← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 16118 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-12-30
2004-12-30 01:54 | User Profile
*Excellent news on the notice these small-farm activists are starting to generate in Tennessee. The real problem isn't health risks, of course. It is the usual state reluctance to allow groups to build self-sufficient community-based economies. Very soon these raw-milk "activists" will be lumped in with the supposedly racist homeschoolers, most likely.
Note the slippery reasoning used by the Ag department spokesman, implying that this threatens the entire dairy and farm industries. As if either of these industries could be hurt by isolated or even wide-spread incidents; ConAgra could just use their GPS-guided tractors to steamroll over any possible bad publicity produced by a few spoiled-milk stomach aches. And the focus on the "healing" aspect marginalizes the pro-raw group; as I understand it this preference is more an anti-corporate selection rather than some kind holistic self-treatment, although I would welcome more investigation into possible benefits of raw milk. Some additional info on whether these co-ops buy from organic farms or from farmers producing without antibiotics would be interesting as well.
Any thoughts?*
[url]http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/state/article/0,1406,KNS_348_3430582,00.html[/url]
Group seeks to legalize raw milk Drinkers of unpasteurized product say risk is their choice to make
By Associated Press December 29, 2004
NASHVILLE - It isn't quite like bootlegging moonshine, but Kate Heidorn, a 41-year-old mother of two, has to keep her supplier a secret when she talks about the illegal liquid she craves and claims she needs.
Because in Tennessee, getting raw, unpasteurized, straight-from-the-cow milk is illegal. And some say harmful.
Heidorn's source could be fined up to $500 or face a misdemeanor criminal charge if the state Department of Agriculture discovered which farmer was selling her unpasteurized milk.
Heidorn, who lives in suburban Nashville, and other raw milk drinkers want to change that.
Tennesseans for Raw Milk, a group of lawmakers, farmers and community activists, are working to legalize the sale of pure, raw milk. But they know it will be an uphill battle.
"I drank it right out of the cow and I'm still alive," said state Rep. Glen Casada, a Republican from Williamson County who grew up on a farm.
Casada is writing a raw-milk bill he says he might introduce in the upcoming legislative session. A similar bill he offered last year made little headway.
"If individuals want the right to buy milk that's not been pasteurized, they should have that right," he said. "Government is not our mother and father. If people know the risks they are taking, drinking raw milk should be their choice."
The state Agriculture Department, which opposes legalizing raw milk sales, opposed Casada's bill in 2003 and would be against it again in 2005, said department spokesman Tom Womack.
"There's scientific evidence of cases where raw milk has led to illness and death," Womack said, adding that any problems could undermine consumer confidence in milk and other farm products.
Advocates of unpasteurized milk claim it has more vitamins, enzymes and nutrients than store-bought milk, plus a "healing" quality.
Raw milk is legally sold in Pennsylvania and more than 25 other states, where farms can hold licenses to provide unpasteurized milk for drinking and making cheese and other products.
Brentwood resident Shawn Dady is part of a group of eight families that call themselves the Franklin Raw Milk Co-op. One family drives each week to an undisclosed dairy farm to purchase unpasteurized milk, butter and cream. The raw products are then brought back to a delivery point in Franklin, where they are handed out to the other families.
"There is a moonshine element to it and it can be a little exciting," Dady said. "We have to keep our sources secret, because the Department of Agriculture won't even let people give away raw milk."
Consumers can't get in trouble because there is no law against buying or drinking unpasteurized milk. There also are no laws against selling it for animal consumption.
The owner of Peaceful Pastures, a meat, poultry and dairy farm more than 40 miles east of Nashville in rural Smith County, Jenny Drake sells unpasteurized milk as animal food. She says she's routinely asked to sell raw milk for human consumption, but tells would-be buyers that's against the law.
"There is a market for it," Drake said. "I would like to see an exception for straight-off-the-farm sales of raw milk. I would sell directly to the consumer if they took the health risk on themselves."
Since 1981, the number of dairy farms in Tennessee has dwindled from 4,012 to fewer than 834 today, according to the Department of Agriculture.
