Raw Milk Casualties: Dairies Say Good-Bye to Whole Foods
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 08:56PM Forget all that talk about Whole Foods developing raw milk standards and bringing unpasteurized milk back to its stores in California, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Connecticut.
Dairies in California and Pennsylvania were told today that the ban is indefinite, likely long term.
"Whole Foods never intended on bringing raw milk back to the shelves in California or anyplace in the U.S.," says Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co.
"OPDC provided the $10 million in coverage requested and everything that anyone would want for food safety...Wholefoods is not putting raw milk back onto any shelves in the U.S. for the short term and foreseeable long term. No rational reason was given...We also were never given the Whole-Foods-team-developed enhanced national raw milk production safety standards that Whole Foods promised to us."
On the East Coast, the message was essentially the same. "I literally just got off the conference call with the Whole Foods people for the Mid-Atlantic region," writes Edwin Shank of The Family Cow. "Liability was the reason we were given."
Mark McAfee has taken to referring to Whole Foods as "Partial foods," given its growing emphasis on asceptic (sterilized) milk.
Whole Foods' decision is sad but not surprising--actually part of a long journey down the road of ever greater conformity with the factory food system. I can remember the days when Whole Foods' predecessor in the Boston area wouldn't carry any non-organic veggies and fruits, or foods with sugar or caffeine. No alcoholic or carbonated beverages were stocked . It's gradually caved in on nearly everything, with the exception of Coca Cola, Frito Lay chips, and Wonder bread. Will those be next?
I have made a request to Whole Foods for comment, but have not heard back as yet.
Reader Comments (22)
Marketing raw milk through the conventional channels is possible...if those channels 'let us'...but I think that creating an new model, a different mode of delivery is smarter. You don't have to depend on those who are engrained in the status quo, and you can build relationships that are stronger than a trip down to the nearest grocery store...
This might create some hardship for some...but in reality, it's a blessing. The battle lines need to be drawn, and the pro raw milk crowd needs to be certain of it's allies. Whole Foods is not...
Only those with true faith in the product can overcome the fear that Bill and his like spread.
Its a war. Period...nothing else. And wars are fought scorched earth, no holds barred.
We will fight to win, or we don't have a chance. Forget playing nice.
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
I do not think that taking on this war head-on is going to prove successful. We are fighting an asymetrical war, and our side is -- by design -- highly DE-centralized. That can be both a stregnth and a weakness. Generally, I think it will make us more resilliant in the face of adversity. If we try to centralize our forces, we will surely face defeat, which will be highly demoralizing for the troops.
The Vietcong didn't win by taking on the French and American empires head-on. They fought an asymetrical war, because they knew their own terrain far better than their conquerers. It is the same reason that George Washington was able to defeat one of the most powerful empires in the world.
AG told me that he was concerned that Wholefoods did not just adopt the strict CA state regs for raw milk. He said that when the USDA adopted the national organic standards in 2002 they just took the CA standards and federalized them. ( not his exact words but very very close ).
We both agreed that CA needs good niche markets and that some of these niches can lead to good new markets.
We recieved our call from Wholefoods at noon today. The news was not unexpected. Our gut check told us that WF had not taken the national food safety standards seriously. We were never contacted after the first days and none of our emails were returned when we offered the enhanced liability umbrella coverage that was requested.
Things just went cold.
So we are overjoyed with our wonderful raw milk consumers and our local Mom & Pop, locally owned short chain, Co-op's stores and buyers clubs. We are starting a raw milk campaign in CA that celebrates these local markets and their dedication to WHOLEFOOD. These are the soul of America and we want them recognized.
We want the dollar vote to go them. Wholefoods will be missed.
I want Walter Robb to know that we know that he had nothing to do with this decision and that he is an advocate for raw milk. We just hope that his voice will not become drowned out by others at Wholefoods that do not appreicate WHOLEFOOD.
Pasteurized milk is a defective partial food. For many people, it causes lactose intolerance, histamine reactions, contributes to immune depression and other nasty stuff'. The last deaths from milk were three people killed by pasteurized milk in 2007.
Raw milk does none of these things yet it is being flogged and stoned at the central town square. There is a bigger story that will be told someday.
Our vending machine concept is almost a reality. We have found a vending company that can start our program immediately and has a machine that can do raw milk perfectly if we stay with quarts.
Our Farmers Markets sales are raging..... some of this is consumer venting anger and dollar voting at a place that actually sells WHOLEFOOD.
Walter...the raw milk movement is going to miss you. I know you drink and love raw milk. When you are in California you can find OPDC raw milk products at a local store that carries WHOLEFOOD. I do hope that Wholefoods becomes more fully conscious and regains its sanity. The idea that any food is perfect is not rational. Wholefoods are not sterile. Organic wholefoods are biodiverse, nutrient dense, enzyme rich, mineral available.
J.L. Rodale said...."it is not organic to produce organic milk and then pasteurize it".
Mark
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
These will be produced weekly. Next week we will have aerial video of OPDC and CAFO dairies to show the stark contrast of the origins of the "Two Raw Milks In America".
One "clean and green" for People and the other for the Pasteurizer and we will let you describe it.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/?ref=home
Mark
I believe the photos and videos could help a lot. Many don’t realize that grass fed organic milk products often means a diet of only 60 percent or so on grass. I wasn’t aware until I was at a local food expo recently and asked one of the owners of an organic dairy the percentage of the cow’s diet that was from grass. I was shocked it was only 60 percent, with the man explaining that the large amount of corn was to make the milk taste sweeter. Often, corn and soybeans are referred to as a “grain supplement” to leave the impression the caloric intake is incidental, like the herbs people consume in their diet. Raw milk from cows eating significant amounts of corn, particularly when it is genetically modified and sprayed with chemicals, may not be that great.
