The move to locally produced food is becoming ever more local in myriad ways beyond production. I couldn’t help but get this feeling reading the insightful comments about raw dairy standards and dairy cow feeding practices–the feeling that we’re going to see practices and groups develop more than we might expect on a localized basis.
It’s clear that different locales place different kinds of pressures on farmers–for example, in terms of feeding options; grass and hay are more plentiful in California and South Carolina than in Vermont and Minnesota, for example. And then there are different philosophies around raising animals and producing milk. So the Raw Milk Institute being organized by Mark McAfee could wind up as an umbrella organization involving any number of local groups (just an off-the-top-of-my-head notion…no one knows how all this will shake out).
Jessica Bernier of the Vermont Coalition for Food Sovereignty (center, in apron) leads Butter Appreciation Day March 8, where raw cream was made into butter at the state house, as a state house security official looked on. Again in that “local” mindset, the expanding outrage over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s court action against Amish farmer Dan Allgyer is showing up in part as upset over federal overreach into community food production. In just the last week, The Boston Globe has published an editorial opposing the government’s action, and the San Francisco Chronicle has featured a two-part series (here the first article) about the “War on Raw Milk”. The tone in both publications is much different than in the recent past–much more questioning now about government priorities and practices.
When you think about it, the localized community-oriented approach fits well with other recent developments in sustainable food production. In Vermont, an outpouring of outrage by ordinary citizens led the Vermont legislature to finally pass “the Dairy Class Bill” that overrules state regulators who had sought to block classes on making raw milk cheese, yogurt, and other products. Classes have been re-scheduled, for details see Rural Vermont’s web site.
The Rural Vermont organization had moved toward a compromise with the state authorities that would have required warning signage and the maintenance of lists of participants at any such classes. That brought objections from another citizen organization, the Vermont Coalition for Food Sovereignty. “Why compromise?” asked Jessica Bernier, head of the coalition. “They are violating our rights and those rules were giving them (ag regulators) a toe in the door.”
Even before the new legislation was passed, the Vermont Coalition had challenged the state on the issue, holding a “Butter Day” demonstration in the state house–security personnel were present, but didn’t interfer with the event (see photo above).
After that event, the Vermont Coalition encouraged citizens to call their representatives in the state House, and the tack worked. The new legislation removes restrictions that technically prevented raw dairies from selling milk to customers who want to make it into cheese, yogurt, or butter.
Separate but related, also in Vermont, the Food Sovereignty movement has recently added two more locales approving resolutions or ordinances to the five I reported previously–Barre City and the Town of Barre. That makes seven towns in three states that have declared sovereignty on food.
My sense of this Food Sovereignty trend is that it’s the kind that starts out slowly, and then gains momentum, in a kind of bell curve formation.
One interesting point about the Vermont Food Sovereignty moves: the two resolutions just passed cover protection of seeds, which has apparently not been covered in Maine and Massachusetts versions. “Saving seeds is so integral to this,” Jessica Bernier tells me. “It is a food issue, it is a security issue.” And with the growing impact of genetically-modified food, it may well turn into a survival issue.
***
The food safety establishment is beginning to take notice of the Food Sovereignty movement and, surprise, surprise, doesn’t approve. A lengthy article in the publication Food Safety News (published by the product liability law firm, Marler-Clark), assesses the new movement from a legal perspective, and concludes:
“While the food-sovereignty ordinance purports to let locals avoid these regulations, its chances of standing up under legal scrutiny are slim.” A New Hampshire law professor is quoted as providing a variation on the FDA’s position: “There is no citizens’ right to foods of their choice in the legal sense…The [Supreme] Court has consistently held that the commerce clause reaches intrastate actions that have interstate impact.”
But might the food safety lawyers be missing the point here? Do we not have a right to engage in private food transactions, neighbor selling food to neighbor? What if too many people are willing to ignore the legal parsing that the lawyers revel in, and are determined to privately obtain the foods they decide are important to them? It happened once before, when America used the strongest legal sanction in its arsenal, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to deny people alcoholic beverages. So many people ignored the prohibition and engaged in private sales that the government threw up its hands and gave up, though it did take 13 years (1920-1933).
RAWMI is a national campaign to responsibly support a reemergance and rennasance of raw milk for producers and their consumers.
I have just heard that Nevada is on a fast track to legalize raw milk. Brace yourselves….This revolution is on fire. Our vision of and feeding moms and market building to change politics is working.
