(Note: The American Cheese Society requested I remove its logo, which had originally accompanied this post, from my blog.)
In a war, you are either a collaborator, or a resister.
A journalist who has been writing about the Russian rock group, Pussy Riot, made that statement during an interview on NPR yesterday, and I immediately thought about the American Cheese Society. Its a trade group that has capitalized on the rapidly expanding interest in artisanal cheeses, many made from raw milk; during the eight years from 2003 to 2012, its membership more than doubled from 776 to more than 1,500 members.
The ACS trumpeted the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month included it among dairy organizations invited to a conference call December 19, where the agency announced it was launching a year-long pilot program to test for pathogens in raw milk cheese.
But the ACS hid details about the program on a section of its web site available only to its members. The FDA didnt issue details about the program to the public.
The trumpeting of its most-favored-raw-milk-trade-group status with the FDA stands in contrast to events in 2010, when the ACS was silent throughout a heavy duty FDA assault on two of its members–Morningland Dairy of Missouri and Estrella Family Creamery of Washington–for allegedly producing cheese tainted with pathogens. (Both companies tried hard to work with the FDA and state authorities to fix product and facilities problems, to no avail, as the FDA in particular, ignored their efforts to cooperate; no illnesses were associated with either producer). Indeed, Denise and Joseph Dixon, owners of Morningland Dairy, were at their first American Cheese Society convention in Washington state in late August 2010 when they were called back to Missouri because the FDA and state had initiated their clampdown.
At that same ACS convention, Estrella Family Creamery won three award ribbons for its raw milk cheese.
These were assaults that eventually put these two cheese makers out of business.
How does the ACS respond to concerns about the emphasis it places on forging its close relationship with the FDA? Here are some questions I posed, and the organizations official response:
Is there a reason why you provided information about the FDA’s raw milk cheese pilot program only to ACS members?
One of the benefits of ACS membership is access to information on important industry topics, including regulatory updates, via Member Alerts like the alert disseminated on December 20. As we are a member-driven organization, the content shared via our e-communications and on our website reflects this. We include media outlets that are active ACS members on our Member Alerts, so that information can be shared with the wider cheese community.
Is there a reason you are aware of that the FDA only informed ACS about the plans for the program?
FDA reached out to stakeholder organizations with an invitation to join a conference call in which information about the pilot program was shared, and ACS was included among these organizations. ACS was likely invited to participate in the call because of our continued efforts to engage FDA and represent our members’ interests on regulatory issues. Our Board of Directors and our Regulatory & Academic Committee actively work to ensure that the interests of the artisan and specialty cheese industry are considered by regulatory bodies.
What are you advising your members to do about coping with the FDA program? Cooperate? Ask for test results? Provide ACS with test results?
We encourage our members to keep food safety at the forefront of their work at all times. This includes adhering to FDA guidelines and creating or maintaining a strong HACCP plan. As FDA is unlikely to provide results directly to cheesemakers whose products are selected for testing via this pilot testing program, we are also encouraging our members to be proactive in contacting FDA’s District Compliance Officer with their sample number(s) to get results from their test(s), if their products are selected, so that they are prepared if any of their products do receive positive results.
What is your expectation of what will result from the FDA testing program? A new “study” on raw cheese, as I suggested? New rules on availability of raw milk cheeses? Other?
We are committed to engaging and partnering with our regulatory agencies, and we have built a Regulatory & Academic Committee including a number of industry experts and academics who are able to help guide ACS as to how to interpret and act on regulatory information. We expect that a report on the trending of sample results from the pilot program will be released after the analysis is complete, which will be in January 2015 at the earliest. ACS will keep our members apprised as soon as there is more information to share. In addition, our leadership is planning to meet with FDA officials at the start of the year to continue our dialogue and discuss how we can chart a future for our membership and the broader cheese industry with a goal toward optimizing safety, creativity, and product availability.
Did ACS ever come out with public statements on the cases of Morningland Dairy and/or Estrella Family Creamery (both raw milk cheese producers shut down by FDA/state officials in 2010, and eventually put out of business; both were ACS members)? Statements of support, concern, info? If not, was ACS working for them behind the scenes?
