Back in 2017, an idealistic young farmer and his wife took over a Wisconsin dairy farm that had been run for years by a raw dairy farming couple, Wayne and Kay Craig. If you’ve read this blog long enough, you might recall that the Craigs and their Grassway Organics farm spent more than a decade unsuccessfully battling Wisconsin’s Department of Dairy, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) over their right to sell raw milk.
The new owners are changing that dynamic, big time. After some start-and-go issues, one of the new owners, Chaz Self, milked his first cows on Thanksgiving of 2017, selling some of the milk to a large processor and the rest as raw milk to area residents as “incidental” sales allowed under Wisconsin rules. Around that same time, he agreed to be interviewed for a Netflix documentary on dairy farming after the producers suggested it would offer an objective view of raw dairy production.
In early 2018, the documentary came out as part of a series on food safety, with the title “Rotten,” and it turned out to be the opposite of what was suggested—a polemic suggesting that raw milk was at the root of the crisis afflicting dairy farming in the U.S., whereby hundreds of family dairies were failing every year. Also featured in the documentary was Mark McAfee, owner of Raw Farm (previously known as Organic Pastures Dairy Co.) in California.
“ ‘Rotten’ was released on a Thursday, and that Monday, two DATCP inspectors showed up on our farm,” recalls Self. “They said everything was wrong with my milk parlor. They wanted me to make $3,500 in changes to be able to keep my Grade A dairy license” allowing sales to a processor.
That was all fine with Self, but they had one other demand: They wanted him to sign a cease-and-desist agreement saying he wouldn’t sell raw milk. “They left the agreement here….and I refused to sign it. My contract with Westby (the processor) came up that March and Westby wouldn’t renew it.”
Clearly, the processor didn’t want to risk bad relations with DATCP by continuing to work with a rebel raw dairy farmer. Around that same time, Self reached out to McAfee, whom he didn’t know. As portrayed by ‘Rotten,’ “Mark McAfee was the big bad organic farmer and I was the small good organic farmer,” says Self.
In any event, they hit it off, and McAfee convinced Self he could survive without selling milk for processing, but that he should “do what was necessary to qualify for certification” from McAfee’s Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI). That included installing an on-farm lab to test his milk regularly for common pathogens.
DATCP “left us alone for two years,” recalls Self, as Grassway expanded its food club providing raw milk and other farm-grown products to members. In June 2020, the RAWMI web site featured an article welcoming Grassway as the first-ever RAWMI-certified farm in Wisconsin. “Two weeks later, two guys from DATCP show up again,” says Self.
This time, DATCP not only presented Self with a cease-and-desist agreement to refrain from selling raw milk, but also threatened criminal charges through a local district attorney. With assistance from Elizabeth Rich, a lawyer who has long assisted the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, Self came up with a proposal to DATCP for legal raw milk: “You can’t legally sell RM in Wisconsin unless you have a Grade A license. Mark McAfee drafted a contract where he would pick up a gallon of milk for processing each year and I formed a coop, which is a legal way to sell, tied into my Grade A license. I pay a $125/year processing fee to Mark.”
DATCP went for the arrangement. “They came and gave me my Grade A license back,” says Self. “They really worked with us to become the first legal raw milk dairy in Wisconsin.”
There was more good timing for Grassway when Covid hit around the same time. “Our business just blew up.” He had added a pizza business for outdoor sales during the summer months. “2020 was the biggest growth we’ve ever seen. We could focus on long-term investment. Not just milk, but everything was growing.” At the start of Covid, “We were milking 30 cows once a day and now we’re milking 45 cows twice a day and selling out.”
In another sign of just how much Wisconsin has changed, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau in December reversed its anti-raw-milk stance, or “flipped,” as Food Safety News put it in a recent article suggesting its disbelief. (Food Safety News has been stridently anti-raw milk for years.)
Self is hopeful that the next big regulatory step in Wisconsin will be legislation that will essentially legalize sales of raw milk, not only directly from the farm, but possibly via retail outlets as well.
Clearly, Wisconsin’s powers that be have decided that watching hundreds of dairy farms fail each year isn’t a sustainable policy for a place that prides itself on being “the dairy state.” A more realistic approach is giving farmers, and consumers, the option for accessing safe raw dairy. Are sensible business and dairy practice finally becoming acceptable in Wisconsin?
Go Chaz!!!
What a wonderful story! Congratulations to the Selfs for adapting as necessary to keep their business going. May their farm long prosper. Thank you for sharing this, David.
