Connecticut entrepreneur Ed Hartz, with his two children, following my talk at Rutgers University last month. He is starting a milk delivery service. The news that Ontario’s food police are challenging the exoneration of raw dairy producer Michael Schmidt—in the face of a thoroughly researched and documented judicial opinion—raises the question of why these officials remain so obsessed about milk. Michael Schmidt, after all, serves only a couple hundred people, and conventional dairy producers in Canada are well compensated for their milk.
The problem for the food police, in Canada and the U.S., is that milk is such an important item in the food-business scheme of things.
In talking with a number of farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere, I’ve come to understand a fact of business life that grocers through the ages have long appreciated about milk: it is an important traffic driver. In other words, because milk is a basic perishable product for many families, it needs to be regularly replenished. But here’s the key: when you go to a store to purchase milk, you invariably purchase other items—eggs, veggies, fruit, bread, meat, cheese, laundry detergent, nuts, flour, etc., etc.
That’s helps explain why Wisconsin’s campaign against raw milk is so devastating to the farms that receive orders to halt raw milk sales, or warning letters that they may be subject to such an order. Many of the dairies are diverse farming operations. They sell their own meat, cheese, eggs, and so forth. They may even bring in other items for sale, like kefir cultures and books (like The Raw Milk Revolution, which a number are already doing). But it’s the raw milk that drives the traffic. Once the dairies can’t sell raw milk, then consumers lose the sense of urgency to drive ten, twenty, or thirty miles to the farm for the meat, cheese, and eggs. They look for another source of raw milk, and when they find it, that new source becomes the place where they move their demand for the meat, cheese, and eggs.
All things being equal, raw milk sellers might be able to weather an interruption in their ability to sell raw milk. But all things aren’t equal.
Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection understands this basic fact of life, which helps explain why they are so obsessed with halting raw milk sales. Without raw milk, farmers can’t sustain their retail businesses, and must go back to the conventional system.
It doesn’t matter what business you are in, whether food, clothing, automobiles, or credit cards. Each customer can be measured in its lifetime value—how much is the customer likely to purchase over some period of years? In the food business, a customer who spends $100 per week on groceries is worth $5,000 per year, for possibly twenty or thirty years. Suddenly some mom or dad looking for a half gallon of milk on a Saturday is worth possibly $100,000 or $150,000.
You don’t think the executives at Whole Foods, Krogers, and Wal-Mart don’t take each individual customer seriously? And you don’t think that the processors that supply those grocers with pasteurized milk don’t take each store customer seriously?
Now extend the thinking a little further. Each person who goes to a farm store or a farmers market or a church parking lot dropoff point for a few gallons of raw milk isn’t just a lost $10 or $20 sale—that person likely is putting off a trip to Whole Foods, Krogers, or Wal-Mart, or avoiding it entirely, or going to a competitor as a result, and may well represent $150,000 of lost sales.
Whole Foods understands the business proposition very well—knows that the highly educated individuals who buy raw milk are top Whole Foods prospects—and thus carries raw milk in states where it’s legal to sell at retail, in California, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The other food retailers haven’t come around to Whole Foods’ enlightened business approach…yet.
In the meantime, smart entrepreneurs are beginning to understand this concept, and are looking very closely at the raw milk business. I met one of them, Ed Hartz, at my recent talk at Rutgers University. He is starting the “Milkman Home Delivery Service” in Connecticut to “deliver direct to the consumer to their door. The company delivers fresh, local farm products – milk and dairy, raw milk, meats, poultry, eggs, vegetables in season, fruits, and more, all farm fresh and all the best quality derived from sustainable agricultural systems. Farms that care.”
Now extend the thinking even further. The regulators serve the entrenched interests—the big dairies, the big processors, and the big food chains. These interests will continue to fight raw milk tooth-and-nail for the reasons I just described.
But there is one factor that will cause them to bend: business considerations. If they see demand for raw milk go crazy, and it already is starting to do that (yes, Pete, think you’re right about use of the word “escalating”) they’ll realize their lackeys at the agriculture and public health agencies can’t keep a lid on the situation, and they better come up with another approach.