ACS does not typically engage in individual cases involving our members. Instead, we make ourselves available and direct our members to helpful resources if/when they are needed. There are a number of industry experts among our Board of Directors and our volunteer committees. We also encourage our members to be as proactive as possible, particularly when it comes to food safety, and we provide them with access to preparatory tools such as a Crisis Management Toolkit and HACCP templates. Our public Position Statements on Safe Cheesemaking, on the Safety of Raw Milk Cheese, and on the Importance of Artisan, Farmstead, and Specialty Cheese can be found here: http://www.cheesesociety.org/about-us/position-statements
One part of me can empathize with a trade organizations effort to survive and grow in the cutthroat world of trade groups competing for influence, and using that influence to attract new members (by withholding from public circulation certain information for the benefit of members).
But my empathy applies to trade groups working in the normally peaceful environment that applies most of the time to most trade organizations. Unfortunately, many of the members of ACS are part of a war, targeted by their government for the crime of making and selling a product based on raw milk (whether or not that raw milk is heated to 105 degrees or a questionable 140 degrees). Representing your members when they are targeted for elimination by the government is another matter, requiring a different kind of strategy than blindly cozying up, collaborating, with the enemy. Such a strategy doesnt mean you avoid any and all dialog, But it does require that you stand up and be counted when your members are targeted for intentionally extreme regulatory penalties, as was the case with both Morningland Dairy and Estrella Creamery.
To simply answer every concern with a response to effect that we advise our members about food safety isnt an adequate answer. The FDAs latest witch hunt against raw milk cheese, disguised as a pilot program, is intended to discredit raw milk cheese. If it fails to do that, then the FDA will come up with another tactic. And then another, until eventually it obtains the evidence it needs to hamper, and possibly even ban, raw milk cheeses. Its up to the ACS to not just collaborate with the enemy, but to stand up to the enemy. In wartime, thats what allies do for each other.
***
A Special Nutrient-Dense Food Conference with Dozens of Interviews and Slide Shows
For some years now, I have been a big admirer of Ann Marie Michaels, best known to her fans as Cheeseslave. She has built a huge following based on her guidance for selecting and preparing nutrient-dense food, as well as for encouraging food rights, such as via wider availability of raw milk.
In the process of getting the word out far and wide about good food, she has also created Village Green Network, a network of bloggers, to more widely disseminate information about nutrient-dense food. I have accepted an invitation from VGN to join up, and become part of the network.
One of my first steps as part of VGN is to participate in its highly ambitious online educational program, the “New You Summit”, being held over five days January 20-24. Ill be there with a number of individuals familiar to readers here, like Joel Salatin and Liz Reitzig. Among the topics are homesteading, sugar de-toxing, weight control, activism, and food rights. (Scroll down the page to see the entire five-day program.)
Attendance is free. To gain followup access to recordings of all the events afterwards is a nominal $49, if you sign up by Jan. 19. A part of all fees goes to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
Neither of those is possible for any part of the community food movement, since the only thing Big Ag and government wants is to wipe us out completely.
“We encourage our members to keep food safety at the forefront of their work at all times. This includes adhering to FDA guidelines and creating or maintaining a strong HACCP plan.”
This non sequitur makes it sound more like they recommend CYA rather any actual concern with food safety. But as we saw with Estrella and Morningland, that doesn’t help if they target you.
“ACS does not typically engage in individual cases involving our members. Instead, we make ourselves available and direct our members to helpful resources if/when they are needed.”
That reminds me of when I was much younger and more naive, and I took a bartending course. They made glowing promises about their job placement program, and silly me didn’t ask specific questions about it. It turned out the “job placement assistance” was a phone recording where a voice read out bartending want ad from a newspaper.
So maybe the ACS gives you a lawyer’s phone number from the yellow pages.
Raw milk cheeses in the USA are regulated just like PMO pasteurized cheeses. If you do the 60 day aged thing and keep the cheese under the pasteurized milk temps, you can “claim raw”. Even more fake, if you do not have a pasteurizer permit and you want to cook your raw milk to high temps above pasteurized temps you can sell that as raw as well….because you are not legally pasteurizing the milk!!!!
It is corrupt, fake, dishonest. missleading, just plain un-ethical and betrays the consumers trust and their gut. And all of this is A-OK with the PMO and the FDA.
