Raw Milk & the Battle over Food Rights

Here’s Markenna Goodman, of Treehugger.com, interviewing raw milk author David E. Gumpert on the findings in his recent book… via AlterNet.org:

Author David E. Gumpert, at the keyboard.

“Food regulation is one of the most important issues consumers face today. And for people who are concerned with where their food comes from (and how it got there), milk is now at the center of this debate. And because of its health benefits, many more people are turning to raw milk. Even lactose intolerant folks have found they can digest the un-pasteurized liquid; and it’s been said to reduce allergies and asthma in children — ailments that are on the rise in the U.S.

But there’s one hitch: raw milk is illegal.

I spoke with journalist David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, about our right to healthy food–what could very well be the new civil rights movement.

Makenna Goodman: Okay — I’m just going to ask, even though it seems like it should be obvious: What is raw milk?

David Gumpert: Raw milk is just what the name suggests — milk straight from the cow (or goat), which hasn’t been pasteurized (heated to 161 degrees for 15 seconds) or homogenized.

MG: Mass media says raw milk is bad for me. Is this true?

Pressing for H1N1 Truth in Toronto

Report on the Toronto vaccination scene from Infowars.com:

“The numbers are considerably down from just 4 days ago and now Canadian officials are ramping up their efforts to get people to take the shot by expanding clinics into the workplace and schools. Another tactic they are using is to claim that there is a shortage. This is a marketing technique which causes people to rush out and line up because of the shortage. You will see similar techniques used by companies like PlayStation and Nintendo. They claim that they can not keep up with the demand and the result is people flock to the stores to make sure that they get theirs before its all gone….”

Martial law in Ukraine — Austria next?

This just in, from Jane Burgermeister’s “The Flu Case”:

A mysterious plague-like flu has recently been afflicting the people of the Ukraine. Photo of Ukrainian Prime Minister Julia Timoschenko via Swine Flu Watch blog.

“On a cold, overcast December afternoon in 2004, I briefly met the Viktor Yuschenko, the Ukrainian President.

He had been treated for poisoning at a hospital in Döbling and when he was released, he held a press conference surrounded by doctors and attended by scores of journalists.

Yuschenko stood there barely saying a word, looking haggard and with a bluish pallor: his face was pock marked and his hair was an unnatural colour; his eyes were full of mistrust and fear even though the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic held few threats.

Five years on, this shattered looking individual, who was once the head of a pro democracy movement, is about to proclaim himself a dictator.

Modern taboos — the things we still can’t talk about in polite company….

Well, for sure, any mention of “Reptilians” is likely to start listeners’ eyes rolling skyward. And yet here we have respected journalist Bill Maher (of PBS) in conversation with the infamous “out there” conspiracy theorist David Icke, discussing just that very topic. Is nothing sacred? Enjoy:

What will we read about next on the Bovine, you might wonder…  Zombies?

Thanks to CK Hunter on American Patriot Daily, who posted this first!

Is Raw Milk Going Mainstream?

Here’s an excerpt from the latest by raw milk author David E. Gumpert:

Organic Pastures' Mark McAfee, out standing in his field. Mark has been a leader in taking raw milk farther into mainstream market penetration in California. AP photo by Gary Kazanjian

“There’s an interesting phenomenon going on now around raw milk. It is gradually, but very definitely, moving more toward the mainstream. Increasingly, the media are writing more objectively, the latest example being Jill Richardson’s even-handed assessment of the politics of raw milk on Alternet.

One of the things that tends to happen as you move from the fringes to the mainstream, though, is that you tend to come under increasing public scrutiny. We’ve seen one example in the intense focus on the outsourcing practices of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., which Jill Richardson’s article highlighted (and continues to be a subject of intense debate on my most recent couple of postings).

Still drinking from plastic bottles?

Here’s an excerpt from a recent NY Times column by Nicholas Kristof titled “Something Scary in the Pantry“:

For how long is ignorance "bliss"? Photo from babble.com

“Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen. More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

Now it turns out it’s in our food.

Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.

The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestlé Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.

No need to panic over H1N1 flu — Thomas Walkom in the Toronto Star

Here’s an excerpt from a column that appeared last Saturday in the Toronto Star, a mainstream newspaper from Canada’s largest city. While this may seem tame compared to a lot of what we publish here on the flu scene, this is notable for being one of the few voices of common sense being heard among all the decontextualized hype in the mainstream media.

Nurse Cathy Hayman (right) injects the H1N1 vaccine into the arm of three year old Timothy Logan who visited the H1N1 clinic located in the Pickering Town Centre with his mother Dawn (left). (Oct. 26, 2009) Photo: Tara Walton, Toronto Star

“People die of the flu. This is no consolation to the family of 13-year-old Evan Frustaglio, the Toronto boy who died Monday, apparently after contracting swine flu. But it is true.

This was so before this latest pandemic. It will almost certainly continue to be so in the future. But it is no reason to go off the deep end.

Keep things in perspective. What is worrisome about this particular strain, sometimes known as Novel Swine-origin Influenza A (H1N1), is its newness. We know, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, that is contains genes from pigs, humans and birds. We know from experience that such a mix gives it the potential to pass back and forth between species and to become particularly virulent.

The men who stare at urban dairy goats

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new movie out titled “The men who stare at goats“. While that’s all about military psyops and such, this post is actually about people who raise dairy goats in an urban setting.. for instance so they’ll have a ready supply of raw milk and not be dependent on the whims of regulators. This is an excerpt from Jennifer Coughlin’s excellent post on “Neighbourhood Notes” blog, titled “Goats in the City: Portland Neighbors Take a Step Towards Self-Sufficiency“:

And the goats are staring right back!

“I have said before that the lessons of our grandparents could really come in handy now that our gross economic negligence has come back to bite us in our entitled behinds (NOTE: I am making a big generalization for effect here, so don’t get upset if you don’t feel that you’re in any way responsible for the Fine Mess the U.S. finds itself in). It seems that others feel that way, too, that a return to the ways of our much more self-reliant ancestors is long overdue. Thus more and more folks are planting vegetable gardens, learning to sew and knit, and are even keeping livestock. Chicken coops (and even bee hives!) are a familiar sight around Portland, but some people are turning to another animal as well—the goat.

Spanish Doctor Reveals Important Information About the Swine Flu

This is possibly the most comprehensive explanation of the swine flu and vaccination issues we’ve seen yet. It begins with some scientific background on the types of flus, then goes into the history of the Swine Flu, discusses the events around the shipment of the deadly 72 kilos of supposed vaccines earlier this year and how that particular “pandemic” was prevented, the politics around WHO’s declaration of a pandemic, and the political dangers that could lead to compulsory vaccination. Thanks to Infowars.com for publishing it first!

“Teresa Forcades is a nun at the monastery of Sant-Benet, in Monserra-Barcelona. She is a doctor physician specializing in internal medicine, PHD in public health at Barcelona’s university, specializing in the USA at the State University of New York. She gives verifiable scientific data and the disturbing irregularities related to this subject. This is relevant to all countries, all people….” Read more on infowars.com

Slovenian health-care secret: raw milk!

Slovenian raw milk automat. Keeping health care costs manageable!

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist: “….In several columns, I’ve noted indignantly that we have worse health statistics than Slovenia. For example, I noted that an American child is twice as likely to die in its first year as a Slovenian child. The tone — worse than Slovenia! — gravely offended Slovenians. They resent having their fine universal health coverage compared with the notoriously dysfunctional American system.