Mark McAfee and Scott Trautman rally demonstrators outside courthouse in Viroqua, WI, for Max Kane last December 21.

Margaret Hamburg: John, I know it hasn’t even been three months since your last review, but I wanted to tell you how impressed we all are with the way you’ve turned this raw milk thing around. Especially since I was kind of tough on you during your performance review.

John Sheehan: Yes, you were a little rough. But we’re a tough bunch at Plant and Dairy Food Safety. I passed your criticisms on to members of my crew, and we’ve all been more resolute than ever about this raw milk situation. One of my staffers even worked half a day on a Saturday on this.

Hamburg: Well, I wanted to hear directly from you how you turned things around. I mean, you are kicking ass, pardon my French, in Wisconsin. That is turning into a total rout. And now you’re even making hay in Massachusetts. Things must be changing there—first they put a Republican into Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, and now they’re shutting down raw milk buying groups.

Sheehan: First of all, I’ve made some personal adjustments. Most of these state people don’t agree with me that we need a total ban of raw milk, period, end of discussion. So I’ve tried to put that aside, or delay that goal, in the interests of the current priority, which is to harass the small dairies producing raw milk and the people who help them distribute the milk, especially these buying clubs. We’re trying to disrupt the raw milk supply chain as much as possible. If we can create enough pain for these small dairies, maybe we can discourage other farmers and entrepreneurs who might be thinking that raw milk offers a market opportunity.

Hamburg: Is that something you just came up with in the last couple months?

Sheehan: No, we hatched this out in discussions in the Midwest a little over a year ago. That protester, Max Kane, got ahold of some emails where we laid it out. I didn’t like the fact that those emails were made public, but we decided to ignore that, and just stay with the plan.

Hamburg: But why does it seem to be working so well now, when it wasn’t just a couple months ago.

Sheehan: Excellent question. We’ve learned some important lessons. Our biggest concern has been negating the raw milk leadership, especially this Mark McAfee in California and Scott Trautman in Wisconsin. These guys are wild men, loose cannons. You know as well as I do, Madame Commissioner, that we hate loose cannons. So we’ve been trying to put them both in a box, shut them up tight. Now, McAfee is tough, because he has such a market presence, and so many devoted customers out there in la la land. But we’ve been pushing hard on this civil suit to become his “partner,” if you know what I mean. We want to be able to come in and inspect his dairy whenever we want, for the rest of his life, and just to show him who’s boss, we get him to pay us for the inspections. How cool would that be? He says the most awful things about me, it’s terribly humiliating. If we get this suit to come out the way I think it will, he’ll be treating me with respect, probably calling me “sir.”

Now, on the Trautman guy, he seems like a McAfee clone. The raw milk people had a rally up there in Wisconsin in front of the court house in late December, and he turns out to be a barn burner, had the crowd all worked up. Then, the really scary thing, he chained himself to the fence outside the governor’s mansion on Christmas Eve. He didn’t stay long, but anyone who would do that, well, you just don’t know what else he might do. He had the people at DATCP, even the governor, all upset.

Hamburg: Okay, I understand what you’re doing with McAfee, but what about Trautman? How have you boxed him up?

Sheehan: There we have to credit the other side. His own people let him down. That rally for the Max Kane guy at the courthouse December 21 was actually a dud. Only 150 people showed up. Our Wisconsin people thought 500 might show, but not all the farmers seemed to support it, and so didn’t encourage their customers to attend. Then, when Trautman chained himself to the fence, they totally hung him out to dry. Only one person showed up in support, Max Kane’s brother. Can you imagine if 50 or 100 people had come out to support him? The whole thing, poor farmers and raw milk consumers out in front of the governor’s mansion on Christmas Eve, it could have been a media circus. Instead, Trautman gave up after a few hours and we all breathed a big sigh of relief.

Hamburg: That still doesn’t explain how we took the offensive.