Mark
A Road Abandoned
Two roads diverged in a quiet mood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, unwitting I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was socialist and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a cry
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Liberty exchanged for slavery and chains, and we –
We took the one socialist in nature,
And that has made all the difference.
[based on the Poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost with sentiments from Patrick Henrys speech delivered at St. Johns Church on March 23, 1775, to the Virginia Convention]
Thank you Robert Frost,
Thank you Patrick Henry.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
What is your point? What alternative would you propose?
Would you prefer that each individual producer be left to their own, against the vast resources of the state and the dairy processing industry?
We are stronger working together than we are as individuals. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Yes, I think we must work together.
Can a large commercial enterprise abuse the smallest sharer of food stuffs?
And is the law one of the tools of that abuse?
And is the government one of the tools of that abuse?
As the founders of this country in its Declaration of Independence were not describing something to which they aspired but described that which had already obtained and from which they would not retreat, so we must not retreat in the face of the abuses aimed at this movement. We must prevent its corruption as well.
Do we aspire to replace the present system of abuses with our system of abuses?
No.
With transportation, refrigeration, communication, and trust, whats to stop Wisconsins small dairy farms in the numbers that there were in 1950, for example, from supplying dairy products as envisaged here (you know, good quality, fresh, raw cows milk (with good quality, fresh, raw cow shit in it – Hi Mary!, Hi Bill!) ) on a farm-to-consumer basis? Nothing really if this is the land described in our Declaration of Independence. Quite a bit as presently reconstituted, having somnolently strolled, step-by-step, far down a bad road, lovers of the chains and slavery that we have traded our liberty for.
As Mark says, teach, teach, teach.
The more clearly we see the divide, the more ably we can work side-by-side.
And yes, I think we must work together.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Wonderful words. Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets.
Words like socialist, communist, liberatarian or other politically descriptive words have morphed into language tools to classify and attack people. The original intention of these words lays far from how they are applied today after labels, wars and deaths and hate has been spewed.
Yes…we must all work together if we intend to revolt and emerge with our childrens health intact and our liberties still free.
I am so excited and heartened by the support that RAWMI is getting from every corner of America…every day more support.
The genius of RAWMI is that each farmer creates their own safety plan. Their own innate, sacred plan for safety. A plan that they develop with RAWMI's resources and assistance and support to address their own risks…risks that perhaps no one else has. Because each farm is sized differently and is located differently etc.
Then that farmer can show the world and his consumers their plan and how they work hard every day to assure that the plan is in compliance. This is autonomy in action. RAWMI then shows off the hard work of each farmer at the farmer profile area of RAWMI website with the farmers own data. The farmers own testimonials.
RAWMI will even collect and classify all the anecdotal testimonial raw milk medical information submitted from consumers and study it. This will become evidence and a study unto its self. When thousands of people drinking raw milk report the same thing about raw milk verses pasteurized milk. That is a profound study in its own right.
I can not wait to open the gates of the RAWMI and let the mentoring and teaching begin!!
Mark
The FDA is really irrelevant. It is what we think and do as a movement that matters. Consumers follow us not the FDA. Remember this, there is an inverse relationship between FDA harrassment and raw miilk market growth. This is a natural law.
The FDA can not step into or out of the raw milk minefield with out a false move. A false move that they created and they will make. Lies return to point a finger at their maker.
All the science we need, is found in the research done by a consumer drinking a delicious cup of raw milk. The results are clear, unequivical, quick and certain. Gas cramps verses none….allergies verses none. The results awaken the stunning realization that the consumer has been lied to….and has been poisoned and cheated.
Sorry Marler, sorry Sheehan. Your words stimulate the solidarity of the truth and advance the cause of health.
Mark
I wish the best of health to you and all your family, and a complete recovery in every way from whatever damage your son suffered.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
I will not be an emotional hostage to the sour outlook you offer.
The levels of simplification that must be accepted for me to see it your way are not rational.
Cow shit, Mary, you own that term.
Dont make it your epitaph.
How about an apology?
We cant cherish the slow and uniform starvation that many experience because it is normal aging can we? Of course we age and we die. But via slow and uniform starvation? Do you rail against that? I quit looking for the perfect anything.
I believe Mary Enig has stated that the edible oil industry in this country is aware that their trajectory vis–vis the health of those that consume their products is a downward trajectory; I would guess that their final out will be that each individual is ultimately responsible for their own decisions, in this case, as to what to eat. As food. In that case I would say: how noble of them to have such a high opinion of the exercise of the individual freedoms that they subvert for their business interests.
