Michael Schmidt has decided to appeal his conviction for violating Ontarios dairy laws to the Canadian Supreme Court. In doing so, he may well have begun another chapter, The New 20-Year Raw Milk War Against Michael Schmidt.
In Europe, they fought a 100-Year War beginning in the 1300s, and a 30-Year War beginning in the 1600s, and a number of others before and after. The world is beginning to take notice of North Americas milk wars–I was asked by a large magazine in India to chronicle the Schmidt case. The result is an article in the current issue of IndiaLegal, Whose Milk Is It, Anyway? The article is pitched to readers this way: Farmers in North America are fighting big food firms for their right to sell directly to the consumer. One of them, Michael Schmidt, may finally win his case after 20 years. This is a sign of global conflict that India will soon witness. (Because the magazine is distributed mostly in print form, the online version is only available as a PDF; youll find the article about Schmidt on page 74. Others about political scandals, torture accusations, and cricket irregularities may catch your attention as well. )
In India, and many other parts of the world, the struggle of Schmidt, and other farmers in North America, is incomprehensible. In India, farmers still take their cows or buffalo around to towns and cities, and provide fresh milk on the spot to customers. Customers then decide for themselves if they want to boil the milk or notself pasteurize.
Indeed, one study indicates that India is the largest dairy producing country in the world, and that something approaching half its milk is distributed raw, by small farms. Consumers often regard raw milk and traditional products obtained from reliable vendors as of better quality than formally processed dairy products, says the study.
The notion of people buying their milk and other foods directly from farmers is respected, as it has been for centuries. The milk available in supermarkets is mostly pasteurized.
My favorite part of the Schmidt IndiaLegal story is this quote from him about all that has transpired during the 20 years Ontario has been prosecuting him,:We have had five premiers in Ontario, ten minsters of agriculture, three popes, three presidents in the U.S., and 260,000 deaths from smoking in Ontario alone. Oh, and zero deaths from raw milk. I have not counted the days in court, the amount of court papers and the money spent on defending our right for food of our choice.
The next phase of the war over food choice seems to be shifting to the legislatures and the courts. Schmidt has led the way.
Another case, in the U.S., is going to a high court as wellthe Food Sovereignty case of farmer Dan Brown will be heard by the Maine Supreme Court on May 13 in Portand, Maine (more info here). Brown was forbidden via an injunction sought by the Department of Agriculture from selling raw milk and other foods from his two-cow dairy, despite the fact that his town, Blue Hill, has a Food Sovereignty ordinance allowing private food sales between producers and individuals. It was a decision that put his farm out of business. His appeal is being handled by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
Yet….rawmilk, perhaps the greatest food innovation known to the history of mankind, is illegal, is banned for shipment over stare lines, is required to have a very over the top warning label….and has killed no one since 1972.
It is time to take your lesson very seriously. The lesson is this….facts do not matter. Food is more than sustenance….it is politics and money.
So, we all need to recognize this and use politics and money to address this injustice!
Dollar vote…that is he greatest political and monetary activity any one can do.
http://hartkeisonline.com/2010/03/18/soil-scientist-travels-to-india/#more-5847
Water Buffalo milk is widely available in its raw form, but our friends boil every drop of it. Why? Because it is not produced under sanitary conditions. The cows on our farm here in the US eat better and receive better medical attention than many people in India, let alone the cows. (I realize India is a huge country and this is surely not true everywhere…I am only speaking of this one area.) When I asked my friend about veterinary practices, he told me that it was very unlikely that water buffalo producing milk were ever screened for TB or Brucellosis. Clean water for washing humans is hard to come by, let alone clean water to wash milking equipment. Refrigeration is also a challenge in this tropical region. So in India, people have to think about risks associated with their own food, and choose accordingly.
Interestingly, our India friends, while taking for granted the freedom that we covet, view our way of standardized safety with envy. At first glance, they would sacrifice freedom for more safety. While we would like to do the opposite. It always makes for interesting dinner table conversation!
Shawna, I spent a couple weeks in India not long ago and had many of the same reactions. I was real careful about what I ate, and was amazed when I returned home, how clean (and orderly) everything seemed here. And I think the situation you describe for India is pretty widespread.
The reaction of your friends reminds me of something I’ve mentioned here before, that I’ve heard from Russians who come to the U.S. and are amazed to find that raw milk is unavailable, or only available on a limited basis: “In Russia, we can eat what we want, but we can’t say what we want. In the U.S., we can say what we want, but we can’t eat what we want.”
I am sure, as India becomes more developed, it will adopt more of our food safety practices. As you suggest, there needs to be some kind of in-between place between no regulation/standards and excessive/obsessive regulation/standards. And the story of a 20-year legal assault on a farmer whose food has never made anyone the least bit sick will hopefully give people in India pause as it adopts a more serious approach to food safety.
Leads me to believe its not really about safety. (wink, wink)
She was then asked why not…she said that dairy system is not set up for it.
Pretty bland vanilla answer. She never said that raw milk was not safe….she gave a political answer instead.
RAWMI has Listed a dairy producer in BC ( the Listed producer is not publically posted for their protection ) where the dairy environment is downright hostile against raw milk. The reason? The milk pool system and market protectionism. Simply money and protecting the quota that costs more than $35,000 per cow ( that was the last amount i have been quoted ) just for the right to be a dairyman and sell milk to the state coop milk pool. That is a very powerful economic system and is very jealous against anyone that would bypass to access end consumers.
When you hear about raw milk in Canada…think money and market protecting extreme jealousy with laws that protect profits.
As far as gulf Oysters are concerned….I stand corrected. I have been told that CA banned their import some years ago, because they do sicken and kill so many. This was an act by CA not the FDA. I might also add, that CA was smart enough to recognize inherently unsafe oysters, but at the same time has established solid standards for safe raw milk. A very interesting contradiction. The FDA has done exactly the opposite. They ignore oysters and ban raw milk? Strangely bizarre and backwards comes to mind.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/cows-make-friends-with-robots–everybody-s-happier-135937575.html
The cows are really addicted to molasis and grain…and they come back more and more for it. The robot actually denies access to cows once they have been back to the bar to drink and eat to much.
Also, most robotic milking systems do test for SCC counts or at least levels. There is an inline system that measures conductivity, specific gravity and etc…to determine the quality of milk.
When I was visiting Denmark in 1998, they had robots milking cows many years before the US FDA had them approved for use in North America. If the FDA can approve Grade A milking robots….they sure as hell can approve raw milk for human consumption. Anything for the dairy industry….who cares about the consumers that eat or drink the stuff.
Quicker, cheaper, easier, more brain dead,farther from the consumer….that is the apparent future for the CAFO dairy industry.
A better future is…. greener, cleaner, more digestible, non-allergenic, more great paying jobs on the farm, more value added!, more nutrition for the consumer,…more brain power and more connected to our wonderful consumers. Talk about opposites!