Always great to hear a RM story with a happy ending ?
What a wonderful outcome!!!
So pleased that Chaz and Megan have stuck to their dreams.
That is wonderful David!!
So much for the Malthusianism theory that suggests, “population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear”.
“Canadian dairy farmer says he’s forced to dump 30,000 liters of milk”
a perfect demonstration of Marxism failing because the directing mind of the central control economy, is always out of synch with feedback signals from what used to be known as “the real world”
Over-educated idiots sitting in offices 3000 miles from this dairy farm, have yet to learn how dairying goes on, seasonally.
the Quota racket is so precise that a farmer with milk quota MUST overproduce in order not to be faulted for under-production. If he/ she fails to deliver the exact amount of milk as required by his contract, he then loses a portion of that quota. Which translates in to very serious loss of capital asset. Which then proceeds in a downward spiral ’til he’s bankrupt
dairy farmers in Canada who hold quota in the milk supply system are “islands of artificial prosperity” sez Sylvain Charlebois, professor at Guelph University
In the video link below Abby Rockefeller speaks about Raw Milk at the 1:00 to 1:14 time.
Here is the CHD-TV link
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/the-attack-on-food-symposium/-attack-on-food-symposium-event/
Unfortunately, this type of humility is rare in the arena of politics including medicine and the higher institutions of education… Politicians and bureaucrats have no business mandating hazardous invasive procedures on individuals. Indeed, procedures such as the current experimental genetically engineered injections that have caused considerable injury and death. Rather than shift the blame government/politicians need to come clean for failing to protect each member of the public’s fundamental choice when it came to these invasive injections, and equally so, for causing far-reaching division and economic hardship in society via arbitrarily imposed mandates.
“A municipal councilor from West Nipissing in Ontario has issued an apology to community members who were affected by a mandatory vaccination policy that lasted a year.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/unnecessary-harm-and-animosity-ontario-councillor-apologizes-for-mandatory-vaccine-policy_5100899.html?src_src=MB_article_free&src_cmp=mb-2023-03-06-ca&est=6ixb%2B76TLjUuPwxUFphipSARd4zm1pLoL8NmgasFyBI8%2BjLXeNSle3Qg3KVTd1yA362Gag%3D%3D
Mistakes Were NOT Made
The crimes against humanity Margaret speaks about so convincingly are still being committed by the media, hospitals, health agencies, corrupt politicians and big-pharma.
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem-57a
This short interview is well worth listening to…
America Thought Leaders Interview with Singer Jessica Sutta (former Pussycat Doll member): I Was Severely Injured by the Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine
https://makismd.substack.com/p/interview-with-singer-jessica-sutta#play
below is the URL to an intriguing story … if it can be believed !
apparently a study has been done showing that the socalled “vaccine” caused 300,000 deaths and did 147 Billion (with a B ) $$ damage in 2022. The analysis was done by an outfit headed by Edward Dowd, former portfolio manager at Blackrock. The story is on a website run by Robt. Kennedy Jr.
one would think that with that kind of Establishment credentials – plus confluence of Health and Big Finance and top level political involvement, such a story would rate a mention on the website which started out as “The Complete Patient”
but no. Radio silence on the greatest piece of medical mal-practice of all time : The SARS2Covid19 HOAX.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccine-injury-deaths-economic-damage/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230329
it gets worse
Cows Milk Used to Immunize Mice
As reported by Dr. Peter McCullough,9 Chinese researchers have demonstrated that food can indeed be turned into a vaccine.
“The nation’s food supply can be manipulated by public health agencies to influence population outcomes … Now an oral route of administration is being considered specifically for COVID-19 vaccination using mRNA in cow’s milk.
Zhang and colleagues have demonstrated that a shortened mRNA code of 675 base pairs could be loaded into phospholipid packets called exosomes derived from milk and then using that same milk, be fed to mice.
The mice gastrointestinal tract absorbed the exosomes and the mRNA must have made it into the blood stream and lymphatic tissue because antibodies were produced in fed mice against SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein (receptor binding domain) …
[G]iven the damage mRNA vaccines have generated in terms of injuries, disabilities, and deaths, these data raise considerable ethical issues. The COVID States project has shown that 25% of Americans were successful in remaining unvaccinated.