So while I like Pete’s suggestion for civil disobedience, my sense is that a more practical and more quickly effective approach may be preferable for now: overwhelm the bastards with demand. If you’re a regular raw milk consumer and you normally purchase a gallon a week, up your demand to two gallons a week. If you’re not a dairy drinker but support food rights, arrange to buy a gallon of raw milk each week. Perhaps feed it to a pet. Or give it to a food pantry. Or even dispose of it. Look at it as a charitable contribution, in any event, meant to further food rights. The idea is to get the demand so high, and attract so many farmers to producing profitable milk, that the goons realize that their letter-of-the-law enforcement of raw milk regulations is hopeless, and begin to work toward accommodation. Mind you, I’m not pushing to have raw milk sold in Wal-Mart, but rather trying to push change.
Remember, in this country, people talk, but money talks louder.
Now grocery stores being who they are, they will want to work with processors or very large dairies. So if they open up store sales of raw milk you run the risk of a California like situation where all the raw milk is produced by a few big players and there are few small operations; none of which are in stores. Now opening up sales would allow producers to sell more openly, but it would likely come with many expensive strings attached that would drive many out of business.
Now, what can a raw milk producer do to survive in such a landscape besides get big? More access to raw milk is great for consumers, but it is the grocery store model which has helped destroy small family farming. And it will eventually compromise the safety/quality of raw milk, even if not at first.
And yes, 400 cows is big and was unheard of when you go back to the time when small diversified family farms were the norm. In my grandparents generation many farms had 6 or 8 dairy cows from which they sold product to the local town, much like many raw dairies now. It wasn’t their main output but it made a significant difference.
Personally, we only use large grocery stores for paper products…..and a majority of my customers do the same. Raw milk is indeed a threat to those mega corporations…and they know it…and thats why they finance those who are cracking down on the good stuff.
Setting up a network of raw milk providers is harder to shut down, more ‘secure’, and spreads the ‘wealth’ over a larger group of farmers. It also affords the customer a better choice, (although they need to make more of an effort to get it). Uneducated consumers demand convenience though, and as long as there are those who are willing to just grab a jug off the grocery store shelf, there will be those who chose to truck it in in bulk.
Real change can occur..if we get our priorities straight…but emphasizing that less can be more is totally lost on some.
I can remember my grandmother buying most of her food from a small local grocer who was also a family friend. If a customer wanted a particular item, the grocer would call around to the local farms, abattoirs etc to find that item.
The industrial scale, mass distribution stores hurt the small grocers as well.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/02/who-benefits-from-raw-milk/#comments
cp
Why does it have to be raw milk? Can’t a farmer do all the right things with the soil, no antibiotics, no hormones…then simply heat treat the milk to kill pathogens and sell it via CSA or buyers club or whatever you want to call it? Is the "raw" really the only major part of the markup (vs. the land/care of the animals)? With the heat treat model, the small farmer is supported, and almost all the risk is removed…public health (and liability) is off your back. Win-Win for small dairies.
Do you mean that the farmer should pasteurize the milk?You are either a very slow learner or you are desperately confused.For farmers who have taken care with the soil,don’t use antibiotics and hormones and feed their cows a diet that promotes the cow’s health,pasteurizing introduces risk.Why take so much care to nurture a beneficial community of bacteria in your milk only to obliterate it just before you turn it over to someone to drink?Eliminating the lactic acid bacteria in the milk,eliminates the safety net.Pasteurizing DOES NOT kill all of the bacteria in milk.In high quality milk it might do a good job of eliminating most of the bacteria but in poor quality milk it will fail to kill the really nasty bacteria that have survived in the sick soil and sick cows and the sanitizing solutions that it has been exposed to before it gets pasteurized.Any one who doubts this can buy a qt of pasteurized milk and leave it at room temperature for three days and smell it.The smell is the waste product of bacteria digesting milk.Does it smell like it would be good to drink?The particular bacteria that survive pasteurization don’t make beneficial waste products like lactic acid.