We have exchanged liberty for chains and slavery.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
None of us ever wish anything but Heath and happiness to you and your son. Please do not let any of these language stones ever say Or mean anything different.
I only want trace amounts of the best, really good, grass fed cow shit in my milk. Our children's health depends on it.
Let your kids play in pastures. Both of my 18 month old grand sons play in our pastures. Just last week they were both found with mouth fulls of manure filling their cheeks…immunity for life is a god send!! They are healthy beyond measure. Then the dogs started licking their faces.
Then they played in the organic mud with the garden hose for hours. It is their most favorite toy….
Yes…. They both got baths before bed along with their bottles of raw milk.
Pediatric Immune Nirvana.
Love and hugs
Mark
http://detnews.com/article/20110301/METRO07/103010306/Got-milk?-A-century-ago–it-came-from-a-peddler—and-bring-your-own-pitcher
Real interesting article. One neednt read between the lines to see that industrialization triggered not only not the trading of rural for urban life, but also a sort of new ideological reality marked by faith in modern machinery and systems (along with the corollary belief that the old ways are inferior). e.g. Colostrum, which was exactly what new infants required, looked unusual, so some new mothers decided against breast feeding.
Thus the crowding, poor sanitization, unnatural husbandry practices (cows are even poorer adaptors to city life than humans!), and unnatural social constructs (families suddenly separated for many hours each day as men, women, and sometimes children, became workers in factories), were not suspected as damaging, but rather heralded as improvements to the human condition. New scientific theories (including germ identification and killing) rode the wave of faith in progress and we were off to the races.
Also interesting is that the massive European emigration to America that fueled American industrialization left Europe holding on to many of the old ways, probably to their unappreciated benefit. (While milk peddling was common in European cities, it was viewed with intense skepticism in the United States by health officials as the age of food science and interest in food-borne illnesses was picking up steam.)
My family, by the way, was part of that European immigration. My mother recalls, as a child in Italy, getting milk from a peddler who arrived with a number of goats on a wagon, which he milked right there in front of the house, into my grandmothers pitcher.
It appears that new USDA research confirms that grass fed cows are healthier and they reduce the impact on the invironment ( verses CAFO )…substantially.
As Joel Salatin says….USDAuhhhhh….
Mark
take a good long hard look in the mirror … is that twisted sourpuss staring back at you the visage you prefer the world to see, and to treat you accordingly? Have you made a conscious decision to remain stuck with one foot nailed to the floor, floundering around in 'victim mode', for the rest of your life ? Recovery of trauma starts with being grateful for what one has, versus what has been lost. Let's hear from your son … is he glad to be alive?
There is nothing "wrong" with Mr Odergard, nor me, as we advocate for something we know to be beneficial, personally and nationally. My decade of involvement in this issue has taught me that the number of people who become ill from consuming raw milk is infinitessimal, meanwhile the benefits to people's health are beyond dispute. Daily, we see them healed when they get the good stuff. Is it your position that the nation is to be denied life-giving sustenance and MEDICINE, because of one or 2 contra-indications?
Your vitriol has nothing to do with the Campaign for REAL MILK … it is you worshipping your self-image
Next time you want to dump a toxic comment on to this forum, bring along some actuarial tables please comparing untoward incidents from raw milk versus the science-falsely-called of wholesale injection of monkey-pus, ie. 'vaccination. I'm sure your lawyer will have them handy. Until you're prepared to ere-xamine your obsession, go expend your energies on getting the authoritites to deal intelligently with things FAR more harmful to the public health than REAL MILK
Some historians believe that the real goal of prohibition was to destroy the on farm stills where farmers made their own alcohol for lighting and to power their engines that did some of the work on the farm.The government only needed 13 years to raid and destroy the stills on the farms so that fuel production could be under the centralized control of Standard Oil Co.Gasoline was once a waste product of oil production.Once the safer and less toxic alternative of alcohol was eliminated,gasoline became the dominant liquid fuel under the centralized control of John D. Rockefeller.
It is an unfortunate fact, as evidenced by the zealous defense of individualism so often witnessed here, that the state is not going away anytime soon. Americans, by and large, enjoy their "freedom" (read: ability to indulge in consumerism) too much, and do not wish to engage in a true mass struggle against state power in all its forms — corporate, military, police, industry, etc… — because of the sacrifice that would entail.
The last time a modern stateless society was established — in Spain in the 1930's — it was crushed by Franco and Hitler who had significant financial backing by American industrialists such as Henry Ford and Prescott Bush (great-grandfather of GW).
Do we really expect a different outcome next time?