This group would have strong objections to mRNA in the food supply, particularly if it was done surreptitiously or with minimal labelling/warnings …
For those who have taken one of the COVID-19 vaccines, having milk vaccines as an EUA offering would allow even more loading of the body with synthetic mRNA which has been proven resistant to ribonucleases and may reside permanently in the human body.
These observations lead me to conclude that mRNA technology has just entered a whole new, much darker phase of development.
Expect more research on and resistance to mRNA in our food supply.
The Chinese have just taken the first of what will probably be many more dangerous steps for the world.”
“How Doctors Became Automatons”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-doctors-became-automatons-dr-kat-lindley-on-treating-covid-19-the-corporatization-of-medicine-and-the-whos-global-pandemic-control-ambitions_5169575.html?src_src=Morningbrief&src_cmp=mb-2023-04-05&est=Y7R79GQSj0zGOG9R8exjEYozP7%2FaEKF2jHSBvXIZKe%2FzKid9tbGUyLq%2FxU96uo2HXhjpFQ%3D%3D
“Groupthink Media Tries to Sabotage RFK Jr. Presidential Bid”
https://www.westernjournal.com/scaros-groupthink-media-tries-sabotage-rfk-jr-presidential-bid/?ff_source=Email&ff_medium=conservative-brief-WJ&ff_campaign=dailypm&ff_content=western-journal
“This is not about whether Kennedy is right or wrong about vaccines. Rather, it is an egregious example of journalistic malpractice insofar as the media decides the issue with which to identify Kennedy, and then proceeds to mischaracterize his view”. Indeed, it does not matter that they agree with 99 percent of what he has accomplished or is trying to achieve. In their mind he has committed the unforgivable sin in disagreeing with them about their sacrosanct vaccines.
North Dakota comes around
On Monday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed a bill into law that expands raw milk sales in the state. Enactment will take a step toward nullifying a federal prohibition scheme in practice and effect.
A bipartisan group of 11 legislators led by Rep. Dawson Holle filed House Bill 1515 (HB1515) on Jan 18. The new law legalizes the sale of raw milk by North Dakota dairy farms directly to consumers for personal consumption. Under current law, raw milk is only available in North Dakota through herd-share programs.
The House passed the final version of HB1515 by an 83-10 vote. The Senate approved the measure by a 32-14 vote. With Burgum’s signature, the law will go into effect on Aug. 1.
Enactment will not only take a step toward opening up the raw milk market in North Dakota; it can also move forward efforts to nullify a federal raw milk prohibition scheme in practice and effect.
IMPACT ON FEDERAL PROHIBITION
FDA officials insist that unpasteurized milk poses a health risk because of its susceptibility to contamination from cow manure, a source of E. coli.
“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” agency spokeswoman Tamara N. Ward said in November 2011.
The FDA’s position represents more than a matter of opinion. In 1987, the feds implemented 21 CFR 1240.61(a), providing that, “no person shall cause to be delivered into interstate commerce or shall sell, otherwise distribute, or hold for sale or other distribution after shipment in interstate commerce any milk or milk product in final package form for direct human consumption unless the product has been pasteurized.”
Not only do the feds ban the transportation of raw milk across state lines, but they also claim the authority to ban unpasteurized milk within the borders of a state.
“It is within HHS’s authority…to institute an intrastate ban [on unpasteurized milk] as well,” FDA officials wrote in response to a Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund lawsuit against the agency over the interstate ban.
The FDA clearly wants a complete prohibition of raw milk and some insiders say it’s only a matter of time before the feds try to institute an absolute ban. Armed raids by FDA agents on companies like Rawsome Foods back in 2011 and Amish farms over the last few years also indicate this scenario may not be too far off.
When states allow the sale of raw milk within their borders, it takes an important step toward nullifying this federal prohibition scheme.
As we’ve seen with marijuana and industrial hemp, an intrastate ban becomes ineffective when states ignore it and pass laws encouraging the prohibited activity anyway. The federal government lacks the enforcement power necessary to maintain its ban, and people will willingly take on the small risk of federal sanctions if they know the state will not interfere. This increases when the state actively encourages the market and nullifies federal prohibition in effect.
We’ve seen this demonstrated dramatically in states that have legalized industrial hemp. When they authorized production, farmers began growing industrial hemp, even in the face of a federal ban. Despite facing the possibility of federal prosecution, some growers were still willing to step into the void and begin cultivating the plant once the state removed its barriers.
In the same way, removing state barriers to raw milk consumption, sale and production would undoubtedly spur the creation of new markets for unpasteurized dairy products, no matter what the feds claim the power to do.
