“Road to hell is paved with the promise to protect you” — Michael Schmidt

Raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt, from his “Reflections of a Candidate” blog:

Raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt, addressing the media at one of his many Queen's Park news conferences on the subject of raw milk.

“The exploration of unknown territory used to be and still is nature, science and our own physical strength. However, today we are dealing with the erosion of our rights, which should be on our priority list to explore. Many  people think that we have no right to explore our rights or the steady limitations imposed by bureaucratic agencies through the power of regulations. We are very well-trained to always ask for permission.

I need to repeat myself again and again; if you truly understand the function of law. REGULATIONS ARE NOT LAW

Miss Scarlett misses her raw milk, won’t drink store bought pasteurized “milk”

From Scarlett’s Homestead Letters, October 17th:

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“For the record, I am a proponent of dairy products. I love cows and everything from them. I eat more cheese than a person probably should and used to drink a lot of milk. In fact, when I was growing up, my father was a milkman. Ice cream and cheese were our snacks instead of chips and candy.  We went through a lot of milk at our house.

Being from a European heritage, my body can still tolerate lactose, which by the way, is unusual. The peoples of Europe and Americans with European heritage are more tolerant of milk due to the fact that their ancestors did and still do have access to it. All other parts of the world grow a natural intolerance for dairy since their diet only includes mother’s milk and dairy isn’t part of their regular diet. We mustn’t treat lactose intolerance as a disease because it is not; it is actually a normal process for many people.

Middle-eastern immigrants brought dairy farming to Europe during the Neolithic period — Spiegel Online

From Matthias Schultz, Spiegel Online, via Salt Spring News:

New research has revealed that agriculture came to Europe amid a wave of immigration from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The newcomers won out over the locals because of their sophisticated culture, mastery of agriculture — and their miracle food, milk. … The remains of more than 40 houses were unearthed [in the Upper Franconia region of northern Bavaria], as well as skeletons, a spinning wheel, bulbous clay vessels, cows’ teeth and broken sieves for cheese production — a typical settlement of the so-called Linear Pottery culture (named after the patterns on their pottery).

This ancient culture provided us with the blessing of bread baking. At around 5300 BC, everyone in Central Europe was suddenly farming and raising livestock. The members of the Linear Pottery culture kept cows in wooden pens, used rubbing stones and harvested grain. Within less than 300 years, the sedentary lifestyle had spread to the Paris basin. The reasons behind the rapid shift have long been a mystery. … In a bid to solve the mystery, molecular biologists have sawed into and analyzed countless Neolithic bones. The breakthrough came last year, when scientists discovered that the first milk drinkers lived in the territory of present-day Austria, Hungary and Slovakia. But that was also where the nucleus of the Linear Pottery culture was located. “The trait of lactose tolerance quickly became established in the population,” explains Joachim Burger, an anthropologist from the University of Mainz in southwestern Germany who is a member of the Leche team. …

University to study raw milk drinkers

From the latest thoughts of raw milk journalist David E. Gumpert of The Complete Patient blog:

“….I got to thinking about the comparison between investing and eating a few days ago, when I read that Ohio State University is planning a study about why people drink raw milk. It is looking for 60 raw milk drinkers (as well as 60 pasteurized milk drinkers) to answer questions, fill out some forms, and provide samples of the milk they drink, to be examined for fat content. One of the scientists quoted in the Ohio State press release about the study states, “We truly do not know very much about how people make the choice to drink raw or pasteurized milk — there’s just nothing in the literature,” How about that, there’s nothing in the literature. Maybe because the scientists have been so busy trying to scare people from drinking raw milk.