This is exactly why you do not see the American Cheese Society standing with raw milk. Raw milk is outside the PMO tent….fake raw cheeses are inside the PMO tent.
I would be shocked and appalled, ‘cept that I watched the same thing happen to the term “organic”, from about 1983, on, as that market took off, increasing at 15% per annum. A brand that was created by people who truly cared about the health of the nation, was mis-appropriated then, utterly perverted so that, today, a product labelled “organic”, more likely, is not. And don’t get me started about anything coming from China
are the facts that the nutrition was stolen from our foodstuffs and our water systems poisoned, just un-intended consequences of decisions made in good faith? Hardly. Only when one realizes that this nation has domestic enemies = people who consciously work to harm us = then can you begin to do something about it
Lynn, not sure what you were looking at, perhaps a previous event, but if you click on the link I provided, it details the conference, Jan. 15-19.
thanks, Ken
In a war you are either a collaborator, or a resister. Wait what about capacitors, transisters, coils, preparatory tools and other snafus?
Never mind, back to your nice cool milk.
Interesting to note a few things about the conventional dairy markets. According to the experts that track the data, fluid pasteurized milk consumption is down 3.6 % since late 2012 yet…dairy demand is still doing well for other dairy products. Even demand for organic pasteurized has dropped .1%
This confirms what the trends have been for some time. Pasteurized fluid milk is being rejected as an allergenic & non-digestible product in the USA.
I stark contrast, CA OPDC fluid raw milk sales have skyrocketed ( over this same time period) more than 27%.
This is pure market data. Market data reflects consumer experience and that means GUT experience.
This is exactly what is scaring the living daylights out of FOOD INC processors and their FDA, CDC, AAP, AMA cronies, where ever they are hiding.
Markets don’t lie…dollar voting is pure truth.
I am on the last day, Jan. 19. Not sure the time–think that still to be worked out.
That’s the first time in nearly eight years of writing this blog that any organization, including major corporations and government agencies of all types, has ever asked that an identifying graphic be removed from a blog post.
Now, what’d I do with my glass of raw milk and my hunk of raw milk cheese . . . 🙂
There is a curve that relates increased technology with its decreased cost and availability.
Well here is a great example of how in the next 18 months, a very accurate and very rapid pathogen test of raw milk samples will be available. Over time it will become very cheap….and will even become a APP for your Iphone.
This will spell the end of the idea that raw milk can not be assured to be safe or at least a very very low risk food. With 2 minute speed and the very cheap expense of this testing…multiple samples can be tested in five minutes and a “test and hold protocol” will be easy-breezy and a mute point!!
The idea that coliforms come from just fecal sources is also some thing that is no longer a valid argument at all.
OPDC has tested hundreds of our milk filters…guess what? There is no correllation what so ever with high coliform counts and cleanliness of a milk filter. A visibly dirty milk filter ( has green pieces of manure particles etc ) can come back with a milk ( from the milk that went through the filter ) coliform level of 3 from the outside lab. Contrastingly….an extemely visually clean ( it is white and looks wet with milk and nearly new ) can be more than 150 coliforms and off the charts with coliforms when the milk is tested.
THERE IS NO CORRELLATION between milk filter visual cleanliness and high or low coliforms.
In our assessment, coliforms are more associated with high SCC counts than anything. Mastitus equals coliforms!!!! ( all other things being clean ).
We have tested this repeatedly and found this to be true.
So the old quote about “high coliforms means crap in the milk is completely false” and not the complete story. A green milk filter and low coliforms is possible and happens….a perfectly white milk filter with extremely high coliforms also happens.
Interesting…very interesting. How much we have to learn. How few dollars to go do this research. What a screwed up system of priorities to serve farmers and people!!
Sure thing, technology is going to meet us at the cross roads of “raw milk market & human need” very very soon.
Mark
Lynn, I think you have more up-to-date info than I do. I am told now the conference has been pushed back a few days, beginning on Jan. 20….More details when I have them. Thanks for the alert.
THERE IS NO CORRELLATION between milk filter visual cleanliness and high or low coliforms.
BINGO!
There is absolutely no way of drawing a correlation between visual cleanliness and the presence of any bacteria including coliform. Visual cleanliness may limit their presence it will not however eliminate them. Hospitals are a case in point.