Sheehan: There I have to give credit to the guy in charge of DATCP. Rod Nisteuen, or whatever the hell, I can never get his name right.

Hamburg: It's Rod Nilsestuen. Yes, he's a comer. We might be recruiting him here at FDA one of these days before long.

Sheehan: Right, Nilsestuen. Anyway, the guy is a genius. An absolute genius. After the Trautman fiasco, he came up with this plan for a “working group” to study raw milk. When I first heard the idea, I thought it smelled of capitulation. Something like that Michigan working group that eventually concluded raw milk is good for you. What a joke that was. But no, Nilsestuen is much smarter than that. His working group is perfectly positioned to be whatever he needs it to be. He can use it to delay any legislative action on raw milk. If the opposition gets its act together, he can have it recommend some narrow and very strict from-the-farm sale permit. Or, since it's stacked with anti-raw-milk people, he can have it affirm Wisconsin's ban on raw milk. Or he can have it do nothing, just kind of disappear into the ether, like so many government initiatives. No matter how you cut it, it's a win. And he's distracted the raw milkies into thinking he's doing something positive.

Added to that, the raw milkies continue to help our cause. They can’t settle on a consistent strategy in Wisconsin. First they’re quiet about the legislation. Then they tell their people to call the legislators and DATCP. Then they say to be quiet. Supporters don’t know what the hell is going on. Now we hear they’re fighting among themselves. I thought at first it was a mistake to go after this guy Dan Siegmann, since he’s a leader for the legislative push to legalize raw milk sales from farms. But now he’s blaming other farmers for informing on him and causing the shutdown of his business, and is pissed at the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. So other farmers are mad at him for only rallying the troops when his own business came under attack. On top of that, this other group, the Wisconsin Independent Consumer and Farmers Association, has come out against the legislation that would legalize raw milk sales for Class A dairies. So the legislature has a good excuse to avoid the whole thing, and say it was the raw milkies who couldn’t get their act together. It’s a classic case of all-for-one and none-for-all. Beautiful. I couldn’t have choreographed it any better.

Hamburg: But that’s just Wisconsin. Granted, it’s a big dairy state, but how does it affect other places?

Sheehan: Excellent question. The really good news is that the Wisconsin situation tells us this movement lacks leadership. So our people in other states can use the Wisconsin scenario to mount a counter-offensive, and reduce raw milk consumption, or drive it underground. If it goes underground, and people start getting sick, we can just say, “We warned you.”

Hamburg: You should be feeling good, John. You’ve totally turned this situation around. If you keep this up, we’ll be looking to you for bigger and better things. Maybe put you in charge of our meat and veggie irradiation program, figure out ways to speed up acceptance of that cleanup effort.

Sheehan: I’m very optimistic. Time is on our side. The new food safety legislation looks likelier than ever to pass, since it has bipartisan support. Obama needs a win after the Massachusetts Senate race derailed his health care legislation. When the food safety legislation passes, we’ll have gobs of new funding we can use to grease the skids with the states, which are desperate for funding, and will prostitute themselves no matter how they might feel about raw milk. We will definitely be in the driver’s seat.

It sounded like peace was nearly at hand. Farmers who had been organizing themselves and encouraging consumers to protest with their legislators as well as with DATCP, over the agency’s assault on people like Max Kane and Scott Trautman, let up, assuming they were about to enter a quiet period before the working group made its recommendations.

But like a nation at war that announces a peace initiative, and then seeks to inflict as many casualties on its adversaries as possible to maximize its negotiating position later, DATCP has intensified its war on Wisconsin raw milk producers.

As one example, it has filed a “Summary Special Order” against Dan Siegmann, one of the leaders of the effort to change Wisconsin’s dairy laws. The order describes the investigation of his dairy, and concludes that Siegmann sold raw milk unlawfully, and must discontinue the sales.

