Utah Ag Officials Have Just the Solution to a Raw Milk “Problem”: Undo the Farm’s Pecking Order
Monday, June 4, 2007 at 10:45PM 
One of the things that stayed with me from my conversations last February in reporting on Doug Kirkpatrick, the Michigan cattle and pig farmer who lost his animals by government decree after an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis, was his description of how the ecology, and economics, of his farm changed after the animals were shipped off.
Even though the government compensated him at market rates for his animals, his expenses to maintain the farm while he waited for clearance to bring in new animals were much higher than he expected, for reasons he never anticipated.
When the cattle were grazing, they acted as natural lawn mowers on his 100 acres of pasture. After the cattle finished their grazing in one area, the chickens would graze further on the shortened grass. Once the cattle were shipped off, the grass just kept growing—so high the chickens couldn’t graze. So Doug had to have the pasture grass cut commercially, which cost money, and energy. And he had to pay more for chicken feed.
I thought of that situation when I read over the last week about an ongoing dispute about raw milk in Utah. It seems 60 people got sick from camphylobacter, and Utah agriculture officials blamed it on one farmer’s raw milk, even though no such bacteria were found in his milk. (They speculate that their test was somehow defective, or it would have shown the bacteria.)
Except the regulators’ speculating didn’t end with their empty-handed tests. They surmised further that the cows came in contact with the bacteria through chickens, which graze along with the cows. So now the agriculture officials are considering rules to segregate cows and chickens.
The farmer, Lars Woolsey, told reporters that he’s not playing along, arguing not only that his cows aren't responsible for people getting sick, but that the chickens eat larvae of flies, thereby naturally controlling the fly population.
The interplay between animals and grass and fly larvae seems so natural. Basic biology. But in a food and agriculture system where animals are segregated to maximize productivity, I suppose it has come to seem natural to agriculture regulators to solve problems by keeping animals separate.
All of which comes back to the matter of food prices. Trying to produce food in an environment in which so many institutions and forces are working against you makes it nearly impossible to turn out inexpensive food. Gary in his comment on my June 1 posting says he has been butting his head against these forces in trying to start a raw milk dairy. Until he gets going, he’s supporting his raw milk habit by paying $12.50 a gallon for raw milk from Organic Pastures, which has had its share of legal bills to keep the doors open.
I might add that Gary hasn’t even mentioned expected legal expenses in his litany. I don’t know what they’ll be in his operation, but I don’t have to be a farming expert to tell him they are probably going to be higher than he expects.
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While I'm on the subject of raw milk, I want to note that Randolph Jonsson, the webmaster of raw-milk-facts.com, has just added an interesting new page on raw milk as a medicine. Most intriguing is the last section, “The Little Known Miracle of Immune Milk.” Jonsson in his research found a patent granted to several scientists back in 1968 based on their demonstrations that cows injected with certain pathogens produce milk that imparts immunity on its drinkers. Sounds a little like a vaccine coming from a cow.
Since patents are only good for twenty years, there may be an opportunity awaiting…
Reader Comments (5)
What the industrial food establishment does not understand (or pretends to not understand) is that industrial ag techniques increase only volume output per invested dollar, NOT productivity. Indirect costs (just as real, but paid by others!) go up--way up--when nature is shoe-horned into the industrial ag’ box.
First on the list of “hidden” costs are the destructive effects of industrial ag's ubiquitous poor quality products. Unnatural food, low in nutrients, full of hormones and antibiotics, and leaning toward a menu designed by business rather than biological forces, is responsible for many of our most pernicious health problems. We’ll probably never know the true cost of that--it’s too large and too dispersed to calculate. Then there’s the cost of land and water degradation (limiting future gains) and the effects of unnecessary use of expensive and polluting fossil fuels. Add into that mix the degradation of local farm economies, and the industrial ag culture looks more like a cost-shifting scheme than a food operation.
The dairy business is a classic example of the industrial ag follies. The simple aphorism, “Cows walk, grass doesn’t,” explains the irony. Rather than letting the cows go to the grass, we choose instead to lock the cows in a barn, burn fuel and labor to bring unnatural feed to them, pump in volume-producing hormones and chemicals, and treat the infamous confinement-related morbidities with chronic antibiotics.
What a mess!
As for Campylobacter, I read one study where some 20 college students became mildly ill with it while visiting a raw milk farm. The farmer and his family/staff were apparently immune, as were the students that had drunk raw milk in the past.
Thanks for your post, David.