Your assessment that, coliforms are more associated with high SCC counts and that mastitis equal coliforms may very well be true in part however, this aught not beg the assumption that the coliforms are in fact responsible for the mastitis. If anything it would suggest, since they cannot materialize out of thin air, that coliforms naturally maintain a limited ongoing presence in the udder. They are merely responding to disruptive imbalances due to stress, injury, or the presence of a toxic foreign substance etc.
The magnitude of their presence and extent of their role with clotting and rise in temperature is merely a defensive, secondary response, or symptom if you will and is by far not the root of the problem.
All this talk of an IPhone APP is just another way of ramping up the level of control. It means diddlysquat and serves only as a temporary fix or way of evading the actual problem and decisively dealing with it. All that being said however, if youre a gambling man I suppose it helps to improve your odds.
Ken
no computer is ever going to be as good as a milkmatron or milkmaid or cowboy who cares about their own animals. But the iPad device is very helpful for narrowing-down a problem cow and /or quarter
Yes we do. It will give the gubment/science fools a full house when the raw dairy farmer is holding only three of a kind. Odds. Figure them. Raw dairying has survived for eons without “technology” and done well.
With regard to the test system. My understanding is that the estimates of the minimum infective dose for E coli 0157 might be somewhere between 2 and 2000 viable organisms. If (just as an example) we look at 1 organism per mL of raw milk as potentially problematic (ie around 200 in a glass of milk); and I’m guessing that the test-strip might require around 1 drop of milk; with 20 drops per mL, then even if the test was sensitive to as little as 1 bacterium, the sampling error alone would yield 19 negative tests for every positive……….. from the same sample of milk.
Sorry. But I still think the best option is to ensure that raw milk sold as raw milk is harvested without contamination……..hence if there are still green filters occurring you should be thinking of retraining/more closely supervising the milkers so these green filters never occur again (because this is all about perception……straining milk through manure (no matter how little) is obviously distasteful.
I know this is a tough ask for your larger herd, but it should be a goal to strive towards.
I hope you will accept this as helpful advice and that Mr Gumpert might remove the post at your request.
John
Lynn, just to close the loop, the conference was moved back a few days, is now Jan. 20-24. The special $49 rate for downloading talks and presentations after the live conference is now good till Jan. 19. Here is the info and signup page: http://villagegreennetwork.com/new-year-new-you-summit/?AFFID=146572
the more of the whole truth they get out, the better that Political /religious movements do. Organic Pastures is teaching us how REAL MILK can be produced consistently safely. But thats not what youre really after, is it Mr John?
……Your post is helpful advice, alright, confirming that our adversaries regularly troll this forum. You wouldnt be doing so if you didnt feel threatened by how the Campaign for REAL MILK embarrasses the dinosaurs, ie. the CAFOs + processor racketeers, by which I mean Dean Foods, now embroiled in a huge anti-trust lawsuit
Feigning concern for the welfare of OPDairy, whilst effectually pronouncing a left-handed curse on it, is a classic demon-stration of how passive aggression works. Portrayed so well by Sesame Streets Miss Piggy when caught at it : who? Moi?!
Raw milk myths and evidence by Nadine Ijaz pdf
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/00E8757C-99E4-4414-8C54-2C92BB776567/0/RevisedPresentationJuly8RawmilkmythsandevidenceNadineIjaz_PROTECTED.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWv7l8Lm_A
Sorry for the obscurity this was an unposted post from yesterday so I just threw it out there.
http://news.discovery.com/human/health/cow-dung-medicine-spiritual-india.htm
Promoting the practical alongside the spiritual, they have developed a line of dung- and urine-based medicines, which they say can cure a whole herd of ailments from bad breath to cancer.
“These formulas are not new,” Gumat said. “They are contained in ancient Hindu holy texts. We are just making them with a scientific approach.”
“Walking on fresh cowdung is very healthy,” Gumat insisted. “It kills all the germs and bacteria and heals wounds. And dry cowdung is a great scrub to get rid of dead skin and improve blood circulation.”
The list of derivative applications is, according to Gumat, an extremely lengthy one, stretching beyond medicines to toiletries like soap, shampoo and toothpaste, as well as incense sticks and mosquito coils.
The products have been applauded by Hindu nationalist groups, the largest of which, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), unveiled its own urine-based soft drink last year as a “healthy” alternative to Coke and Pepsi.
