Ohio court comes down hard on “flagrant regulator abuses” in recent raw milk case

Once again we bring you an excerpt from another significant chapter in the annals of raw milk from David E. Gumpert’s The Complete Patient blog:

“The February 2006 ODA action in Ohio led to an obscure court suit filed in a county court by Gary Cox of Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund fame. There were a number of problems with the ODA’s orders to the two farmers, according to the suit–they had each been legally selling their pet food for more than four years prior to the order without incident, the ODA didn’t give them a reasonable way to challenge the order, and a national organization monitoring pet food ingredients had no prohibition against raw milk as pet food.

Yesterday, an Ohio judge issued a judgment rescinding the original ODA orders and demanded that the ODA pay the two farmers’ legal fees of nearly $20,000. In the process, the judge, Ed Lane of Common Pleas Court of Washington County, castigated the ODA for flagrant violations of the farmers’ rights as well as of Ohio law. Here is a sampling from his opinion:

Got sick? Get raw milk?

Is this Organic Pastures ad real? Or just some internet "mashup"?

We found this graphic, which appears to be an ad for Organic Pastures, a California-based raw dairy that ships nationwide, and possibly worldwide.

We found it on the blog of a woman who calls herself the “Holy Hemptress”. And as you might expect, she’s into a lot of other far-out stuff — stuff that makes raw milk look tame — as you can see by looking at the topics down the right side of the page this link will take you to.

I wonder if this ad was approved by the American Medical Association? Don’t they have the official monopoly on anything to do with medical conditions in the United States? But I suspect that theirs might be a different kind of monopoly game — one where you have to “pay” $200 before you can pass go.

I mean, what’s the world coming to when you can get rid of  medical problems just by drinking unpasteurized milk?

And what will our doctors do now? Milk cows?

Editor’s note: The above raw humour may be an oversimplified generalization. Consume at your own risk.

A Catholic mom “converts” to raw milk. So does her priest!

Found this on a blog called “A traditional Catholic mom”, from a post called “Raw foodies“:

“…. We decided to start purchasing raw milk for several reasons, one of which is that I hesitate to exclude all dairy products from my diet.  Call me a dairy snob if you will but I vow to never give up good cheeses or milk for my tea.  I just can’t do it.  Dh has decided he will abstain, for the most part, in any dairy we purchase because he’s about sure he’s ready to give up most forms of animal protein.  He’s not becoming vegan mind you, but cutting out unnecessary consumption because it’s made a huge difference in how he feels.  The raw diet, being the anti-inflammatory diet it is, typically excludes milk because diary is a big offender.  However, raw milk is another issue unto itself.  Unpasteurized milk is still a living food, teeming with enzymes as are raw eggs.

From what I’ve been reading consumption of raw dairy doesn’t have the same effects that your typical drug-filled, hormone filled, ultra-pasteurized, vitamins-added-back-in-because-they-were-destroyed-during-the-pasteurization-process that grocery store milk has.  I suppose time will tell if raw milk aggravates my pain or not.  I will say that while discussing a purchase with Mrs. L. our priest, Fr. F., walked in and told us he suffered discomfort when drinking milk (a form of mild lactose intolerance, same form as my husband suffers) and since he switched to raw milk the intolerance disappeared.  Walking endorsement indeed….”

Read the whole post here.

Two readers takes John Doyle to task

Last Tuesday, Oct 23,  John Doyle, television columnist for the Globe and Mail, wrote a derogatory column about raw milk on the occasion of CBC Newsworld’s broadcast of Norman Lofts’ prize-winning documentary on Michael Schmidt and the raw milk story. Here are two more reader reactions to that bit of creative writing:

First, from Malene Brynildsen:

You know, John, I grew up in Denmark, probably the greatest of all great nanny states (rivaled only by Switzerland and Sweden, perhaps). I am a woman in my mid-thirties. My grandparents were dairy farmers, as were my great grandparents and . well you, get the picture. I drank plenty of raw milk as a child and young person as did ALL my relatives and their families and friends. I can honestly say that I know of no one who got sick from, much less suffered a serious long term or life threatening condition caused them by this practice.

Flouride added to children’s milk in 42 elementary schools, Sheffield, England

Here’s an excerpt from a report on the website of the Flouride Action Network. “Do you know what’s in your milk”, may become the question of the future. Although it’s been a widely accepted practice to flouridate drinking water, there are a growing number of people who question the practice for health reasons. Yet another reason to prefer “raw milk”.

“A NEW strategy with the focus of preventing dental problems among children is be introduced in Sheffield. Dentists in the city, who are currently paid according to how much treatment they carry out, will be asked to sign a new contract that will encourage them to carry out more preventive work.

The changes are part of NHS Sheffield’s Dental Health Commissioning Strategy, which outlines how services should be run up to 2011.