In an email to supporters of the Wisconsin raw milk protest, Dan Siegmann said a few days ago: “They have been aware of the possibility of raw milk being available from our farm because we worked with them many years ago to provide it according to their terms. The terms since then have been revoked and the state law stands as written back in 1957 and 1958. We received a summary special order from Steven C. Ingham, the administrator of the division of food safety at DATCP. We have been officially notified and ordered to cease all raw milk distribution. If they discover any distribution of raw milk
from our farm, they have threatened to revoke the retail food establishment license we have for Back to the Best Country Store. If this happened it would be shut down.”

DATCP has also filed requests for detailed information with three other farmers to determine whether or not they have been selling raw milk. These are often prelude to the summary special order Dan Siegmann received.

DATCP’s spokesperson, Donna Gilson, adamantly denies there is any connection between the announcement of the working group three weeks ago and the seeming step-up in enforcement activities against raw dairies. “We don’t have the authority to declare a moratorium. If people think that’s what the working group is about, they’re mistaken.”

Certainly a number of Wisconsin advocates of raw milk have made that assumption. They had cautioned protesters to remain quiet, mainly to allow for legislation that would legalize some on-farm sales to work through legislative hearings, which haven’t yet been held.

Now, a number are advocating a reversal. Dan Siegmann, for instance, in his email, is encouraging supporters to phone DATCP officials like Ingham as well as their legislators to protest the state’s crackdown.

Others are in the process of trying to determine the best ways to challenge DATCP. the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is in the midst of its own determination of how to handle the additional cases being cranked out by DATCP.

One thing is clear: in such an intensive battle with a determined enemy like DATCP,:you can’t ever let up the pressure. Any letup is interpreted as weakness, a lack of resolve. DATCP only understands two considerations: pressure and fear of more pressure.

***

Speaking of regulators in relentless pursuit of raw dairy producers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to apply the heat to Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co.  As part of its settlement of a civil suit against the dairy, it wants not only to conduct regular inspections of the dairy, but it wants to charge Organic Pastures for the privilege. All this according to a detailed report in Food Safety News that is well worth reading. Thanks to Don Neeper for the original link.

Joseph Heckman of Rutgers University.

He feels most isolated when he schedules individuals to appear at a series of lectures on raw milk he first launched in 2008. Among a number of speakers, he’s had Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. speak in 2008. I just spoke on Friday. 

Each time he organizes one of his lectures, he encounters tension from other professors in the food sciences arena at Rutgers. Sometimes they send emails around to other faculty questioning whether the lectures amount to advocacy of raw milk consumption by the university, which could endanger funding by New Jersey, which doesn’t allow the sale or distribution of raw milk; sometimes they question whether opponents should be invited to attend; and sometimes they simply question the safety of raw milk. He says colleagues have attempted to attract opponents from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lecture, but, of course, they won’t attend once anyone in favor of raw milk has been at a university lectern.

Initially, Heckman says, the lectures were well attended by Rutgers faculty, but attendance has gradually fallen off to the point where only two Rutgers professors besides Heckman attended my talk on Friday. “I’m not sure what this means, whether it’s moved from hotly contested topic to boredom, or maybe to a boycott.”

My sense is that the hostility isn’t unusual. Academics in public health and agriculture tend to be anti-raw-milk, because that is what they have been taught. More often than not, they don’t have to deal with dissenters like Joseph Heckman in their midst, so raw milk never comes up as a debatable issue.

In any event, we had a good group of about 35 students, farmers, and professionals attending the Friday talk, and afterwards there was animated discussion about what raw milk proponents need to do to encourage wider acceptance. A psychiatrist in attendance, Richard Schwartzman, compared the FDA’s approach to raw milk to its approach to the jailing of psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich during the 1950s for his writings and teachings on psychiatry.

