When They Play Hard Ball, It's Essential We Not Play Wiffle Ball: Lessons from the MA Protest, and Spillover Continues
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 01:08PM 
Domonstrators Monday on Boston Common, near MA State House.It's taken me a little longer than I expected to recover from the Massachusetts raw milk protest festivities on Monday. I've never been involved in organizing a protest. Not that I did a lot of the heavy lifting, but the amount of detail required to put something like that together was pretty amazing. Signs, police permits (a day-and-a-half of one person's time), arranging for the presence of the Jersey cow Suzanne, police permit for Suzanne, arranging for Suzanne's poop to be cleaned up, etc., etc.
But I must confess, and confess is probably the right word, the toughest part of the entire affair was dealing with internal wrangling. I had heard talk of internal divisions in connection with the Wisconsin campaign for a law to allow farm sales of raw milk--some farmers opting out of certain demonstrations when it didn't suit their own interests--but this past weekend, I got my own personal exposure to the realities of what can happen when divisions crop up.
As I said in a previous post, one of the things that impressed me last week as the activities opposing the crackdown on raw milk buying were being organized was how a number of foodie organizations became actively involved in supporting the Massachusetts buying clubs and opposing restrictions on access to raw milk imposed by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. Several important foodie groups--most notably the Northeast Organic Farming Association (MA chapter) and the Organic Consumers Association--encouraged members to write MDAR and to attend the hearing.
By the end of last week, the two organizations were essentially working in tandem to encourage a substantial turnout. The OCA put together the many pieces for a pre-hearing rally on Boston Common, including arranging for the presence of Suzanne for public milking. NOFA/Mass was encouraging its members to testify at the hearing. Media like the Boston Globe began picking up on the event last week. The pressure was building for a large and vociferous turnout on Monday.
Then, at 5 p.m. on Friday, the MDAR lobbed the grenade I previously described. It said that, thanks to "the passion and concern on all sides of the raw milk debate," it was removing the proposed regulation that would have explicitly banned buying clubs. But the seeming conciliation was balanced by MDAR's commitment to "take such steps to enforce violations" under less explicit existing regulations by categorizing the buying clubs as Milk Dealers; over the last four months, MDAR sent four clubs cease-and-desist letters to buying clubs.
Moreover, MDAR said testimony at the Monday hearing would "be limited" to some remaining technical regulatory changes. In other words, opponents of the crackdown on buying clubs wouldn't be allowed to testify.
A last-minute maneuver by a state agency to confuse and divide a budding protest shouldn't have been unexpected. Regulators understandably don't like to deal with large groups of infuriated citizens, and there have been a number related to governmental actions to restrict access to raw milk, most notably in California in 2008 and in Wisconsin last year and this year.
What happened five hours later was much more unexpected, though. The Northeast Organic Farming Association issued "an advisory" to its hundreds of members that seemed to celebrate the MDAR press release as "a testament to our perseverance and passion...Thanks to a lot of hard work from many people, we have played a part in beating back, however temporarily, regulations that would have deeply harmed Massachusetts dairy farmers and diminished food rights for everyone. Our message was clearly heard by MDAR, and many new supporters have joined us along the way thanks to our outreach and education efforts over the last few weeks."
While a little self congratulation never hurt anyone, the NOFA/Mass advisory was most notable for discouraging its members from attending the Monday hearing. "MDAR has made it clear that they will NOT hear testimony about the on-farm purchase rule or the buying club prohibitions at the Monday hearing, so that is no longer an opportunity to be heard."
I was seeing things mostly from the perspective of Organic Consumers of America, and its people were stunned. NOFA/Mass seemed to be pulling the rug out from under the organizing effort, and in the process, stopping in its tracks the momentum for a major protest on Monday. As has been discussed frequently on this blog, getting consumers engaged on behalf of farmers is always a herculean task, and once halted, momentum can be difficult to re-kindle.
There followed a series of urgent emails and phone calls by OCA officials and supporters to Julie Rawson,the NOFA/Mass executive director. They asked her to at least adjust the language in the NOFA advisory so as not to discourage people from attending the Monday events. She told some of them NOFA/Mass didn't want to encourage farmers to take a day off to attend a hearing they wouldn't be able to testify at.
