At the end of the now-infamous meeting he had a week ago Monday with raw milk proponents, Scott Soares, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, suggested that proponents come up with specific ideas for making adjustments to the proposed ban on buying clubs in the state.
I’ve communicated via phone and email with a few dozen different Massachusetts food organizations–those involved in organic food issues and so-called slow food–and everyone seems able to come up with only one suggestion for Soares and his minions at the MDAR: Leave things the way they were, and by the way, go back to your pencil pushing and stop wasting everyone’s time and energy trying to deprive us of our food.
It’s encouraging to see many food groups coming together on this–organic and so-called slow food organizations–because for a good while a number of these didn’t take seriously raw milk and its symbolic importance in the emerging food rights movement. Now, thanks to the sensitive folks at the MDAR, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, among others, they do.
The argument for trying to negotiate with MDAR about this issue seems at first glance sensible, as it’s articulated by Neewa Andrapal in comments following my previous post. “For all other bulk transport of milk, there are protocols and inspections (and checking temperature is standard) for milk transport…One does not need evidence of mistransport to suggest a need that there needs to be some guidance or ovesite of an activity…I would suggest replacing the hyperbole and conspiracy theories with some suggestions on how to feasibly ensure that buying clubs are transporting appropriately.”
There’s just one major flaw in Andrapal’s argument (and no conspiracy theories): Raw milk in Massachusetts, and many other states, isn’t treated the same as pasteurized milk in the regulatory scheme of things. Raw milk can’t be lawfully distributed the way pasteurized milk and most other foods are because it is limited to sales from the farm. So there is no formal distribution process to regulate. The buying clubs aren’t distributors, but rather private organizations that contract with individual buyers to pick up their milk at the farm. Individual consumers already own the milk being transported. No one needs to regulate the person or organization I designate to pick up my milk for me. It’s a private arrangement between the club and me.
Sophia Lovett says it best following my previous post: “Where does it end? Should I install an Ethernet connection on my refrigerator so DAR can monitor the temperature?”
If raw milk in Massachusetts could be sold at retail, then I’d say, fine, regulate it the way you do other perishable products. Make distributors get a license and conform to regs about truck size, refrigerator temperatures, containers, etc.
And by the way, don’t give me the bull about “protecting the public.” The raw milk clubs don’t serve the public. They serve private individuals who contract with them.
In fact, to negotiate over rules associated with buying groups would be to say, in effect, I give up my contract rights. As Sophia asks, Where does the regulation end?
Soares and the other busy-bodies at MDAR (and their buddies over at the MA DPH) should know that lots of people are extremely upset about this effort to club consumers into submission. I don’t use those words lightly–this is government intrusion into our lives at its worst.
What is especially scary, though, is that regulators around the country are watching the Massachusetts situation very closely. If this first effort to prohibit buying clubs is successful, then several dozen other states will know they have carte blanche to do the same.
And once they finish with buying clubs, and in effect ban raw milk, they will brush off their hands and move on to the next item on their list for gaining more control. Irradiation of meats and leafy greens (already approved by the FDA), cloned meat, genetically modified grains. The list is endless, and these people’s power appetite knows no bounds. No, this isn’t hyperbole, it is reality.
Indeed, it is all symbolic of what lots of Americans are very upset about, part of what has led to the fast-growing influence of the Tea Party movement, not to mention polls suggesting that incumbents this November are facing big trouble. Soares and his cronies know this is about much more than changing a minor dairy regulation. The FDA and Midwest regulators made it all clear in their 2009 discussions about cracking down on buyers clubs, the emails of which Max Kane obtained. (See pages 7-9 of the emails for regulator approach to buying clubs.)
I believe these aparatchniks are playing with fire. The politicians who fund Soares’ department can’t possibly be feeling good that this could all blow up in his face, at a cost of lots of votes. Rapidly growing numbers of people are saying: ENOUGH! Don’t tell us what we can and can’t eat. Don’t put farmers out of business, and damage our economy even further than you already have. Help agriculture, don’t kill it.