Easts Indians use Coke and Pepsi as insecticides!!!
http://consciouslifenews.com/coke-pepsi-being-pesticides-india/
Most people here will be relieved to know that, The dung is generally dried for over a week, then blended at a very high temperature to kill all harmful bacteria and germs. The final product, a dung powder, is mixed with variety of ingredients to make the medicines and toiletries.
Ken
Marietta,
Thanks for the kind words about the blog. As for censoring comments, you are correct, I try hard to avoid that, in the interests of open discussion (unless comments become potentially libelous or personally abusive). I have removed comments at a reader’s own request, if he or she had second thoughts about revealing information or accusations later thought to be unwise.I think Mr. John was suggesting that Mark McAfee might request I remove a particular comment, and he hasn’t done that.
Ken
Is this my dear friend John Sheehan?
The somewhat dirty filters that I reported came from our sick cow pen and an experiment performed over many months. Our sick cows are milked separately and not used for our products. It is fed to the calves.
Our dirty filters are comparatively very clean compared to other dairies filters. As we take our game to entirely new levels of sanitation, we discover interesting things. Opdc has re–engineered its prewash system to apply some of the lessons learned just in the last year since being LISTED by rawmi Improvementa and learning never stops
One of the hats is worn as we take on the challenges of the absolute domination of Food Safety as it is prescribed and narrowly defined by state law and regulation.
The other hat is worn in the pursuit of truth. These two hats do not necessarily exclude or conflict with one another…but sometimes they do.
Prewash, now there’s a band name gone awry backed by the Entirely New Levels Of. MOooo.
Here is another Guaranteed Safe result of pasteurized dairy product and a huge recall because of Ecoli found in finished properly pasteurized dairy products.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/fonterra-recalls-fresh-cream-over-e-coli-fear-5799368
I’m neither American nor Irish nor employed. Thankyou for the explanation about the filters (although I tend to think anything might be possible v/v bacterial counts and cows in the sick pen).
Mr Watson was correct though, I favour the pasteurization of milk.
Nevertheless, I have quite a lot of respect for what you are trying to achieve through OPDC, legal raw milk distribution and RAWMI; and you are (whether you like it or not) a leader in this regard (plus, v/v your products YOU are THE Food Safety Regulator). Most of your posts reflect this, but some (like the one I responded to), to me reflect a return to the ‘denial era’ perpetuated by some of the current contributors to TCP.
Learning requires a consistent message, methinks. No manure in milk (whether it is pasteurized or not). Works for me.
John
PS Mike. Many pathologists believe as few as 10 E coli 0157 can lead to human disease.
PPS Mr Watson. I much prefer to be likened to Shrek. ‘Mr Shrek’, if you will…….
JMHO. Marietta
Many pathologists believe whatever sustains their livelyhood, but not necessarily yours. You know what they say denial is a river in Egypt, or has it dried up.
Interesting that Mr. Boehner our honorable Speaker of the House is holding up the “Farm Bill” calling it Soviet Style regulation. What he does not say is that he is being paid off by the processors to keep commodity milk prices “dirt cheap…just the way they like um”.
The dairy producers really tried their best to collect themselves and manage their supply to control prices just a little and this is what they get.
I have an agenda for the farm bill dairy passage…if the farm bill passes, that means that CA Milk Pool members can vote and join the Federal Milk Pool orders and abandon the CDFA Milk Pool orders. This also means that OPDC will no longer be subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars of CDFA MILK POOL Fees that are paid into the Convential Milk Pool as a raw milk producer!!! It is not fair. OPDC bottles its own raw milk Class one fluid ) and we pay the Milk Pool that in turn pays cheese producers ( Class 4 producers Kraft or Laprino and its dairies ) to “make it all equal”. It drives me nuts and cheats our consumers big time!!
The farm bill fixes this and will decrease the cost of raw milk in CA!!
I share your concerns and inclinations. I also prefer no manure in my raw milk. Our protocols provide very high levels of assurance that no manure gets into our raw milk. However, each udder has its own normal skin surface colonies of bacteria. As do each of our bodies and each area on each of our bodies. Each teat has colonies of bacteria that are supposed to grow and live on and inside the teat. There are also micro particles of environmental soils, stray hairs and other little itty bitty little things that are on clean teats. That is what is collected in a milk filter after 200 cows. It is inevitable and it is part of clean and safe raw milk.