I once lived in a small village halfway up the Andes mountains.It had a market once a week when all of the farmers from the high plains on top of the mountains brought their produce down and traded with people from the valley for their produce.At the end of the market day a few "grocers"would buy up left over produce at a discount.During the rest of the week people who hadn’t bought enough on market day could go to these stores and buy what they needed at a slight markup from market day prices.It was a service to those who missed out on the farmers market.These stores were very small and had a limited selection because most people preferred to buy their food fresh and directly from the farmer that they new and trusted.We have gone too far in the other direction in this country.We need bigger farmers markets and smaller grocery stores
That’s what many smaller milk producers in Iowa are doing right now because raw milk is illegal (for now). I’ve talked with a few and they would be willing to sell me raw milk if it were legal, but for now they run rather successful businesses with vat-pasteurized, non-homogenized milk with an emphasis on caring for the animals properly and feeding grass as opposed to grain. It’s the best I can get in this state until the laws change.
The point about raw, however, is that some people don’t want it heat treated at all. There are many people who would rather make their own decisions about safety as opposed to having a decision forced upon them. I would drink raw milk if I could, and my choice to drink raw doesn’t infringe on your choice to drink pasteurized. All most raw milk advocates want is that same amount of respect in return.
There’s one particular grocery chain that I like to frequent because I often see local produce and products on the shelves. Their meat counter is abysmal and only features mass-produced, vacuum-packed items, but the fresh produce and a number of other things have many locally-produced options.
I am more inclined to trust a diverse food system with many producers supplying a little as opposed to a few producers supplying a lot. The former system makes more sense to me from a safety standpoint (even putting aside the positive economic impact). If many people are working on a moderate amount of something there is more personal oversight. If something does go wrong it’s much more likely that the problem will be spotted before it gets out of hand. Even then, nothing is perfect, but if the worst does happen then the damage to the population as a whole would be minimized. (as crass as it feels to put tragedy in such stark proportional terms) I think this makes sense where all foodstuffs are concerned, not just milk (both raw and pasteurized).
Thank you miguel, for pointing out the ecological framework that milk occupies.
Pasteurization is, of course, just one of the many, many decisions we have made in isolation, ignoring context, ignoring what is essentially the interconnectedness of all things. Like all decisions made in isolation it has made terrible trouble. But we seem unable to recognize that trouble, since the same narrow view that tempts us to compartmentalize our problems narrows our view of the consequences of our solutions.
So we blithely ignore the condition of our soils, our air, our water, and even our own health (which in the modern, context-free view, is defined merely as a negative test). Like frogs brought slowly to a boil, we dont discover that we are fatally weakened until its too late to reverse course.
In the foothills, Im aware of at least three initiatives beginning within the last two months just a cow or two for now. I sense that the incentive is not to provide an income stream for the family so much as to have an assured adequate supply of very good milk from a very local source. As the importance of **creating-what-we-need-from-within-the-local-community** gains in awareness, people with the means to offer milk (and health) to others – find themselves willing to do so. Others searching for health and not being able to find good answers through conventional channels, stumble upon / hear about the Good News and want REAL milk. The word about the local source gets around pretty soon, and often (based on the experience of other initiatives), demand soon again exceeds supply. (Most of OPs and Claravales production hasnt kept up with the demand for raw dairy products in high-density populations, and perhaps as a result, many rural areas are way underserved. For whatever reason, ever more people are discovering that they are willing to go (sometimes) way out of their way to get the real good stuff.)
I live in western Nevada County where an unbelievable 20 to 30 thousand 49ers mined a lot of gold. Back in that time, without fossil fuels, much of the food was provided by local farmers and other necessaries came from not too far away. Grains were carted 30 miles up the hill from Wheatland, and ice came 20 to 30 miles down from lakes in the High Sierra. Timber came from out the back door. Abundant non-renewable fuels have encouraged high per-capita energy consumption, and that has enabled our society to evolve great complexity. Relatively soon, as the energy which powers our economy, the energy that makes and moves our stuff, as it becomes less and less affordable, our complex economy will likely be driven to more-local and more-labor-intensive ways of meeting our needs. (Careful observation will show that we are right at the cusp where this shift is becoming visible.) At the same time, social distance will reduce and interactions can become more personally satisfying.
