Heather Ramsey writes more about the raw milk scene on the Queen Charlotte Islands, a sparsely populated archipelago off the west coast of B.C., northwest of Vancouver. Thanks to Gordon Watson for telling us about this story, which is excerpted from thetyee.ca:
British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands
“Milking the cows is so important that it isn’t even on her huge list of things to do. Lisa Graham-Knight is 22 years-old and running a cow-share co-op on Haida Gwaii. An unlikely revolutionary, she is tanned, smiling and up every morning around 6:30 am to relieve Ebony and April, a Jersey Holstein and a pure Jersey, two cows who now find themselves living on a small island across the inlet from the tiny village of Queen Charlotte.
Between tending the garden and the pasture that feeds them; milking and bottling; and making plans for a winter barn, Graham-Knight doesn’t have much time to worry about the laws that say selling and distributing raw milk is a federal offence. Under the Food and Drug Act, no one can sell the “secretion obtained from the mammary gland of a cow” unless it has been pasteurized (heated to a high temperature to kill bacteria that might cause disease). Raw milk is, by definition, unpasteurized — straight from the cow’s udders, and Graham-Knight is right in there pulling teats every morning in order to provide. Continue reading
The Bovine 