Small farmers saying NAY to NAIS

American government plans to introduce what is being called a “National Animal Identification System on steroids” is meeting with resolute opposition from hard-pressed small organic farmers who say it threatens to take away farmers’ choices and impose an agribusiness, big-pharma straightjacket on all farming. Hopefully, enough people will recognize how bad that would be and speak up loudly and in time to keep this corporate-government steamroller from doing any more damage to America’s local-food survival base. Here’s some compelling material on this issue via Linn Cohen-Cole.

An important part of the America we are losing

But first an intro from Linn: This information is from one of the wonderful, real, caring hard-working farming groups around the country that have been fighting for survival against NAIS – on no money, doing legal work themselves, doing documentaries themselves, working (one said) 23 hours a day for years now, while trying to run farms and raise families.  You have no idea how brutal this has been for them. Look at what he lists:

The Fate of Raw Milk in Toronto

This is an excerpt of a post from Lauren at BlogTO. Photo by Sean Bennell (we’ve used it before) also via BlogTO:

Michael Schmidt and supporters outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where Norman Lofts' award-winning documentary on raw milk was about to debut.

“For those following dairy farmer Michael Schmidt’s court proceedings (dubbed the Raw Milk Trial), the fate of raw milk in Toronto has not yet been decided. After 6 days in a Newmarket court last month, the final arguments have been postponed until May (for Schmidt) and June (for the prosecution).

Since authorities first began their investigations of Schmidt’s Glencolton Farm over a decade ago, there has been a whole lot of fuss over a food we don’t even really need to be consuming in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I love milk. And cheese – please – I can’t live without the stuff. But the reality of being mammals is that we don’t really need our mother’s milk once we’ve gained the ability to eat solid foods, let alone the milk of another animal.

FDA to hold a raw milk symposium of their own Feb 17, 2009 in Virginia

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If this keeps up, pretty soon there will be raw milk symposia all over the place. It’ll be interesting to see how open the FDA will be to entertaining pro-raw-milk evidence at the symposium they’re planning on Feb. 17th — hey that’s just in three days. This story is by Kimberly Hartke and it first appeared February 12th on her Hartke is Online blog:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

“Remember the famous scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Robert Redford and Paul Newman were sitting on the edge of a river canyon?  They were being chased by a relentless team of marshals and one turned to the other and said, “Who are those guys?”

Then they said “Oh, _____” and jumped into the river far below.

This must be how our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) feels about the raw milk movement.  Try as they might to inspire fear into consumers about raw milk, the raw milk posse keeps coming at ‘em. Every newspaper account about raw milk gets progressively more favorable (toward food freedom) as it airs both sides of the story.Raw dairy farmer, Michael Schmidt, in Canada goes to trial on 20 criminal counts (for farming!) and he emerges a folk hero, not only in Canada, but in the U.S. having won more converts to his cause. An International Raw Milk Symposium held during his trial, creates even more buzz about the benefits of consuming milk from sustainably raised dairy cows. Scientific evidence that supposedly doesn’t exist, according to health officials, was made public by scientists at the symposium.  “Who are those guys?”–you can almost imagine the exasperation and head scratching going on in the Puzzle Palace of Food Safety.