It also defines how unnatural, freaked out & immune depressed modern man is and how freaking removed from nature we have become!!
Food is daily in producing and trading and consuming.
Time waits for no one.
Law is destroyed or at the least eviscerated if used as a commercial bludgeon.
Beware, accept such misuse of the law and we will be left with castles made of sand when we really need the law, its consistency, its strengthening against chaos, its ennobling effects on civilization.
Deceit is the enemy of all mankind.
Free markets are vital. Do people mean to trade liberty for regulatory security? And how long does that work? Set the whole regulatory machinery on a bad course and HELLO LEMMINGS.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are on the wish list of every human soul everywhere.
These are deeper matters, carrying more weight over time than much of what we of necessity discuss and fight over on a daily basis.
What Im saying is to mind and respect these underlying matters to the end that you will not unwittingly compromise them for, for nothing. Deceits fail in the end and those that trust in deceits will fail alongside their snares.
Lets go back to comments that I’ve read here in regards to small(er) dairies and the familiarity of the farmer with each of the animals and their condition at the time of milking and how that might govern to what use the milk is put. Animals are animate. I heard in an interview re. how the lowest level (but very perceptive) worker around a thoroughbred was able discern information regarding the animals condition that was pivotal in the life of that great horse. Machinery clattering and electronicalling and frothing our thoughts, we might need to step back, take a deep breath and accept life as it is, reconciling the disparate but necessary and resist the way of the lemming.
BTW the USDA Agricultural Research Service- when the USDA is decried, do we include them?
Hey! Have a wonderful week everybody.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
(Also: Sam Samaniego of the Stuffed Sandwich in San Gabriel, Calif. passed away last Wednesday. Sam and Marlene have championed the small operations (beer not milk however) for decades. Helping many get their feet under them as producers.)
Raw Milk Talk – check out the last about 25 min.
Well, anyway, that’s his foundation. Geezalou. He’s right about one thing – no one trusts the alphabet agencies to take care of things like this. IMHO, lobbying has everything to do with outcomes.
It’s really only a matter of time, I suppose, before all raw milk will become illegal because the gubment says it should. Reasons, whether proven or not, don’t seem to go in anyone’s favor except the State and the Feds. I really don’t understand why, if they’re so concerned, some department on The Hill doesn’t just go ahead and make it illegal and stop the in-fighting. Also, they should do the same with CAFO meats & poultry because the track record for those things is abysmal. So if they’re going to target one food they think is causing problems, let’s make sure they target ALL foods causing problems. They don’t seem to believe their own data unless it falls in their favor. Imagine that.
The Senate could vote on the raw milk bill, (SB 236) as early as next Tuesday. There were amendments added to the original bill when it was in the Senate Agriculture Committee, which turned the bill from bad to ugly. The bill is now full of regulations which are unnecessary and also require the farmer to keep a record of the name, address, and phone number of all who purchase the milk. The date of of purchase and amount purchased is also required. This information is all available to the Department of Agriculture inspectors whenever they want to see it. This bill will discourage rather than encourage the sale of raw milk. it is an infringement of the freedom we already have to consume the foods of our choice. Call your senator and express your very strong opposition to SB 236 Include your own personal concerns about the raw milk bill, regulations, freedom, etc, when you make your two calls. Ask other like minded people to make these calls as well. The bill, if it becomes law, would create even more oppression for the farmer as well as the consumer of raw milk. Thanks for taking time for this.
Canada suffered under Prohibition of alcoholic beverages, for a shorter time than the US did. Here, someone could purchase wine + spirits from a pharmacy, but they had to identify demselves on a govt. registry. Meanwhile the home brewers and little old winemakers, never missed a step. I have a PNE program from 1923, in which there’s a full page ad screaming “Home Brews are dangerous!”, paid-for by the BC Liquor sellers. Now, the BC provincial govt. subsidizes the craft brewing rennaissance
Sam Bronfman built an empire which continues to today ( as collosus EdPer Investments) shipping booze to Al Capone and his pals in – among many others – the Great State of Wisonsin. Let’s see how much nerve you have … all you genuine “free enterprisers aka black marketeers”.