The industrial empire will collapse on its own eventually, but that may not be for several generations. I do think it will survive peak oil, as it turns to other more toxic form of fuel (nuclear? hate to say, but its spread is probably inevitable…)
In the meantime, our best bet for survival is to find ways to work within the system using its own logic against it — insurance comapnies want risk management, so we must be able to demonstrate that we can effectively manage risk in raw milk production.
I don't like it anymore than the next person, but I don't think we have much of an alternative. What would you propose, Miguel?
http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Blogs/Dear-Dara/May-2011/Pastureland-Crisis/
There's certainly a lesson here to learn about power, but I doubt you're the one to teach it.
Michael Schmidt has taught us this lesson with grace and confidence. Michael understands that cow-shares are not about "me-me-me" but about a true partnership between consumers and farmers. I am glad that Michael sits on the RAWMI board. His wisdom will help guide us through the many perils we face ahead.
Miguel-
Great poem! But I'm not expecting collapse in my lifetime… I'd rather spend my time preparing for what perils lie ahead for the our generation and the next. Its going to be a few centuries before industrialism and nation-states really collapse. This crises is only temporary.
The walls he was referring to are the walls inside our heads.The collapse has already begun inside many people's minds.When will we reach a tipping point?I don't know,but it would be a good idea to be part of a community of family and friends who can produce most of their food and a fair amount of the energy they need to survive.People in that situation will only have a few adjustments to make to carry on. The walls of course are the FDA and other things that divide us.For some of us they aren't even there.We don't give them any room in our minds.We have arranged our lives so that they don't exist.When the farm gets raided and things get confiscated it is no different than a tornado,earthquake or fire.We pick up the pieces as a community and continue doing what we were doing before it happened.The only divisions there really are ,are the ones we build ourselves in our own minds.
Gentlemen, am glad you boys don't live in my community or go to our church with such lack of compassion regardless of your political views. Here's a blog post I came across…perhaps some food for thought:
What is up with the lack of compassion for the children who have gotten sick from drinking raw milk? My Suburban Homestead
http://www.mysuburbanhomestead.com/lack-compassion-children-sick-drinking-raw-milk/
MW
I wonder why the anti-fresh milk folks never complain about this. I wonder why so-called "food safety" lawyers don't go after this unconscionable practice. No good can come of this product ever.
When tens of thousands of mothers praise the value of raw milk….this is irrelevant and disregarded?
Something is really out of balance. This is exploitation of the exception and denial of the common. This is FOOD INC at its very best. Big dairy needs bad news for raw milk because all it has is tragedy for dead milk including 11,405 illnesses per year and 70 deaths since 1973 ( misscarrages included ).
I feel for the mother and the HUS baby….I feel deeply.
I also feel and celebrate for the hundreds of thousands of moms that rejoice from no more snotty noses, no more ear infections and doctors office visits, I feel for the moms that have reduced their childrens asthma condition….
The tears are missplaced…
The anger must be focussed on the FDA, the CAFO, the highly processed immune depressing SAD diet, and the antibiotics that created the HUS causing bugs to begin with. It was not from the raw milk farmer and his pastures, even though the HUS bug came from his farm…it was not of his making.
This is why RAWMI is an organization who's time has come.
Standards, safety, concern, science, compassion, teaching, learning, education.
It is time…..the human toll must stop and the truth must be told and engaged into change.
Guys…Mary Martin is not the enemy…she is a mom.
Mark
Please clarify, Ingvar?
Both are moms. Both deserve a great deal of respect!
I do not consider you to be my enemy. Period. End of discussion.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Walls we have. That is for sure. As we communicate we must do it with compassion and love. If we expect the world to be a better healthier place, raw milk and love are both needed. Mike said once that raw milk is love. It is the first food and is living love.
You are catching on to the ways and means of this blog,Good for you!!!
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19878
Last report indicates that over 600 people are ill and somewhere between 30 to maybe 50 percent have developed HUS. What I found interesting in the European Surveillance report was that even in Europe, the first two foods suspected in an E.coli outbreak are raw milk and raw meat.
Foods like raw milk and raw meat, which were identified as vehicles in former STEC outbreaks, appear not to be related to the current event.
Latest count: 1000 ill, 300 HUS, 9 dead. This is the most severe outbreak in world history.
