The right to pour your own [raw] milk

From “The Weal”, the weekly student newspaper of the SAIT Student’s Association (SAIT is Southern Alberta Institute of Technology):

People who want to drink unpasteurized milk are crying over government policy that makes it illegal. Illustration by James MacKenzie

“Albertans looking to drink a glass of raw, unpasteurized milk hold empty glasses in the eyes of the law.

The pasteurization process was added to the Canadian Food and Drug Act in 1991, and detailed the prohibition of selling or buying raw milk. However, the Canadian Food and Drug Act does not say that drinking raw milk is illegal.

Dietician Ariane Fortier, of Dairy Farmers of Canada, says pasteurization has minimal impact to the nutritional value of milk, and is in the interest of protecting public health.

Canada’s Senate restricts debate on Bill C-36, in bid to pass the unconstitutional legislation before the year 2010 ends

From a National Health Products Protection Association media release:

Canadian citizens who see Bill C-36 as anything but ‘safe’ overwhelmed Senators with communications last week.

They pressed government to allow time for a full debate in the Senate committee. Hundreds of individuals requested the attendance of constitutional and legal expert Shawn Buckley, who has studied the Bill and can testify to the dangers of it.

Are Minnesota raw milk drinkers the latest victims of “affirmative action”?

David E. Gumpert struggles to find meaning in the use of a handicapped parking sticker by “regulators” who steal people’s raw milk in police raids. Could he be overlooking the obvious? Perhaps the regulators’ “handicaps” are not physical. First some more video from the raid and then an excerpt from David’s latest post:

“Before I explore the latest controversy to have come out of Tuesday’s highly public raid of the Hartmann Farm delivery, I should report that the Hartmann Farm, half a dozen of its customers, and the Foundation for Consumer Free Choice have filed suit in state court against the state to seek return of confiscated product and an end to “harassing and malicious prosecution.”  They charge the Minnesota Department of Agriculture with having “intentionally introduced this chaos in hopes of creating conflicting decisions, increasing Respondents costs to defend himself, and to advance multiple theories of liability. Serial prosecutions for the same alleged offenses, are an abuse of process, and can have no legitimate purpose…”

SURPRISE — FDA reveals factory farms use a shitload of sub-clinical antibiotics

From Tom Philpott, writing for Grist.org:

Animals in factory farms get daily doses of antibiotics, both to keep them alive in their stressful, unsanitary conditions and to make them grow faster. What’s the annual volume of antibiotic use on factory farms? The question is a critical one, because the practice has given rise to a novel strain of antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), known as ST398, that’s widely present in our vast hog and chicken factories.

Well, federal regulators have for years ignored the question and refused to release estimates of just how much antibiotics the livestock industry burns through. But that ended yesterday, when the FDA released its first-ever report on the topic. The answer: 29 million pounds in 2009. According to ace public-health reporter Maryn McKenna, that’s a shitload. (I’m paraphrasing her.)

Raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt tells Regina audience that pasteurized milk causes more diseases than we think

C. J. Katz writes about raw milk and Michael Schmidt’s recent visit to Saskatchewan, on her “Savour Life” blog titled “The Raw Milk Debate”:

Michael Schmidt makes his point in Regina. Photo via Savour Life blog

Raw Milk. Canada is the only G8 country to have a total ban. British Columbia has declared it to be a hazardous substance. The raw milk debate is heating up in Canada and driving the issue is Michael Schmidt, the German dairy farmer from Durham, Ontario who has been taking his fight to allow the sale and distribution of raw milk to the courts of the land. In mid-January, a Newmarket court acquitted him of 19 charges of distributing raw milk and raw milk products. This was after he lost 500 of his 600 acre farm, all his machinery and 42 of his 45 cattle.