One more time: This has absolutely nothing to do with safety. It is about rights, pure and simple. The lines in the sand have been drawn, and the battle, perhaps for symbolic purposes, is being fought in Massachusetts. The answer to the control freaks at MDAR, MDPH, and FDA must be clear: NO, NO, NO.
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The Masschusetts MDAR hearing will be held at 10 am at 100 Cambridge St, Conference Room A, 2nd Floor in Boston In the meantime, here are the rules for testimony at the 10 a.m. hearing: Those who wish to testify will be called from a sign-in list provided at the hearing for those who wish to provide oral testimony. Each speaker will be given 3-5 minutes each to speak to ensure all who desire have an opportunity to testify. Anyone is permitted submit written testimony at the hearing as well. Those who can’t make the hearing can submit written testimony to MDAR at 251 Causeway Street, Boston by May 10, or email the MDAR, michael.demakakos@state.ma.us. Written comments will be accepted until May 10 at 4 p.m.. We won’t know who is providing oral testimony until the day of the hearing.
?
Here is a challenge to consumers, a great many of whom have emailed me to say I was wrong in my comment a couple of posts ago. You’ve told me…some politely, some not so nice, that I am wrong…that consumers DO care enough to do something…that consumers won’t just sit on their asses and let folks like Max Kane, Michael Schmidt, the FTCLDF lawyers, and others carry their water for them.
Fine. Prove it. Here is a specific action you can take…if you will.
Oral comments will be allowed…everyone who registers will be given 3-5 minutes. OK. Make the meeting lasty 5 hours…or 10…or 24. Show up. Speak.
I’m betting you don’t. Prove me wrong.
Bob Hayles
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
How the heck are you??? Hope things are well.
If you buy me a ticket….I will go and testify. I fly out of KFAT. Fresno Yosemite International Airport. I can leave out on the 9th at anytime and fly back late the 10th after the testimony.
I do not want a seven stop red eye….that would be an invitation to Aviation Travel Waterboarding. I will pay for all other arrangements.
The passenger name is spelled:
Mark L. McAfee
7221 So. Jameson Fresno CA 93706.
http://www.mark@organicpastures.com
Just let me know….I would love to share how 50,000 people in CA every week buy our safe, inspected, delicious raw milk from 400 stores and people are thriving. The people of MA are being denied access to a "true medical food". The more this right is denied the hotter the battle will become.
I really appreciate your support and always knew you were a closet raw milk supporter and drinker.
All the best,
Mark McAfee
You are missing the point about the transportation of milk.
The PMO is designed for milk destined to be pastuerized, thus the need to keep bacteria populations down, regardless of bacteria.
The reason that Grade A PMO milk standards require a Standard Plate Count of under 100,000 on the farm (and under 300,000 once the milk arrives at the factory) is because of Staph Aureus.
Staph is ubiqitous bacteria that lives on our skin. When cows are mastitic, they get a staph infection in the udder. If Staph reaches a critical population in the milk (about 1 million/mL) it produces a toxin that is not destroyed by pastuerization.
Thus, the need to keep total bacteria population down in PMO milk. It doesn’t matter whether the milk is Staph positive or not, high somatic cell count or not, high coliform populstion? Doesn’t matter. As long as we know that the total bacteria count is relatively low (under 300,000/mL for Grade A, under 1 million/mL for Grade B) we will know that the milk can be "safe for the pastuerizer."
Raw milk is a different story. If we have a large population of lactic bacteria in the fresh Grade A raw milk (say 75,000/mL, which would have the regulators in cahoots here in WI) these bacteria would work to exclude pathogens, such as Staph, Listeria, E. Coli O157:H7, etc… ESPECIALLY if the milk wasn’t held at refrigerator temps.
However, if we had a Standard Plate Count of 10,000/mL, but 500 of those bacteria were listeria, and the milk was held at refrigerator temps for two weeks (where the listeria then could out-compete the lactic bacteria) we might have a problem in the raw milk, and we’d be seeing people getting sick.
You get my point… none of these regulations have anything to do with food safety. They have to do with keeping the pastuerization system working. If anything, NATURAL milk is safer and better when it is kept warm. The only purpose of keeping milk cold is to keep it "sweet" (aka not sour, fermented, cultured, curdled etc…) as long as possible.
