the farmers get independent split sample tests and video recordings of our screwups. We’ll just ignore them. We’re the government and we can do what we want. We're like the mafia. Who’s going to stop us?

Now, as Gary Cox and others point out, if you get enough of such documentation, and give the regulators enough of their own Big Brother treatment, and file enough lawsuits against them, you may eventually get the attention of a sympathetic legislator or two.