The shift to a more face-to-face economy will offer a real opportunity for producers of dairy and other farm products… nationwide. I dont think anyone will get wealthy providing local food, but for those who do, they will have a high-demand product and their lives will surely be richer. I wouldnt be surprised if cows began to appear in some of the burbs making local, REAL milk available to fortunates in the cities. That city people drive 50 miles to pick up milk today, indicates the degree so many want greater control over their lives. They want to exercise their Freedom of Choice. The numbers are noticeably increasing.
Raw Dairy farmers, your nearby community will discover your local farm and your importance in their lives. Cross the competition bridge when it appears.
Because the people buying from the raw milk producer often do so because pasteurized milk isn’t safe, or pasteurized milk makes them sick, or raw milk keeps them healthy.
Pasteurized milk isn’t ‘raw milk only safer’, it is an entirely different beast. In many places there is local pasteurized milk available in the store. If the customers wanted that they wouldn’t be going to the trouble to get ‘unsafe’ raw milk from a farmer directly.
Of course, some of this is part of the movement to support family farmers. Often it only takes 1 middle man to drive the price to the farmer down below what can be produced in a healthy, organic manner without getting big. And much of those dollars lost to the farmer are also lost to the local economy as the corporations suck up the profits.
If you don’t expect the farmer to pre-cook (heat treat) your fruits, vegetables, eggs or meat, why does the milk have to be pre-cooked?
Shouldn’t all food be clean enough to eat raw if one so chooses?
I’ve never gotten sick from the raw milk that we buy each week. Nor have any of my friends or family. Thankfully, I live in California, where raw milk is legal.
When I travel domestically outside California I have to switch to almond milk because the conventional pasteurized milk produced in North America makes me sick……very sick…..as in call 911 & the EMTs sick. I don’t get asthma attacks from the raw milk that I buy. I don’t get asthma attacks from milk I drink in the parts of Europe or India where my relatives live, whether raw or pasteurized. I do get asthma attacks from the conventional pasteurized milk produced here in the US & Canada.
Sterilizing a polluted food item doesn’t make it healthy.
BTW, my mother got Campylobacter from *pasteurized* milk a couple of years ago. Her physician reported this to the Oregon state health department. OSHD never bothered to follow up or investigate. Apparently they don’t care about illnesses from pasteurized milk. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to most of the readers or posters on the site.
Petew and I have talied about this before on the phone, but I’d like to throw it out there as food for thought.
Why not turn the tables on the regulators? I don’t know the laws of every state, but I would assume that most, if not all states have some form of small claims court where suits are easily and fairly cheaply filed, and, as an added bonus, are usually heard by an elected judge beholden to local voters to keep his job.
So, if we can get one consumer in each court’s jurisdiction (in the case of Georgia it would be each county) to file suit against the state regulators for denying them access to raw milk, and if this were repeated on a monthly or quarterly basis, we could overwhelm the system…effectively killing them with "the death of a thousand cuts".
Georgia has 169 counties. Imagine 169 suits filed against the staate dept of agriculture this week, each having to be dealt with on an individual basis…now imagine it happening monthly, over and over and over…and it getting press coverage…the state spending all that money trying to keep folks from…drinking milk. A public relations nightmare…and one that would have an effect at the ballot box.
Now…take that idea nationwide, to EVERY state.
I think they would cave.
Thoughts?
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
A few posts have requested questions by you answered . . . . as always you are silent. They answer you but you do not post back. Why do we all post back to this "unknown" person but he/she never responds.
David – please ask this Lykke person to "out" themselves or I and others might consider this person a troll. I am sure you can easily find out who this person is by capturing thier ISP address. This has been done on other blogs that I frequent and most of these people caught are either from the USDA or FDA.
Btw, Lykke . . . . If you are a govermenment employee – please note that all of us here do pay your salary in the form of taxes . . . . you are supposed to work for us (as in raw milk drinkers) and if we want to drink raw milk free from goverernment intervention it is up to you to learn from our stories and to be truthful – get out of our lives when it comes to consuming "nutrient dense foods from small local farms and dairies"
A few people who comment on this blog do so under disguised names. The issue of who these people are comes up from time to time. My sense is that they have good reasons for not wanting their identities revealed, having to do with protecting their livelihoods and/or jobs. I respect those concerns, so am not about to "out" anyone.