Indeed, there was no relenting by NOFA-MA. It pushed its message via its Facebook and Twitter outlets, as well as on foodie blogs, and Kim Hartke's blog, for one, picked up on the "victory" message to discourage attendance on Monday.
OCA was left to re-group and send out counter-messages--via a revised news release and Twitter and Facebook postings--advising foodies that both the rally and the hearing were very much on. OCA people were convinced that the MDAR couldn't just arbitrarily limit discussion from one day to the next at a hearing it had previouslly given public notification about.
When Monday dawned, some 200 protesters assembled on Boston Common, together with Suzanne, the cow brought by Framingham dairy farmer Doug Stephan, to protest the MDAR crackdown on raw dairies. Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. had flown in from California, and Max Kane from Wisconsin. Then, the protesters walked a few blocks to the hearing room in Downtown Boston and, sure enough, the agriculture commissioner, Scott Soares, announced at the outset that he was reversing the MDAR Friday press announcement about limiting discussion at the hearing. He would hear all comments, including those about the crackdown on the raw milk buying clubs.
As I described in my previous post, some 50 individuals testified over the next three-and-a-half hours.
Afterwards, NOFA/Mass adamantly defended its decision to pull out of supporting the Monday event. When I asked Jack Kittredge, NOFA/Mass' policy coordinator, if there had been some kind of quid pro quo with MDAR for pulling its support, he said, "No quid pro quo. What we were doing was in response to the DAR move. We didn't expect anything further, except what they promised in their retraction -- that they would take a broader look at the issue. We expected, and still do expect, as the primary local group which has been working on this issue with farmers for ten years, that we will have a chance to put our two cents in to what that broader solution looks like. Hopefully it will be ways to get even more raw milk to Massachusetts consumers."
Kittredge also admits NOFA/Mass had a warning at least a couple hours before the MDAR posted its press release that something was coming, though he says his organization had no knowledge of exactly what MDAR would put out.
There's no telling how many people would have been at the Boston rally and hearing Monday if NOFA/Mass hadn't discouraged attendance, but it seems safe to say the number would have been significantly higher.
People at OCA became ever more committed to organizing the Monday activities after NOFA/Mass pulled out, based on several convictions. First, it's only through ongoing pressure that regulatory agencies and politicians will make changes to reduce barriers to availability of locally produced products like unpasteurized milk. Such public pressure has pushed legislators to back consumers in California (SB201) and in Wisconsin (even if the governors don't necessarily go along). Second, organizations can't get consumers all worked up about an issue, then pull the plug on the effort at the last minute, and expect to automatically be able to gain the same momentum the next time around. And third, there's a general acknowledgment that the people pushing for the crackdown on raw milk aren't the people who are most visible--in the Massachusetts case, MDAR commissioner Scott Soares. More on that matter upcoming.
From where I sat, it seemed clear NOFA/Mass decided it could best serve its farmer members by going its own way, essentially throwing Scott Soares a bone to gain favor with MDAR. As I told a number of people at NOFA/Mass, that is most likely an illusion. MDAR's commissioner has made it clear he is much more concerned about protecting his job than he is about protecting Massachusetts dairy farmers, and besides, memories are short.
No, consumers and farmers need to be united if they are going to have any chance at all against the edifices that are Big Dairy and Big Ag, and the regulators and politicians under their influence. They are playing hard ball.
***
Other fallout from the MA DAR pre-hearing and hearing shenanigans: The Organic Consumers Association has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts attorney general charging that MDAR's failure to allow all consumers to attend the hearing violates that state's Open Meeting Law. According to OCA's complaint, "A number of people (we estimate between 50 and 75) were prevented from entering the hearing room by DAR staff who stated that allowing additional people to attend the hearings would exceed the rooms' capacity. These people were directed to another room that lacked any visual or sound connection to the hearing room. Only as individuals left the hearing room were additional people allowed, on a one-by-one basis, to enter the hearing room."