While most farmers sell their milk for about $1 a gallon or less, Drake sells her unpasteurized pet milk for $5 a gallon of cow's milk and $8 a gallon of goat's milk.
Opponents of legalizing raw milk say the health risks have not changed over time.
Bob Strasser, 46, is a third-generation dairy farmer who farms in Davidson and Robertson counties. While admitting he'd like to make more money, and could by selling raw milk straight to consumers, Strasser said he thinks the health risks associated with it are too great.
"I say we don't need it legalized. We've come so far in the food safety side that this is taking a step back," he says. "Yes, I'm normally opposed to regulation. I would normally say I should be able to sell as much as I want, and reap the benefit the consumer is willing to pay, but the health risk is too great."
Mike Davidson, professor of food microbiology at the University of Tennessee, performed a study in the 1990s that he says clearly demonstrates health risks associated with raw milk.
Copyright 2004, Associated Press. All rights reserved. Click for permission to reprint
2004-12-30 07:09 | User Profile
I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. When I was a little boy I'd drink it directly from the cow. I remember it well. Must have been about five years old. My little hand gripped on the big Gurnsey teat and just a-sqeezing it into my mouth.
I used to feed the cats that way, too, squirting the stuff into their mouths. It would always draw a big crowd of barn cats. Used to irritate Pop to no end.
My it was good. There's nothing better than fresh raw cream. I used to have it with fresh rasberries and a bit of sugar. Raw milk definitely tastes better than pasturized, which has a sort of burned flavor.
2004-12-30 16:50 | User Profile
This is an interesting story. I have looked into this a little, and there many people who are convinced of the health benefits of raw milk. Anyway, I think there are a couple of things going on here: 1. Some of the main opponents of this legislation are the large agri-business companies, and for them, it is all about control and profit. Right now, the small farmers have to sell their milk to these companies so that it can be pasteurized and re-sold. If this bill passes, then the farmers would be able to sell it to their neighbours, or at co-ops, or wherever. Perfect competition or self-sufficiency are the last things the agri-business companies want to see. 2. There are documented health risks from raw milk, just as there are from raw eggs. However, these are normally the result of being exposed to micro-organisms to which one has no immunity. If one has been drinking raw milk one's whole life, then that immunity has already been attained. I consider this a good thing. I think the modern approach, in which everything is sterilized, disinfected, and treated with antibiotics, is misguided. Obviously, all of these things have their place, but I think moderate exposure to pathogens in order to build lifelong immunity is a better approach, in general.
2004-12-30 21:41 | User Profile
Recommended link: [url]www.thirdway.org[/url].
2005-01-03 08:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Buster]Recommended link: [url]www.thirdway.org[/url].[/QUOTE]
Great wegpage. I think that most of us agree with the general outlines of the Distributist program.
The goal is to encourage a broad distribution of property by favoring active investments over passive investments. God commanded that we earn our bread through the sweat of our brow, and thus wealth must always maintain its nexus to human labor. This is the essence of active investment - our wealth is made by our own muscle and brain power. Passive investment - while not wrong in itself - should be disfavored, since it contains within itself the seeds of monopoly, parasitic existence and tyranny.
Our current capitalist system perversely skews the rules in favor of passive investment. The main pillars of the current system that tends inherently so dangerously toward monopoly and parasitic finance are (1) routine use of the corporate orgazational form, (2) usury, (3) the fiat money system, (4) the progressive income tax. The entire virtual financial system of publicly traded stocks and bonds, derivative and futures markets, ludicrously overextended credit, and so on rest squarely on these. We must attack these institutions and replace them with Christian forms.
I received this list of quotes on corporations in an email from a colleague. We take all of this for granted, but it wasn't so long ago that good men spoke out strongly against all these things, including the corporate organizational form.
[QUOTE] "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ââ¬Â¦ corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln (1864)
"The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few ... It is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." -- Rutherford B. Hayes (1881)
"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done ... Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1910)
"Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy." -- Woodrow Wilson (1912)
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1961)[/QUOTE]