A photo from the Selman Waksman Museum at Rutgers.Afterwards, Heckman gave everyone a tour of the tiny Selman Waksman Museum, which was the soil laboratory at Rutgers where scientist Selman Waksman developed the streptomycin antibiotic and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1952. The gold Nobel Prize is also in display. Ironically, the exhibit includes the photoabove of tuberculosis patients from the early 1900s, who were treated with raw milk.

I want to personally thank Joseph Heckman and his wife, Joyce, for their gracious hospitality in hosting me Friday and Saturday.

Ontario Judge Paul Kowarsky

Yet last evening, a number of the questions and comments concerned raw milk’s supposed protective and health-giving powers. Doesn’t good bacteria in raw milk from pasture-fed cows overwhelm pathogens that might be present? Doesn’t that mean you can’t become seriously ill from raw milk? Isn’t pasteurized milk more likely to contain pathogens than raw milk?

I tried to explain that there is very limited data on the first question, and what little there is doesn’t support the notion that milk from pasture-fed cows won’t allow pathogen growth. I also said that people can become seriously ill from raw milk, as they can from pasteurized milk. And, once again with incomplete data, I said I thought that what there is indicates raw milk is riskier than pasteurized milk, but that the entire category of dairy products is low on the food-borne illness totem pole.

Given the dearth of data, and the fact that raw milk doesn’t appear to be a serious health risk in its own rite, then the real issue is food rights, which brings me back to the Michael Schmidt decision in Ontario last week. And that is where I thought Judge Paul Kowarsky began to set some interesting parameters.

He may not have spoken about food rights, but he spoke to an area very close: the right of individuals to enter into private contracts in order to access the foods of their choice. More Americans are choosing private arrangements—for example, C.A.R.E., the largest buying group in the U.S. in Pennsylvania, has grown to 5,500 members over the last few years.  The right to private arrangements is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 10) and known as “the Contract clause”, though admittedly it was included for different reasons at the time; food rights wasn’t much of an issue in the late 1700s. 

Repeatedly in his decision, Judge Kowarsky affirmed the right of individuals to enter into private agreements to access raw milk:

• “Is the defendant guilty of the offences with which he is charged or does the fact that he sells his milk and milk products only to paid-up members of his Cow Share Program exculpate him?”
• “If the ultimate purpose of regulatory legislation is to protect those who are unable to protect themselves, especially those who are particularly vulnerable, do those members of society who expressly waive the need for protection, still need the protection?” …if, in consuming raw milk per se the cow share members are not committing an unlawful act and they wish to continue to do that within the parameters of the essentially private cow share program, why should they be forced to be bound by legislation which is intrinsically aimed at the vulnerable—those who need the protection?”
• “These findings support the existence of a valid private agreement between the defendant and the cow share members in terms of which he is responsible for the upkeep of the cows and the provision of milk for the membership. The responsibility of the members is to pay a fee for the upkeep of the cows, the production of the dairy products, and their delivery.”
• “In my view, the establishment of the cow-share program creates a sharing of ownership of the cows amongst the members…”

It’s interesting that the Dairy Farmers of Ontario are advocating an appeal of the Michael Schmidt case since, as Steve Bemis suggests in his comment following my previous post, the judge didn’t make any changes in legislation. Quite the opposite, as the judge concluded his decision by stating: “Indeed, the milk marketing legislation remains of full force and effect until such time as it is amended or revoked by the Legislature…”

And Canadian dairy farmers shouldn’t be worried about too many of their brethren selling raw milk. They have a much sweeter deal, I am told, than American dairy farmers, with price supports that enable them to receive on the order of $3 to $4 a gallon for their conventional and organic milk, versus $1 to $1.50 a gallon in the U.S.

I can only assume the Ontario dairy organization is worried that Judge Kowarsky’s decision could begin to erode its complete control of the dairy system. Control is what a lot of this is about, and only guarantees and exercise of rights can counter the forces of control.

Michael Schmidt displays cow manure he credits with replenishing his farm's soil, during a tour of Glencolton Farm's dairy operations Wednesday evening.