Regarding whole foods, the vegans have taken over the company. The chain adopted nutrition standards advanced by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who urges everyone to not eat animal foods. The company has adopted the belief system that healthy eating means everyone in the world should eat all the same way. I live within walking distance between two whole foods stores. What would likely be considered the whole foods at either of the stores by leaders of the whole foods movement from the 1960s and 1970s could easily fit in two storefronts with lots of room to spare.
I hear you....it appears that the Vicious Vegans at WF definitely are having their way.
What is lost at WF is the appreciation for some good old human history.
What humans have been doing very well for a long time is....starving....
Cows, goats, sheep, horses, oxen, camels and other mammals have recued mankind time and time again.
Jamestown in 1630's was saved by the arrival of cows from Europe.
Take away the full shelves of food in the stores and everyone would be begging for a herbivore mammal to convert sunshine ( expressed as grass on earth ) into nutrient dense food we can eat. You can not eat sunshine or grass. It is not nutrient dense and we humans do not have four stomachs to convert grass into food.
The indian word for skinny, starving unsuccessful hunter is "vegan". The human brain is mostly made of fat....you simply can not think if your brain and nervous system is missing its good fats. Fats from grass fed animals.
The future will be for the healthy and the well nourished.
Darwin is so right.
Mark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatgrass
cp
Farmers need to abandon selling to the commodity chain, including grocery stores.
My body naturally of it own accord REJECTS the modern day emperors PANEM I have no choise in the matter. I do however of my own free will reject the emperors CIRCENSES and it is indeed amusing to see the look on friends faces when I tell them we have no TV.
So for refusing the emperors bread and circuses my wife and have been nominated by our peers as candidates for the nearest nut house.
Don, powdered wheatgrass is the equivalent of powdered milk. You wouldn't expect to get the same health results from powdered milk that you would expect to get from fresh raw milk. Just the same, powdered wheatgrass is nowhere near the same as fresh-cut, fresh-squeezed wheatgrass juice. If you read all of the information available about wheatgrass it sounds a lot like raw milk in that it will supposedly cure everything. Truth is that wheatgrass juice (fresh is imperative) has almost everything a person needs as far as vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. I haven't read about much bacteria in wheatgrass though - I'm sure there is some as there is bacteria in everything. I tend to think that milk has wheatgrass beat in that area (but that could be a good or a bad thing as we all know). I can see a beneficial role for both products in one's diet (mine especially). I think most of us hear have heard of people that have lived solely on raw milk. Funny enough, I have read about people that have lived on nothing but wheatgrass too.
I have consumed wheatgrass freshly juiced years ago, long before I even got interested in raw milk, and it was just terrible.... I could barely get even an ounce down. It was VILE. There's no way you can compare wheatgrass juice to moo juice.
An ounce of wheatgrass juice provides little in essential nutrition; you'd have to drink a gallon or more of the juice just to sustain life (notice I said, sustain, not thrive). Not possible on the basis of taste alone... or cost. If you think raw milk is expensive...!! LOL
Plus wheatgrass is limiting in Methionine and Lysine, two essential amino acids for mammals. Limiting in an essential amino acid means that your body restricts the usage of other amino acids until enough missing ones (in this case, methionine and lysine) are also present.
Looking at an analysis, 2 tsp of wheatgrass provides only 2% methionine and 4% lysine of human RDA: http://www.wheatgrassforlife.com/nutritional.htm
If you were to live on wheatgrass only, which some say is possible, your body will pull methionine and lysine from your own muscles until you become deficient. This may take a while, but eventually your muscles will run out of the stuff. This is one reason why many vegans become so unhealthy in the long run.
The wikipedia article says wheatgrass is high in protein, but compares it only to other veggies (which are just as methionine and lysine deficient as wheatgrass), not to milk or other complete sources of essential amino acids: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatgrass
Wheatgrass is just a supplement, not a whole food necessary to sustain life. If I had my druthers, I'd drink 100% milk for the rest of my life than I would 100% wheatgrass.
Correction from prior post did not mean to say I never ever generated a medical record I did generate a couple medical records about 15 years ago but thats another story for another time.
http://pondpond.blogspot.com/2010/02/best-eggs-in-world.html
That someone MAY get sick is no basis for limiting the options that people have for choosing the food they want to eat. If it were, there would be little nutritious food for humans to consume. Safety is no justification for restricting people from having to eat whole, living foods. Sure there are risks, but all food has risks. It's a personal choice that government, and low-life lawyers need to stay out of.
It seems like the germaphobes are pushing for a sanitized world, where there are no risks associated with eating food...but the risks of the quality of nutrition are off the charts. This sanitized world doesn't exist, and risk is something that every human has the right to take.
Push to eat local food is hampered by shortage. by Katie Zezima
The shortage is NOT the lack of local food nor caused by drought nor insect infestation ect. The shortage is directly caused by EVERYONE that stands between the local producer and the local comsumer. But of course most of this constructed insurmountable barrier is there to protect the consumer but in the meantime we slowly starve consuming the APPROVED foodless foods. And its all legal maybe WRONG but that term has been cast into the dust of history not PC these days.
http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/2010/03/articles/foodborne-illness-outbreaks/raw-milk-is-it-a-viable-constitutional-issue-or-simply-a-matter-of-consumer-safety/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoodPoisonBlog+%28Food+Poison+Blog%29&utm_content=Twitter
cp
http://www.vimeo.com/5803952