OCA charges that the attendance limitation was deliberate, stemming from the 5 p.m. Friday press release, and the buy-in by NOFA/Mass. "Responsibility for the size of the room falls upon the agency having control over the arrangements, not upon members of the public who are trying to exercise their rights to address and petition their government...Moreover, the DAR itself anticipated a large amount of interest in its proposed regulations. In an attempt to reduce attendance, it posted an announcement on its website after hours on Friday, May 7, attempting to withdraw a controversial provision of the proposed regulations and contacted at least one large organization, which withdrew its request for its members to attend."
Too bad NOFA/Mass, a well-meaning organization over many years, wound up on the wrong side of the events.
Reader Comments (40)
On a lighter note, my wife called the governor's office today to ask the gov to sign the bill again and spoke to an aid who said and I quote "I hear you I was raised on raw milk".
As far as I can extrapolate from your post, you seem to take issue with NOFA/Mass mostly because they "stopp[ed] in its tracks the momentum for a major protest on Monday". I would argue that the MDAR is the group that killed the momentum, and that NOFA/Mass realized that, in the interests of maintaining a longer-term pressure on the issue, they needed to regroup, possibly switch gears (as MDAR did) and get ready for the next salvo in this battle.
You mention that NOFA/Mass struck "a separate deal to gain favor with MDAR". Do you have anything to support that claim of collusion? I think it's certainly true that NOFA/Mass had a different response than OCA to the issue - but from the evidence provided, it appears that MDAR acted and NOFA/Mass reacted. If you were implying that MDAR might look more favorably towards NOFA/Mass in the future for negotiations because of the NOFA/Mass response on this issue, then that's just smart tactical thinking on the part of NOFA/Mass.
I seldom post since I'm one of the regulated (both by MA DAR and MA DPH). I had the now dubious honor of being presented a "Faces of Massachusetts Agriculture" award by Scott Soares last fall. I've dreamed of MA as being a haven for taking an innovative approaches to development in-state markets for raw milk and raw milk cheeses (let's skip over the FDA by not indulging in interstate commerce) from small family farmers committed to quality. A market totally separate from commodity milk.
It's a pity that MDAR doesn't approach the farmers it regulates for input into proposed regulatory changes. I was jokingly told by an inspector lsst year that, of course, raw milk operations could always be shut down by requiring extensive and prohibitively expensive testing. I would rather have had a conversation about what my customers would like to see marketed and what regulatory framework would be needed to support that market.
NOFA/MA is an extremely useful conduit to MDAR (and I probably should use them more actively) since it can aggregate farmers' viewpoints allowing them a veil of anonymity vis-a-vis regulators. I'm sure that they probably learned as much about organizing as David did.
Really proud of the interview the Robinsons did with WBUR as well as Suzanne's and Doug Stephan's appearance on the common.
Internal misteps are just that.....little errors that must be forgotten quickly as we continue our alliances to educate and build bridges of understanding and trust.
Soures is our friend and he is in a very tight spot....the governor Doyle is our friend and he is in an incredibly tight spot....
Now here is the challenge....push as hard as possible while giving a positive message of our individual rights and giving testimony about the health giving benefits of raw milk.
Raw milk rebuilds communities and its citizens immune systems. This is not about food safety....although it is about jealousy and CAFOs that can not do what we can do.
Fight on....but do not create enemies of those that are in a tight spot. Fight-on but stay together. We have a very broad base of support....lets not let the other side see our diversity as a opportunity to break up our message. Our diversity is our strength.
Make the message to Soures and Doyle come from your heart....well actually your GUT!!
Mark
First, Mark, Soares and the governor are NOT in tight spots...not as long as their guiding principles are to do what is right. Truth and right never feel constraints. If they are feeling the pinch of playing both sides rather than doing what they are supposed to...represent the will of the people, so be it. They make their bed...let them sleep in it.
Second, Tricia, I appreciate your position..."...since it can aggregate farmers' viewpoints allowing them a veil of anonymity vis-a-vis regulators."...but I'm awfully glad folks like John Hancock didn't feel that way. (if you don't know how a signature became one's "John Hancock", google it. Some historians say its true, some say legend...eithr way its as it should be.)