Yet it took a Canadian judge Tursday to provide the strongest affirmation yet of individual food rights via its ruling in favor of raw dairy farmer Michael Schmidt. The Ontario judge, Paul Kowarsky, stepped into a void left by the failure of American judges in New York, California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to show anything near the Canadian judge’s backbone and legal sophistication in ruling on consumer rights with regard to raw milk.

The only American judicial ruling in a raw milk case even beginning to approach the Ontario ruling came in late 2006, when an Ohio judge ruled in favor of dairy farmer Carol Schmitmeyer and her herdshare. But the ruling was based more on the state’s inconsistent approach to regulating herdshares than to a major endorsement of the arrangement.

But there is one important similarity I believe the two cases will wind up sharing: Just as the Ohio Department of Agriculture decided not to appeal the Schmitmeyer ruling, I predict Ontario officials won’t appeal the Michael Schmidt ruling. The reason has to do with the very strong ruling put together by Judge Paul Kowarsky. Generally speaking in countries with well established legal systems like Canada and the U.S., it’s difficult to appeal a well-reasoned and documented lower court opinion. Appeals court judges don’t like to overrule lower court judges who have done their homework.

One of the most significant case law matters for the judge was to examine conditions under which consumers might organize themselves privately to avoid public health restrictions and regulations. He pointed to a case involving a private club in Toronto organized so smokers would be able to avoid the city’s anti-smoking laws in public places. The effort was struck down because the club advertised and had minimal dues.

But another case that seemed to fascinate the judge involved a Montreal club organized for members to engage in group sex. The club was similar to Michael Schmidt’s cow share in that it wasn’t advertised and required members to pay dues. Two lower courts ruled that the club was illegal because of concerns about public health risks from sexually transmitted diseases But Canada’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the club, the judge said. “The risks of contracting a sexually transmitted disease were unrelated to the issue of decency,” he said. In other words, even though society might frown on the activity, individuals who decided to join the club were entitled to make their own determinations about health risks.

The judge asked at one point: “Are cow share members bound to accept protection” from public health authorities? The answer was that, so long as the cow share was organized properly—not advertising, explaining risks, well structured—the answer was no.

The four lawyers representing Ontario’s Ministry of Health who sat at the legal table while Judge Kowarsky read his opinion were noticeably squirming toward the end of his two-and-a-half hour oration. As well they should have been. Michael Schmidt had represented himself, and outmaneuvered them.

He had taken on the task of representing himself not out of principal, but out of financial necessity. The high-powered firm he originally engaged raised its rate from $100,000 in anticipation of the trial last year, to $400,000 once the trial was about to get under way. Michael determined he couldn’t afford the extra money, and decided to go his own way.

The government’s lawyers have already been humiliated by a farmer. I have difficulty imagining them wanting to risk a second or third humiliation in front of higher courts, especially since Michael Schmidt on an appeal has the commitment of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union, to represent him.

And as you can see from the photo I published yesterday of Michael Schmidt meeting the media, Canada’s media has given the matter wide publicity. For an excellent summary of Canadian coverage, see The Bovine blog.

Also, the ruling, while encouraging for herdshare/cow share arrangements, has little obvious wider applicability. It’s not as if Canada’s tightly regulated and heavily government supported dairy industry has been de-regulated in any significant way, and the judge affirmed that notion.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank Michael and Elisa Schmidt for their hospitality while I visited at their farm Wednesday evening. In the midst of their preparations for the court appearance yesterday, Michael even insisted on giving me a tour of their Glencolton Farm (see photo above). And thanks to Richard Chomko of The Bovine blog for driving me the nearly three hours from the Toronto airport to the Schmidts’ Glencolton Farm.

Michael Schmidt meets with the media before entering a Newmarket courthouse.