Better reread it again, CP:
"Foods like raw milk and raw meat, which were identified as vehicles in former STEC outbreaks, appear NOT {my emphasis} to be related to the current event. Preliminary results of a casecontrol study conducted by the RKI and the Hamburg health authorities demonstrate a significant association between disease AND CONSUMPTION OF RAW TOMATOES, CUCUMBER AND LEAFY SALADS."{my emphasis}
Once again, it's leafy greens that'll kill you. Better start raising your own veggies, if you're afraid of HUS…. the danger is far far more likely.
You missed my point. People on this blog believe the attitudes in Europe are different about raw milk. So EVEN IN EUROPE, the first two foods which are suspected when an outbreak occurs are raw milk and raw meat because these are the two foods typically implicated when there is a STEC outbreak.
You dont have to have such a hostile attitude over information.
An abstract of the dissertation you referred to states in part, While farmers enjoyed the benefits of scientific advances, they did so at the cost of their autonomy as scientists increasingly dictated what constituted modern dairying.
Those scientists that chose to dictate were employed by government and corporate interests and although farmers were enamored by and enjoyed the continuous stream of scientific advances, they did so, not only at the cost of their autonomy, but at the cost as well of their financial well being including their and the consumers health.
Government along with corporate interests, in an attempt to implement various technologies cajoled and manipulated farmers via subsidies, grants, rebates, low interest loans and a cheap food policy. The practice continues to this day. Joseph
An abstract of the dissertation you referred to states in part, While farmers enjoyed the benefits of scientific advances, they did so at the cost of their autonomy as scientists increasingly dictated what constituted modern dairying.
Those scientists that chose to dictate were employed by government and corporate interests and although farmers were enamored by and enjoyed the continuous stream of scientific advances, they did so, not only at the cost of their autonomy, but at the cost as well of their financial well being including their and the consumers health.
Government along with corporate interests, in an attempt to implement various technologies cajoled and manipulated farmers via subsidies, grants, rebates, low interest loans and a cheap food policy. The practice continues to this day. You can add threats and law suites to their tactics as well.
Ken Conrad
I put up with the kind of claptrap you espouse, as one of the articulators in the Tax Protest Movement, in British Columbia from 1998 'til 2005. Guys like you are full of their own vanity … but they invariably fold their insufferable cards when the Man pulls out the Gun
On the issue of submission to authority : do your own homework = find out what happened to Gordon Kahl. Or if you want to hear it from someone still alive, talk to Al Waddell
compared to the income tax racket, the Campaign for REAL MILK is a walk in the park.
Until you prove to this readership that you've actually delivered some REAL MILK, your opinion is just ill-informed railing. From what I've seen so far, you're a child who has yet to learn what's really going on in Ham-Merica
"A milk peddler's hands were typically unwashed, ladling raw, un-pasteurized milk from open cans exposed on his wagon."
See, that's what the anti-real milk people do…they subliminally sneak in an anti-real milk message at any opportunity. Why say "un-pasteurized?" How healthy would pasteurized milk be if the peddlers hands were unwashed, ladling milk from open, exposed cans? I hate that stuff. Argue the merits, if any.
It gave me an opportunity to share my thoughts, albeit over a month after the fact.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43180177/ns/health-food_safety/
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/28/us-germany-ecoli-ecdc-idINTRE74R25120110528
Per compassion, accusing David of lacking compassion in other blogs is pretty low and untrue – anyone who knows him and knows many in the RM movement know compassion and love is one of their motivating factors.
But as Mark M. has pointed out, they see a different picture as to the where, how, and why of these cases. They are sorrowful for them nonetheless, but especially sorrowful over the whole system that has created them, not just one possible facet of the system.
Because the sides see the risks and benefits differently, how much each highlights these is then used to malign one or the other at times. This is unhelpful and usually, though not always, unwarranted. Unless you speak with someone personally and over time, you really have little right to judge and malign their motives and heart towards others based on the fact that how they articulate a larger position doesn't match how you would do so.
Why do we not put up videos of those affected by these cucumbers and make a huge deal out of them? I bet if you polled 1000 people on the street of America almost no one would ever think cucumbers could make them ill… man, they are walking targets for the cucumber hucksters who will sucker them in and poison them.
All food is inherently dangerous, just like all of life is. The sooner we take responsibility for this, and for our families, the better we all will be and the better our society will be.
While I certainly respect the historical anti-authoritarian thinkers, they must be understood in their historical context of the industrial revolution. I consider permaculture and anti-civilization thinking to be more meaningful in today's context.
I do tend to be a cynic, though. I don't think the state is going away anytime soon. As I said to Miguel before, Americans enjoy their "freedom" too much (indulgence in consumerism) to ever pose a real threat to industrial civilization and the power of the state.