I agree the WI raw milk legislation has become a target for mockery. But it seems almost as if the anti-raw-milk side is getting tangled up in its own underwear. Certainly some of that group is behind all this designed-to-fail effort which, even if it passes the legislature, the hard liners will see to it that Gov. Walker vetoes. The only reason for all this stop-start-reverse BS must be that the Big Dairy side is more confused than ever as it loses its grip on the marketplace.
Wisconsin does not have raw milk. My advice….take whatever small crack in the door is provided, and run with it. Build markets, prove your ability to be safe! Then use that market strength to fix the stupid laws later. Beggars are not choosers! Right now, Wisconsin raw milk producers are less than beggars. They are oppressed and have literally nothing. You need to get onto first base to be in the game.
Meanwhile….I swear, no one on the national regulatory scene is mentioning CA raw milk markets. They are thriving!!! Huge increases in demand. More farmers joining in and asking for CDFA permits for raw milk production. Why is CA being ignored? Simple answer….success is something that must be ignored lest it be acknowledged. Our success is based on consumer love if product….being driven by consistent safety and the producers being extremely diligent and safe! The math is simple . No target….means no regulatory oppression opportunity.
Freedom will come later. You can be free and starve or be strategically smart and build markets, thrive and kick their asses. This takes a longer term vision. Come one guys….
It’s also meant to put the public in general back to sleep. Another version of the standard scam which engenders the opinion, “they got their rights, what are they still whining about?”
As for the notion that you enshrine a crappy policy and later make it better, where in recent decades have we seen any such thing? This is an obviously false rhetorical ploy on the part of those who really want the police state in control of food.
Of course we know that Mark McAfee believes in state access to customer lists, since he handed his over to the state on demand. It’s those rotten small farms who aren’t playing fair by respecting their customers’ privacy and human dignity, right?
The Wisconsin bill is a good example of what I and others here have warned about all along, about the evils of corporate-oriented “legalization”.
A basic premise of the whole discussion here is that the movement is doing well by going the democratic, sell-and-talk-direct-to-the-people route. Why would anyone want to jettison that and leap over to going the corporate system route, just because some faction within the system dangles the bauble of “legalization”? That’s always how you identify those who want to “make a deal” and sell out the movement.
There’s just no way I would ever approve of my name being on any list that the government could use against the public, and that’s a minor reason I post here under an alias. I would stop doing business with any company that would willingly comply, and believe me that was a major factor in the showdown in Foxboro just a few weeks ago.
Anyhow, just to illustrate how intimidating and dreadful corporate marketing control can be, try searching this website for milk. Nuts.
http://www.rawguru.com/
I agree with David, this whole SB236 charade appears to be orchestrated.
I would like to see how far they would get if they tried to demand the names, addresses and phone numbers of consumers who purchase pasteurized milk, lettuce, spinach, almonds and eggs etc. No politician in his right mind would agree to this.
Their sole objective is to control and undermine the sale of raw milk, while at the same time give the political, BS impression that they are on side with making it available for purchase.
Ken
Ken
Moms listen to moms….the refuse to follow the advice given by regulators and even doctors. When they followed the advice by regulators and doctors…their kids get sick.
They have been forced to decide for themselves and be smart with their own due dilligence.
As far as consumer lists are concerned. Can any one tell me why they matter?
Does a consumer have something to hide? If the state calls the consumer, most my consumers would give them an ear full. In fact this has happened. Now…the state never asks for consumer lists…they know what a redicuous debacle it becomes. All they get is harangued if they call most consumers.
The real target is the farmer. A consumer list is redicuolous and not a part of the target zone. We all know this. So why not give them rediculous things as we get really important things in return.
We really need to get the raw milk community into thinking bigger and less into conspiracies and” freedom what if’s” of some regulatory agency calling a consumer list and asking questions. Who cares!!
Build the markets. Then let freedom and health ring!! You will have an incredibly tough time building raw milk markets if can not even sell raw milk!! Take what you can negotiate and do not worry about the rest. Vermont changed its laws and now they are back to make even more changes.
Change does happen. Incremental change is even more likely to happen. Especially in really back ward places like Wisconsin.
Change is inevitable that’s why the still make pennies.
Change is inevitable that’s why the still make pennies.