At first, the judge sounded as if he was going to rule against Schmidt,when he said several times he had "no authority" to pronounce on legislation. His role, he said, was to determine "whether offenses occurred." He then went through each of the 19 counts against Michael Schmidt, which stem from offenses that first occurred in 1994, when his Glencolton Farm was first raided by authorities.

He then went through the account of how two undercover agents from the Ontario Ministry of Health in 2006 acquired milk products from Michael Schmidt. The circumstances around that operation wound up influencing the judge's ruling when he decided he had "reasonable doubt" about whether the acquisition of $6 worth of raw milk cheese from Michael Schmidt constituted a sale. That decision was essential to allowing the judge to then rule on whether cow shares are subject to Ontario milk laws.

In the end, the judge determined that cow shares are outside regulatory oversight based on the following:

• That legislation is subject to a "dynamic" based on cultural, social, and historical factors. In other words, raw milk doesn't pose the same dangers it might have been seen to pose in the 1930s, when much of Ontario's dairy legislation was passed.
• That Michael Schmidt wasn't "marketing" the cow shares. "There was no advertising and sale (of raw milk) to the general public...Cow shares are a legitimate private enterprise that does not constitute marketing in Ontario."
• Perhaps most intriguing, that "the people who are permitted to buy the milk are fully informed" via a special booklet, identification cards, regular newsletters, and other steps Michael Schmidt took on behalf of his members.  "There is no evidence of any illness" in all the years Michael Schmidt has been distributing raw milk, he observed, and tests by the regulatory authorities never found any evidence of pathogens.

Judge Kowarsky obviously gave the case a huge amount of time and consideration. He In addeitionto researching other cases, he reviewed cow share procedures in the United States and Australia,and rules regarding sale of raw milk in Europe. It made me wish that the New York state judge who ruled against Meadowsweet Dairy on a very broad definition of the term "consumer," might have done the same kind of analysis.

Max Kane, the owner of a Wisconsin raw dairy buyers club facing legal problems of his own, said, "I want that judge for my case." He drove overnight from Wisconsin to Newmarket to hear the court decision. Another American raw milk "celebrity" in attendance was Tim Wightman of the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation.

Michael Schmidt was all smiles afterwards. "It's an incredible relief," he told me. Especially given the judge's observation that the amount of potential fines had Michael been found guilty couldhave been "astronomical."

The late Ayatollah Khomeini greeting supporters in Iran.

I found myself asking that question as I read through the comments following my previous post about kombucha. They all seem to come down to the issue of trust. Lykke launched the debate when she said, “I could care less if something is GMO.”

Many of the objections that followed stem from the fact that most people on this blog care very much whether food is GMO, just as they care whether it is irradiated, treated with pesticides…or pasteurized. There is a fundamental mistrust of the health establishment—we know that just because they say certain processes or drugs are “harmless” doesn’t make it so. In fact, the reality may well be quite the opposite.

All of which brings me back to the new raw milk working group planned in Wisconsin, and a comment by Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund following my previous post: “It appears that most of the proposed members are either government anti-raw milk officials or are large scale agribusiness practitioners.”

I’ve heard that comment from a number of people familiar with the twenty individuals appointed to the working group. It doesn’t surprise me that Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) would try to stack the deck in favor of an agenda that, even if it recommends legalizing the sale of raw milk (not guaranteed), imposes such tight restrictions that the regulatory process becomes a means of harassing dairy farms and, in effect, making raw milk difficult to obtain—not unlike what New York has done to its raw dairy farmers via its tough inspections and continual findings of listeria in raw milk that makes no one ill.

Still, I’m optimistic about the opportunity that Wisconsin affords. Because it is such a huge dairy state, the DATCP working group could, in effect, set a precedent for negotiating raw milk availability nationwide. I see the working group as essentially a negotiating forum for setting up safety and distribution standards for raw milk.

The simple fact that it was established was a major concession by DATCP, an acknowledgment that it was under siege from outraged consumers and farmers, and needed to act before losing further credibility.

