New Quebec regulations for soft raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days

Thanks to Paul Ericson for this information:

Here’s an excerpt from the Quebec regulations for the new class of safe raw milk to be used in producing raw milk cheeses of any age, not just those which have been aged for at least 60 days.

I suggest you take a few minutes to carefully read through the regulations outlined below. The requirements are actually pretty low, just basically a separate supply chain and regular pathogen testing.

But the implications for raw milk drinkers are pretty profound. First, the milk for these cheeses has to be safe to drink since the cheese production process does not produce a pH low enough to kill pathogens. Second, Health Canada has accepted the protocol in Quebec, so there is no technical or legal reason why they wouldn’t accept the very same protocol in Ontario. The only snag would be political pressure from the DFO.

Here, then, is the relevant section from the new regulations:

Raw Milk, Civil Liberties

This excerpt from a report on the sometimes discouraging results of citizen efforts to obtain legislative backing for their raw milk rights (in California, Maryland and Pennsylvania) is from Counterpunch.org, which calls itself “America’s best political newsletter”. The author is Kimberly Hartke, a raw milk drinker, and publicist for the Weston A. Price foundation:

Cows on pasture, from author's blog

“…Our constitutional right to liberty is systematically being attacked by government agencies flanked by anti-competitive forces in the food industry.   Nowhere,  is this more obvious than on the raw milk issue.  California Governor Arnold Swartzenegger recently vetoed SB201, a bill to preserve consumers rights to access farm fresh milk, while guaranteeing its safety.

The Governor, who likely consumed raw dairy in his rise to stardom as a body builder, thwarted the freedoms of the over 40,000 raw milk devotees in his state.  He ignored the will of the people in favor of the milk processors and the government regulators bent on crushing the raw dairy producers in their state—two of which are the most successful in the nation.