It could ultimately nullify the interstate ban as well. If all 50 states allow raw milk, markets within the states could easily grow to the point that local sales would render the federal ban on interstate commerce pointless. And history indicates the feds do not have the resources to stop people from transporting raw milk across state lines – especially if multiple states start legalizing it. Growing markets will quickly overwhelm any federal enforcement attempts.
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
Michael Maharrey
is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center.
DES MOINES — Dairy farms in Iowa can sell raw milk to consumers with legislation signed into law Thursday by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
The bill was among 10 that Reynolds signed into law Thursday.
The new law allows producers to sell raw milk and related products from their farms, but not at farmers markets or restaurants. Containers must have labels saying contents were not subject to state inspections or public health regulations that require pasteurization and grading.
Critics of the proposal expressed concern that it could endanger Iowans because the consumption of unpasteurized milk could lead to bacterial outbreaks.
Among the organizations that lobbied against the bill were the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Iowa State Dairy Association, Iowa Public Health Association, Iowa Veterinary Medical Association and Iowa Grocery Industry Association
The only group registered in support was Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian conservative political advocacy group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries.
“With Gov. Reynolds’ signature, fresh milk and the freedom to choose what your family drinks is the new law of the land in the Hawkeye State,” Tyler Raygor, the group’s Iowa director, said in a statement. “This law gets government out of the way of Iowa’s farmers and dairy workers and empowers Iowans with access to the freshest milk they can buy.”
Senate File 315 passed the Iowa Legislature with mostly Republican support, 37-13 in the Senate and 64-35 in the House
DRUGS IN ORANGE JUICE
https://www.thelunaticfarmer.com/blog/5/30/2023/drugs-in-orange-juice
“The guy with the answers, who dares to come to the earth humbly, who dares to bring a diversified plant and microbial guild to the tree, never gets an interview. His voice is drowned out by drug chatter and shallow journalists.”
Indeed, as the voices these last three years, who offered constructive common-sense solutions to this fear driven narrative, they were systematically ignored, marginalized, censored and threatened. Those voices were drowned out by drug/vaccine chatter and shallow journalists.
FAKE IT ‘TIL YOU CAN MAKE IT didn’t work this time
all that puffery about “meat” made from pulse + spices, turns out to have been just another pump’n’dump stock market game. Millions made then lost, chasing the image of a producer instead of an actual producer.
…..
Beyond Meat, Inc. (BYND) Misled Investors Regarding its Ability to Produce Products at Scale to the Specifications of its Key Customers
A shareholder filed a class action on behalf of purchasers of Beyond Meat, Inc. (NASDAQ: BYND) common stock between May 5, 2020 and October 13, 2022. Beyond Meat is a Los Angeles-based producer of plant-based meat substitutes.
According to the complaint, during the class period, Beyond Meat misled investors by boasting about the success of its product tests with its large-scale partnerships, including prominent food retailers like McDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. Beyond Meat assured investors and partners that it would “ensure manufacturability” through “extensive testing,” and that it was capable of manufacturing the unique plant-based meat products at commercial scale.
In truth, Beyond Meat was unable to manufacture its meat substitutes at scale to the specifications of its partners. Further, Beyond Meat suffered from widespread scaling issues, particularly misalignment and delayed decision-making, which led to corresponding production delays. Such issues were exacerbated by Beyond Meat’s disjointed production lines. These problems led some partners to balk at the high price of Beyond Meat’s products and express doubts about the Company’s ability to produce them at commercial scale.
The truth began to emerge on October 22, 2021, when Beyond Meat reduced its third quarter net revenues outlook by 25%. On this news the Company’s stock price declined by $12.82 per share, or nearly 12%, from $108.62 per share to $95.80 per share. As the truth continued to reveal itself, the Company’s stock price continued to decline, closing at $13.35 per share at the end of the class period.
What Now: Similarly situated shareholders may be eligible to participate in the class action against Beyond Meat, Inc. Shareholders who want to act as lead plaintiff for the class must file their papers by July 10, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. You do not have to participate in the case to be eligible for a recovery. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member.
All representation is on a contingency fee basis. Shareholders pay no fees or expenses.
© 2023 – Robbins LLP
Hi David. We haven’t heard from you in awhile. I miss your insightful and well written posts. Are you OK?
Thanks, Rob. Yes, I’m okay. I’ll be posting an update about my activities and blog status shortly.