However, raw milk proponents will need to keep up the pressure. They will need to counter attitudes like those in Lykke’s comment following my previous post: 

“Perhaps change will happen when raw milk dairies embrace risk reduction and accept food safety as part of their culture (something the beef industry still can't do and keeps getting in trouble for it)? At the same time there is a mentality that raw milk is incapable of doing this, and a desire among regulators to give up because y'all are just a bunch of crazy anti-government people not concerned about consumer safety. Wrong too? Wisconsin could be an interesting test case because both sides are pure.”

My sense is that no matter how loudly raw dairy farmers profess their interest in safety, the public health regulatory establishment won't want to hear it. I predict that as the debate unfolds in Wisconsin, the vested interests will be working hard behind the scenes, bombarding working group members with fear mongering. It’s the type of fear mongering that food poisoning lawyer Bill Marler specializes in, and is currently trying to carry out against a Pennsylvania raw dairy selling raw milk via Whole Foods--a dairy that has committed itself to the highest possible safety standards.

If Bill Marler had bothered to listen to the video Whole Foods posted about Edwin Shank (whom I profiled last fall), he’d have learned that the farmer has committed to testing his dairy’s milk for pathogens far more often than required by Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture.

But Bill Marler isn’t interested in safety. He posted the first comment on the Whole Foods site containing the video, and he includes his standard bag of tricks: videos of people allegedly sickened by raw milk and a threat to sue Whole Foods for carrying raw milk. All of which has, not surprisingly, upset Edwin Shank a great deal. He wrote me today, referring to Bill Marler:

“It seems he somehow feels the need to create as much fear as possible. It is not that the videos are false information, but rather that they represent a phobic, unreasonable focus in one direction. Does he also feel compelled to show car wreck pictures and paralyzed children on ventilators when a car company comes out with a new model and is highlighting new and improved safety features that are even more than the government requires? Or ditto to spinach and beef vendors.
 
"I'll have to admit it does anger and yet scare me a little. The injustice is so monstrous. The lawyers seemingly would just love to see someone get sick that also drank raw milk." 

Absolutely correct, Edwin. I’ll go a step further. The reason “the injustice is so monstrous” is that Bill Marler has the regulators and judges in his corner. His threats remind me of what the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran did against the novelist, Salman Rushdie, in 1989. The Ayatollah issued a “fatwa” against him, essentially threatening him with death. Had Rushdie not lived in Great Britain, where he was given round-the-clock police protection, he might have been killed. So when Bill Marler issues his threats in the U.S. against a large retailer and a farmer supplier, it’s akin to a fatwa, a religiously-based threat. Go get ‘em, he’s saying to lawyers and regulators alike. But unlike Rushdie in Great Britain, Edwin Shank and Whole Foods can’t necessarily expect much in the way of protection from their country’s legal and public health establishments. (Of course, money counts for a lot here, so Whole Foods, if it so chooses, can try to defend itself against the army of lawyers and regulators swarming about.)

One final note: Bill Marler will likely respond by saying I don’t care about kids getting sick. It’s his standard response if you disagree with him on this subject. All I can say is that ever more consumers and farmers alike are beginning to see through the arrogance and fear-mongering he, Doug Powell, John Sheehan, and various others of America's health establishment bring to bear.

The problem these people face going forward is that as more consumers become informed about the reality of the struggle over raw milk, and related issues like genetically modified food, they conclude they can’t trust the establishment to tell the truth. (You can see on the Whole Foods site, Bill Marler is the only comment of more than a dozen that expresses antipathy about Whole Foods carrying raw milk in Pennsylvania.) As the distrust spreads, the fear mongering sounds ever more hollow. That’s what I’m expecting will carry the day in Wisconsin.

Why have I kept it secret? Because I’ve been afraid that if I say anything publicly, I might lose my kombucha. Call it post-traumatic raw milk disorder.