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
As farmers, we all have fences and we stand on one side or the other at each of them.
As a raw milk dairyman I stand on the side with my consumers....I respond and am 100% responsible to each of them.
Now think of the conventional dairyman that does not know one single consumer and stands on the side with where his paycheck comes.
That means that consumer connected farmers will become more at odds with farmers that are disconnect from the consumer....
So as we proceed foreward lets all be very senstive to our neighbors that are not being paid well and are being neglected by everyone and abused by the banks.
We must extend our hand to those that will allow us to educate them and not denegrate the rest of them.
We are all farmers.... and we are neighbors. We must extend our hand to educate our neighbors as we serve our consumers. We must never step on our neighbors as we reach and serve our consumers.
Mark
I think you have it all backwards. There are serious consumer safety problems with raw milk and the continued denial fuels your enemy's fire (even if Big Ag actually fears a raw milk market, you give them plenty of ammo to team-up with public health by ignoring the food safety concerns). No matter how many testimonials of benefits you present, they mean little in the absence of a rational food safety plan for raw milk, or even an acknowledgment that some raw dairies need to do better. The most recent example:
http://www.salmonellablog.com/2010/05/articles/salmonella-outbreaks/salmonella-found-in-utah-raw-milk-samples-six-sickened/index.html
And, arguing that other foods (or drugs or cars or baby seats) have safety problems doesn't "exempt" raw milk proponents from dealing with their own consumer safety issues.
And Mark is right. REAL food safety is all but irrellevent in this debate. The Wisconsin experience proves this. Farms that consistantly produced a safe product were shut down along with the (single) farm that made people sick. Scott Trautman is being forced to build an unsanitary wall in his milking barn in order to get his Grade A back -- a wall that will increase cleanliness problems in his milking enviroment.
IF your profession were really serious about food safety, then you'd figure out what is neccessary to produce safe raw milk. Its not an impossible task. Mark McAfee has figured out how to produce safe raw milk. And entire countries in Europe have -- France, England, Italy, Slovenia, to name a few.
But unfortunately, because you are only interested in pursuing a vindictive and politically motiavated agenda on behalf of agribussiness corporations, food safety takes a back seat to the vindictive political games that your profession plays.
This is why it is upto us to make it as difficult as possible for you to try to ban raw milk. Once you realize that it is going to be more difficult for you to ban raw milk than it would be to create common sense safety standards, then there might be progress on the food safety front. In the meantime, resistance to your agenda, and rallying the grassroots to the cause are the most important tools we have.
In Wisconsin, it doesn't matter whether a farm can produce safe raw milk or not. It only matters that they produce raw milk, therefore they are a threat to public health. End of debate. There is no way to produce safe raw milk, as far as DATCP and large parts of the dairy industry are concerned. Repression and revenge are the name of the game.
How do you expect food safety to ever get a foothold in this kind of enviroment?
"I think you have it all backwards. There are serious consumer safety problems with' lunch meats' and the continued denial fuels your enemy's fire (even if Big Ag actually fears a 'ban on unsafe lunch meat'(raw milk market), you give them plenty of ammo to team-up with public health by ignoring the food safety concerns---'indeed, they do ingnore the safety facors'). No matter how many testimonials of benefits you present, they mean little in the absence of a rational food safety plan for l'lunch meat', or even an acknowledgment that some 'lunch meat processors' need to do better. The most recent example:"
listeria, salmonella,EColi, etc...
"And, arguing that other foods (or drugs or cars or baby seats) have safety problems doesn't "exempt" raw milk proponents from dealing with their own consumer safety issues. "
Who is "exempt"ing safety issues regarding raw milk? Please name names.
http://www.realmilk.com/washington-lessons-learned.html
http://www.realmilk.com/press-release-12mar07.html
https://westonaprice.org/California-Government-Official-Lies-About-Raw-Milk.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/CDC-Report-on-California-Illness-Shows-Continued-Government-Bias-Against-Raw-Milk.html
http://hartkeisonline.com/2009/09/22/weston-price-foundation-makes-statement-on-wisconsin-raw-milk-outbreak/
The message that DATCP and the so-called "food safety" establishment don't care about food safety is heard loud and clear every day here in America's Dairyland.