Key changes will come into force in March next year, when the current three-year dental contract comes to end.

Melamine now in animal feed in China

This story by Anita Chang via Associated Press is from the Oct 30, 2008 Globe and Mail. Read the whole thing here. Here is an excerpt:

“BEIJING — Animal feed producers in China commonly add the industrial chemical melamine to their products to make them appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, an indication that the scope of the country’s latest food safety scandal could extend beyond milk and eggs.

The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an “open secret” in the industry, the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported in an article that was republished on the Web sites of the official Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.

Publicizing such a problem is rare for the Chinese media and appears to be a tacit admission by China’s central government that melamine contamination is widespread.

Raw milk video from Australia

We found this on the Natural Moms Talk Radio website. But it’s originally from Nourished Magazine . It’s a great little video with testimony from a mother and children who attest to health benefits. That and the obligatory regulator droning on about the hazards and minimizing the advantages of raw milk. Watch the video and make up your own mind. The title of this little movie is: The Nourisher interviewed on TV about Raw Milk, Asthma, Eczema, tooth decay.

The mother in the video calls herself “The Nourisher” and is editor of “Nourished Magazine. Here’s what she says about herself on her blog: “When we got married the registry wouldn’t let me put Super Hero as my occupation, they put Home Duties on our marriage certificate instead. But I AM a Super Hero and my Super Hero name is…… The Nourisher.”

Comments on Tuesday’s raw milk movie broadcast from viewers at CBC.ca

CBC.ca doesn’t seem to be as “on the ball” in handling comments as do their colleagues at CBCnews.ca . Either that, or they’re deliberately damping down the response by being slow in moderating and posting comments, perhaps in response to adverse reaction from “someone” up there. I was thinking again about how Norman Lofts’ movie won the big prize at Planet in Focus and wondered how much of that was for his excellent filmmaking and how much was because the judges liked the movie’s message. Was it like Michael Moore winning the big prize at Cannes for “Fahrenheit 911” — which commentators at the time thought was motivated more by the judges’ agreement with his political message rather than as testimony to the timeless excellence of his filmmaking? Anyway, CBC Newsworld’s broadcast on Tuesday night was the first showing of Norman Lofts’ movie about raw milk and farmer Michael Schmidt to a mass audience. What was their response? Read all the comments here on the cbc.ca site. Or start with the few samples below:

Chris B: My choice to consume raw milk was more to do with the health concerns related to the pasteurization and homogenization process. It is sad that those in authority that appeared on the show, are totally ignorant of the very real downside of processed milk. It all depends on the farm. If the cattle are living in dirty conditions and being fed unatural food, then yes, the raw milk is not fit for human consumption. If the cattle are living in fields and eating grass, that is a totally different matter. When I told a friend from Poland about the so called dangers of raw milk, she burst out laughing. that is all they ever had and no-one ever got sick from it. A very informative website is http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw_milk_safety.html

The DFO and the raw milk “nuts” — seeking common ground for discussion

When MPP Bill Murdoch put forward his private members bill in the Ontario Legislature back in 2006, proposing to study the issue of raw milk, it became clear that the chief opposition to re-opening the question of raw milk at the legislative level, arose from the “The Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO)”, and their two lobbyists, Hill and Knowlton.

The DFO (formerly the Ontario Milk Marketing Board) runs the quota-based supply management system which limits production to ensure predictable market prices for milk and milk products in Ontario.

You might wonder what possible common ground there could be between an organization like the DFO and a bunch of raw milk “nuts”. Well, to start with, we’re all “nuts” about milk. Unlike a lot of people these days, we strongly believe that it’s neither unnatural nor unhealthy for human beings to drink a substantial amount of bovine milk and to eat milk products.

Next, we all believe in the family farm. Ontario’s quota system has had the effect of keeping production units smaller than in say, California, where 5,000 cow farms are not unusual and where increases in scale are necessitated by low prices paid to producers. In order to be confident in the quality of the product, raw milk fans like to know that there’s genuine human responsibility at work in the production process, which is really only feasible in a smaller scale of production — like the family farm.

Food security at Glencolton Farms

grafitti art by Bansky

For our cow share members’ safety, Glencolton Farms has designed a comprehensive surveillance system to ensure the safety of your milk. This includes video surveillance, motion detectors and more.

This has become a more and more pressing issue since it is obvious that the best argument for the opponents of Raw Milk would be for someone to become sick from it. Tampering with food has been a successful tool used on many occasions in the past in order to sway public opinion. I have just read a report about an incident in the U.S. where this method of willful contamination was used.

While it is rather difficult for me to move into the realm of mistrusting the so-called other side, our experience 14 years ago has taught us that , at some point, anything will do to prevent the success of our current struggle to properly regulate and legalize Raw Milk. Since we are battling a powerful industry with lots of money at their disposal, anything can happen.