I drink GT Kombucha, the multi-green variety. I know you can make kombucha yourself, but spoiled foodie that I sometimes am, I prefer the convenience of buying it at Whole Foods, so I confess, I pay more than I should, sometimes as much as $3.49 a bottle. I’ve seen it at small health food stores for $4 a bottle.

I’ve been watching the kombucha, especially my favorite multi-green variety, fly off the shelves at Whole Foods for about three years now. It’s so popular, I try to keep at least three or four bottles in my fridge, to allow for the fact that I could go a week without finding any at Whole Foods, it’s that popular.

Of course, the journalist in me has wanted to write about kombucha’s exploding popularity (and sometimes exploding out of bottles—it’s a bear to open, and a mini-bomb if you drop it), but I’ve restrained myself. As much as I love my kombucha, I know that aside from the explosion problem, it’s a dangerous drink in other ways—dangerous as in a potential target of the food-safety police at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It has three important attributes they detest:

--It’s unpasteurized;

--It’s fermented;

--Its makers say it’s healthy.

Think about that combination of attributes. Even states that allow raw milk to be sold won’t, with the exception of California and a couple other places, allow unpasteurized yogurt and kefir. (Question: has raw yogurt or kefir ever been implicated in an illness? I’ve never seen it noted in data from the Centers for Disease Control; yet raw dairies in nearly every state are prohibited from selling it. But I digress.) And for a manufacturer to say its food is healthy is to risk the FDA charging you with selling an untested drug because, in their scheme of things, only “tested” drugs can make health claims. (It does require you to adjust your sense of logic.)

So why am I divulging my secret now? Because Alternet published an article (thanks to Don Wittlinger for the original link) seemingly exposing the health claims some kombucha makers are making, along with “the documented risks” potentially posed by the fermented tea—namely, two cases of illness among kombucha drinkers in 1995, in which one person died. I won’t bore you with the details, but you get the idea of what a crazy reach we’re talking about.

The Alternet piece is a sad attempt at a provocative article designed only to create controversy where none exists, and to bait the FDA food police who probably never heard of kombucha or, if they tried it, figured that because it was fizzy, it was probably made from Coca Cola and thus not a health problem.

I even wrote an angry comment on the Alternet article, joining more than 70 already there, many of which expressed similar feelings, namely, find something more important to spend your time on.

But I decided to write something here, not just to vent about the article, but because I realize I should be able to talk openly about my kombucha habit. I shouldn’t be afraid that the food police are going to deprive me of important food.

All of which brings me back to the world of raw milk (isn’t that where I always wind up?). The backing off by Wisconsin authorities on raw milk has come about because people are objecting to the actions of the food police. Same in South Dakota, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts.

We can argue about whether the government should or shouldn’t be licensing, or whether the Wisconsin working group on raw milk is serious or just a delaying action, but when you come down to it, all this protest is as much or more about education as it is about specific legal tactics. When 50 people show up at a Milk Board hearing in Missouri, or 150 people pack a court house in Viroqua, WI on a freezing weekday morning, or more than 100 people crowd into a hearing room in Framingham, MA, it sends a message not only that people demand their rights, but that nutritionally-dense food is important to our health. To the extent more people are educated, more people will understand that because the FDA's hysteria about raw milk is baseless, other of their enforcement activities must be baseless, and they’ll seek out good food. The more people demand good food, the better it is for small farms, and the better it is for people’s health.

So I’m going to speak up about kombucha and raw milk, and any other serious food that may come into jeopardy from the food police (though I promise, there’s no “Kombucha Revolution” in my writing future).

And my suggestion is this: use all these regulatory and legal events—the new Wisconsin raw milk working group meetings, or Max Kane’s upcoming court hearings—as opportunities to spread the word, to educate. The battle for food rights is as much as a fight for legal rights as it is a propaganda war, and now the authorities are being forced to open up the airwaves to the other side.