I do indeed care about food safety in raw milk. Which pathogen do you want me to explain the details of? Name it, and I will tell you how that pathogen behaves and where it can get into milk.
That is why I oppose DATCP, because they want raw milk to get people sick. It will make their job a lot easier, because then it will be easier for them to rationalize to the public why they are shutting down all the farms that sell raw milk. That is the reason that they are trying to force Scott Trautman to build this wall, because it would make his milking area more difficult to clean, thus increasing the chance that his milk will become contaminated and make someone sick.
DATCP is incompetant when it comes to food safety. Can you tell me again why DATCP had butter and cheese under 60 days removed from the WI legislation? How could it have possibly been because of food safety? Or was it because they were trying to protect the cheesemakers and buttermakers monopoly? (WI is the only state that requires cheesemakers and buttermakers to be licensed, and the system is pretty much setup so that the existing cheesemaker and buttermakers can limit the number of new cheesemakers and buttermakers.)
Food safety takes a back seat to politics in the WI dairy industry, ALWAYS. You can't just sit there and point your finger at the WAPF. Their job is not food safety, their job is to promote traditional nutrient dense foods. However, it is(supposedly) the job of the guys at DATCP to promote food safety, and they do a piss poor job of it, especially when you consider that WI is one of the largest dairy producing states in the U.S.
Why is Wisconsin milk not fit to be consumed raw, in the eyes of DATCP? Because they don't want it to be. They want WI milk to be dirty and unfit for human consumption. Mediocrity is enforced by the iron fist of DATCP and the WI dairy industry.
Why doesn't the govt do this? It appears that with the govt entities by allowing the factory farms to continue "showing flippant disregard toward sanitation," " show that, for 'the govt entities' , "this isn't about food safety." The message that 'the govt doesn't' care about food safety is heard, loud and clear.
It is very obvious that the govt isn't concerned about safety for the people. The govt web sites "showing flippant disregard toward sanitation" by promoting factory farms and allowing chemically induced/contamination into the food chain. I would bet the majority of Americans haven't heard of those 3 web sites, and if that is all they research then shame on them. I give people more credit than you do.
http://www.realrawmilkfacts.com/real-life-stories/
cp
http://www.marlerblog.com/2010/05/articles/case-news/orem-and-heber-utah-raw-milk-linked-to-salmonella-newport-outbreak-does-the-wisconsin-governor-read-a-morman-newspaper/
cp
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3QFz975e05Q8yDFw7t3hQjzc6nwD9FMP1O80
cp
Why doesn't the govt do this?
Would NY state violate your constitutional rights and act illegally? You bet it would:
http://www.ftcldf.org/victories.html
Are they going to arrest the farmers/suppliers of this stuff? Don't think so
http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2010/ecoli_o145/index.html
Would the FDA try to destroy a farmer and his business? Why not? They've done it before and would do it again, except for this judge:
http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/?currentPage=3
Lykke's favorite luncheon meat for kids. Shhh Don't tell the children's parents. But it's FDA approved
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html
CP's fashion statement for milking cows. You won't find this at Neiman Marcus:
http://www.drillspot.com/products/509142/dupont_tk613tlymd000100_chemical_hazmat_level_a_suit_w_faceshied?s=1
The irony in all of your vitrole about raw milkies not taking food safety seriously, is that YOU - YOUR PROFESSION -- does not take food safety in raw milk seriously.
It is your job to protect public health, but instead you go on prohibtionist rampages driving raw milk into dangerous black markets.
There ARE ways to make safe raw milk. Many Europeans countries, and even some U.S. states (thank you Mark McAfee), have done so. However, your profession has utterly failed to step up to the plate. You have decided that instead of taking the proper precautions to make raw milk safe, it would be better to spread fear, create broad generalization about all raw milk, fail to take the animal health and enviromental issues seriously, etc...
You need to take a good, long, hard look at the "food safety" profession and your reactionary approach to raw milk, before you start pointing fingers at consumers and farmers.