This has been said numerous times on this blog. It is known that it is not a safety issue, it is a power struggle. Again, if it were a safety issue, the prudent thing to do would be "teach" so that sanitation et al is at least a basic standard and grow from there. This isn’t done, further showing there is no "safety issue".
The more I read and learn, the more the govt entities show they are not "for the people". Is there a need to seek out small community groups that will sell/trade foods that are not part of the commercial entities? will this become a necessity should the govt succeed in outlawing freedom of choice for food consumption? What else are those who wish to avoid processed/chemically ladened phoods to do? I can grow veggies, chickens,eggs that I would sell/trade for fresh milk, cheeses etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
If so many have positive personal experiences about the same item, why does the govt el al not investigate? There MUST be something about it true, otherwise so many would not be having the same experience.
The old man in the above link, just may have been healthy when he died in the car crash, the story doesn’t expand on his detailed health status- if he was driving at 99, I would hope he was healthy. My brother has smoked like a chimney for 40 yrs, his PFT are like that of a nonsmoker. My father had numerous colds after he quit smoking, (he rarely had a cold while smoking) Does the "scientific community research to see why some are affected and others not? When they do research are they looking at the whole picture or just a small portion? If the whole picture isn’t taken into consideration, all results are skewed.
This explains the conundrum we face with raw milk, where people who grew up on dairy farm drinking raw milk (like DATCP’s media secretary Donna Gilson) are against consuming it.
Or our dependence on the "wheat belt" for our carbs, energy, and protien, despite its tendency towards desertification because of the its dependence on annual cereal grain crops.
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
Seriously, that response just shows th contempt of jackasses like lykke for little, insignificant things…things like the declaration of independence, the constitution and bill of rights, the federalist papers, et al.
lykke and her kind personify EVERYTHING that caused the first American Revolution…and their crap will cause a second one.
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
Sorry this is off topic but I’m trying to grab as many raw milkies 🙂 as I can on this blog (which I just love, thank you David). I"m looking for copies of raw milk policies from "authorities" whether it is FDA, state Ag depts, with details on what the "expected" standards are for raw milk production. For instance, "sanitary conditions" – what specifically do those mean in reference to barn inspections, water quality, etc.
If you have such documents could you please email them to me (jenerin78@gmail.com)
That would be really swell, thank you!
jen
Thanks for the offer….I am interested. I will call Bob Hayles today.
I am always looking for a deal and when it comes from you…well that would make my trip.
Mark
I’m pretty sure I know which way they would go if decisions were made in the dark, the customary modus operandi of regulators. Will they still willingly tell the public…the voting citizens…to go to hell, that their rights don’t exist, in the sanitizing light of day?
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
BH
http://www.JuicyMaters.com
If you would have provided me an airline ticket to Boston it would have been one of your biggest regrets….giving aid and confort to the enemy would have certainly confused your buddies at the FDA.
I have my own airline ticket already.
I need someone to provide me with some good whole raw milk from someplace in MA. The FDA will not allow me to bring my own raw milk from CA for this rally. I will bring my own retail approved container from CA but it will be empty. I would like to fill it like I did in Wisconsin with Max Kane.
MA is the place and now is the time to educate and demonstrate against the tirany of food fascism and its resulting rampant immune destruction and depression that is directly causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year. This is a food fight!!! and a fight for food!!
See you on Monday in Boston. This is the real tea party. Actions scream loudly…talk is dirt cheap.
Mark
I just called Abby Rockefeller ( she still has the same number she had years ago ) whom I had met with in 2003 to discuss raw milk. My wife Blaine and I had been called by Abby to come visit her in Cambridge to talk about raw milk and we ended up spending the day and night visiting with Abby and her doctor friends and then traveling to upstate MA to visit her raw milk source.
It was magical.
The government has pissed off the wrong person. Abby is a bit upset and smart people do not piss off a Rockefeller….especially Abby. She wants her raw milk and no FOOD INC government pencil pusher is going to stop her. Can not wait to give her a big old hug and chug some raw milk together!
David…she speaks very highly of you…congrats!
Mark
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