Here’s an excerpt from a recent post on the Gothamist blog:
Hannah Springer and her son Oliver Corvera drink raw milk — meaning it’s not pasteurized or homogenized. As such, it’s also very much underground. Photo Bess Alder/The Brooklyn Paper
“Swearing that a drink of raw milk beats a trip to the doctor, a Brooklyn woman has gotten in with an underground network that traffics the unhomogenized, unpasteurized product.
According to the Brooklyn Paper, Hannah Springer and her fellow milk smugglers meet at secret “drop-off” points around the city, to collect bottles driven down from farms in Pennsylvania.
Like many converts, Springer had her first taste after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and now she’s addicted. “I no longer have to take thyroid meds, which every doctor said I would be on for the rest of my life,” said the mom, who feeds two glasses of the stuff to her 18-month old son daily. But if its curative properties are what she says, why does the FDA call it “inherently dangerous”?
“[Raw milk] should not be consumed by anyone at any time for any purpose,” said Michael Herndon, a spokesman for the FDA, explaining that “it may contain many pathogens … that may be especially problematic for infants, young children, the elderly.”
As far back as 1987 the FDA has prohibited the shipment of raw milk across state lines, and the controversy over raw milk has raged. One organization, the Weston A. Price foundation—whose “Real Milk” campaign claims milk becomes less healthy through pasteurization—pointed Springer to her current “club” where she now acts as a membership director, excluding those who seek to “tear the group apart from the inside.”…”
The Bovine 
We can see some very good information and events these days regarding raw milk and the consumers awareness of the possibilities, the potential. The farmers and their associated businesses are also seeing the benefits. some farmers have figured out that they can make more money if they do not homogenize the milk. Let the cream come to the top. Sell the milk in glass bottles. Low temperature pasteurize the milk. and sell it as “Cream-line” milk. In New York Metro, these farmers are getting $1.50 – $1.80 per quart. Why or how? Ask the Milkmen. Ask yourselves.
Conventional milk or milk processed by large plants have been rolling out the milk and dairy for more than 65 years or so in North America. The standards are kept, facilities and bottling machinery are clean and standards are followed. The pasteurized milk, almost any milk is safe after bottled or containerized. These organized farmers or processors and distributing companies are well organized, well “oiled machines.” There is little chance that they get into trouble with germs, bacteria, or human illness as a result of their operations. They also have underwriters, insurance companies, big business, government, lobbyists, and more behind them.
Imagine what it can do for raw milk and most other raw food products if the same standards are met, good regulations are in place and the machinery and procedures and processes in the chain of events from the cow to bottle are standardized and pass with flying colors as does most or all conventional milk does today.
The milk industry needs to market, sell, distribute their products in a way that the consumer perceives the value of milk and dairy in fair light. Cow and dairy and farmers are misunderstood and underestimated values of the land and our societies throughout the world. Funny thought, in India, the cow is sacred. Here you get a mild dose of what it is like to live in a land where cows are respected on higher levels. The same conditions exist for the animal and pant life of the oceans. How many people know and respect what those resources are? For sure, the Japanese whaling vessel machines do not? Just ask Bob Barker and The Sea Shepherd. Maybe the dairy industry needs a radical group like the Sea Shepherd to get the message across.
Our point is; if you can make raw milk safe or safer, and help insure proper handling and distribution, then we have a better chance to see this farm product come to a sense of fairness in the market. Farmers today suffer for low pricing. Milk should not be priced low. Who says Gatorade, Coke, Red Bull, Snapple, or Yoohoo is better than milk? Yet these products are ahead of milk in sales in many places and at many times of the year in the life cycle of a beverage. In our opinion the two liquid beverages that are a staple group for the human body are water and milk.
We are developing now the tools and machinery and systems needed to farm, milk, process, handle, sell, market, and distribute raw milk and dairy. we are in a tie now where basic values, and systems for humanity are coming back into utility because this is what is needed to be healthy and live a better quality of life. The industrialization of food has gone too far. It is not too late to turn back and get back to basics.
Imagine a bottling plant, a processing plant or system for Raw Milk that is more widespread. We all have not seen McAfee’s operation for raw milk in California, but we are sure that this is a good model. How to duplicate this or similar is the challenge.
No person wants to see another accident or person become ill or die from raw milk. Pasteurized milk can cause a death or illness too, we know this. But, if it happens, people still drink it right? Why? That is the answer to part solution.
In the meantime, our wish and hope, is that farmers gain more control. They can do this buy creating and maintaining product excellence, selling, marketing, and distribution in better ways. If an industrialized product we drink that removes the paint from the hood of your car can do so well, then certainly a natural food like milk can do also.
Thank you.
The Milkmen USA
The Milkman is BACK!
Thank you for getting the word out about raw milk!
I dream that one day soon I can buy it in my corner market and not have to (continue to) go contraband!
Omni’s Dilema has completely bolstered me up. I knew it was bad but now I know how horrific the food chain is actually destroyed. At times I felt hopeless. Like you, I discovered the underground. May we keep the swell going into a full sunami.May we have the courage to quell the fear mongers when they begin in force. Then the manipulators who make parents feel guilty. I have stood up to it my entire life the best I could. I applaud you young people. You are right!! Please do not give up the fight. This IS the last Stand!! Our food chain!
Mary Walker
Pingback: “Raw milk is becoming contentious” — now even in the New York Times « The Bovine