David
Suzanna asks some good questions.
"Lykke, do you buy ALL your food pre-cooked?
If you don’t expect the farmer to pre-cook (heat treat) your fruits, vegetables, eggs or meat, why does the milk have to be pre-cooked?"
No. I prefer fresh products and cook or don’t cook them according to my preferences. If it is an animal product, I assume that there could be contamination, thus my preference is to not consume raw (in other words, I cook my steaks, burgers, chicken, duck, quail, pork, seafood, etc.). Raw milk is inherently problematic because it carries similar risks of contamination, but a consumer is not "expected" to cook it. I personally choose to avoid raw milk. Moreover, I like the taste of pasteurized milk, and have never been ill from any pasteurized dairy product. Given the choice, I’ll pay more for local animal or plant foods produced in an environmental and animal friendly way. Indeed, I paid 3x the WalMart per pound cost for local (or was it regional…farm was about 70 miles away) whole chicken last week. I’d probably pay a similar markup for milk pasteurized and cared for appropriately by a local farmer as described by Alexis in Idaho.
"Shouldn’t all food be clean enough to eat raw if one so chooses?"
That is impossible. Everyone must assess the risk. I think raw milk, raw meat and poultry are too risky to eat in their raw state. Others may think differently. Raw fruits and vegetables have some risk, but more controls like clean water for irrigation, using properly treated compost, etc. are available to minimize that risk.
Question for miguel or others:
Can you describe the route by which "good bacteria" get into raw milk, and how you measure whether there is enough good bacteria to call raw milk a "probiotic" food? Obviously, the bacteria do not travel through the bloodstream in a healthy cow and over to the udder…how are they getting from the gut into the milk?
I liked your question. It was thought provoking. I believe there is a market for people interested in non CAFO pasteurized milk produced on a small, local farm. Isnt this issue about choice? I would love this option for my children. Our family drinks pasteurized goats milk. Id prefer to support a local farmer. It would be great if I could go to our local farmers market on Saturday and buy grass fed, hormone and antibiotic free pasteurized milk.
cp
Pasteurization is very simple. You could get a herd share of grass fed, hormone and antibiotic free cows (or goats if you prefer–but they could be browse fed rather than grass fed) and pasteurize it yourself at home, resulting in a much healthier product than you are currently buying.
Jean
Im a retired dairy farmer. Ive been consuming raw dairy for 82 years. Can a person play Russian roulette for so long and still have good health? But as Gumpert says, its not a health issue, its a political issue.
But why do we continue to pay the politicians so well for harassing us? Is it not because we have been government schooled?
Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robs banks replied, because thats where the money is.
If we were to ask our lawmakers, our judges, our lawyers and our policemen why they so mistreat us. The lawmakers might say because you still vote for us no matter how many onerous unjust laws we make. The judges might say, because you still walk voluntarily into our courtrooms and say your honor. What honor? It might be less hypocritical to say your fraud. The lawyers might say, because you still pay us handsomely. The police might say, because you still submit meekly even when you know you have not hurt, threatened of defrauded anyone.
Im saying we should stop supporting and paying our harassers in any and all ways that we dont have to. Instead of having our minds filled with the cobwebs of government schooling we must search out historical freedom principles. They are not so readily available, not found on every street corner.
But in a booklet that I wrote, Back to Basic Law and Basic Freedom Education. I list ten or so unique and rare excellent freedom educators. These are past and present unsung heroes that we need now. For more info on this booklet write Jacob Lapp, 7796 Barnum Road, Cassadaga NY 14718.
McAfee of California, Hebron of Michigan, Barb and Steve Smith of New York and many others have made brave resistance to the harassers. But have the harassers been dethroned or are they still poised to strike again. Im trying to say here that the best way to defang them is to get a good historical freedom principle education. As Frederick Bastiat said: Plunder, which plays such an important role in the affairs of the world has but two instruments; force and fraud, and two impediments knowledge and courage.
Get those plunderers dethroned.
By the way I just read The Raw Milk Revolution.
Jacob