Six months of legal marijuana in CO

From Ultraculture:

“Colorado made history in November 2012 when voters passed Amendment 64, making it one of the first two states to approve legal regulation for the cultivation, sale and use of medical and recreational marijuana to adults aged 21 and over. Since the amendment went into effect on January 1 of this year, the Centennial State has become a proving ground demonstrating the positive impact of regulation over prohibition.

Despite the warnings and hysteria from opponents to legalization, Colorado hasn’t descended into lawlessness and disorder. In fact, many conditions seem to be improving in the state, with crime rates down and a sound economy to boot.

The true price of a gallon of raw milk

From the Midlife Farm Wife:

Midlife farm wife rings bell to trigger conditioned response.

“Yesterday we had some very unusual visitors, raw milk farmers like ourselves. But because they work very hard to stay under the same radar I am always swinging from dressed like a clown grabbing as much attention as I can, I will not share their names or their location.

Israel ahead in medical marijuana; Colorado and Washington states have now voted to make marijuana legal

Image via Cannabis Information Network, on FB

From USA Today:

“SAFED, Israel (AP) — Moshe Rute survived the Holocaust by hiding in a barn full of chickens. He nearly lost the use of his hands after a stroke two years ago. He became debilitated by recurring nightmares of his childhood following his wife’s death last year. “But after I found this, everything has been better,” said the 80-year-old, as he gingerly packed a pipe with marijuana. Rute, who lives at the Hadarim nursing home outside of Tel Aviv, is one of more than 10,000 patients who have official government permission to consume marijuana in Israel, a number that has swelled dramatically, up from serving just a few hundred patients in 2005.

David Lynch, Colorado raw milk dairy farmer worked to legalize cowshares

Special to the Bovine from Michael Schmidt:

Why farmers matter.

Colorado dairy farmer paved the way for raw milk cowshares in his state. Photo by Michael Schmidt.

Today I had the honor to meet one of the unsung heroes of the North American Raw milk movement.

David Lynch, no not the film maker, yes the real farmer who so far seemed to be the only one who successfully in the long run carved out a legislative exemption for cow shares in the US.

We met during his Thursday delivery at a parking lot in the Rocky Mountains.

It was as refreshing as the fresh mountain air to talk to this man who opened the legal door for over 70 cow shares in Colorado.

There ought to be a law… keeping kids safe from their parents, and raw milk

From Dr. Richard Raymond, former Undersecretary for Food Safety, U.S. Department of Agriculture (2005-2008) on Bill Marler’s “Real Raw Milk Facts” website:

“….In Colorado, it is illegal to sell raw, unpasteurized goats’ or cows’ milk, but the people who fell ill and the farmer got around this by what is called the Goat Share Program. You buy a share of a goat (or cow) for a set price and get a set amount of milk in return. And you pay a “boarding fee” on top of that to cover the farmers’ costs and labor. So it is technically your goat, I guess, and therefore you are not violating the law by “buying milk.”

Laws are written for a reason, usually to help keep us safe. Parents who find ways to circumvent the laws should be held responsible when their children suffer because of their actions.

Raw milk regulators on the rampage in Colorado after news story about store

The latest from David E. Gumpert on The Complete Patient blog:

Image from website header for the Rocky Plains store.

“For 18 years, Phil Haynes has been selling his ranch’s buffalo meat through a store at the ranch, Rocky Plains Quality Meats, outside the northern Colorado town of Dacono.

Over the years, he opened a second store in nearby Loveland and added pork and chicken from other area producers, along with locally-produced fish. And a little over three years ago, he added raw goat’s and cow’s milk, produced by a nearby farm under Colorado’s cowshare law implemented five years ago.

How the EPA allowed the pesticide that “kicked the honey bees’ nest”

From Ariel Schwartz at Fast Company — new knowledge about why so many bees have been dying:

Photo of beekeepers via Fast Company website.

“The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined–electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.

Raw milk — its popularity is nationwide

Here’s a story from a state we don’t hear much from in the raw milk news — Colorado. This is excerpted from the Durango Herald:

Raw-milk dairy farmers such as Keith Lafferty collect and bottle milk from the cows on their farms. Consumers purchase shares of the cows, which entitles them to raw milk. This photo is from Jason Blevins of The Denver Post and was found on the Durango Herald website, along with the story below.

“ERIE – When the neighborhood kids visit the Lafferty family’s bustling farmhouse, they’re offered water, juice or milk.

“They always say, ‘Milk, milk, milk,'” says Nickie Lafferty.

Spin-doctoring around raw milk illness allegations — both in Colorado and B.C.

David E. Gumpert’s last three blog posts on the Complete Patient blog have followed the situation in Colorado in which stories of illness from raw milk have been making a big stir in the media. But before we get to excerpts from those, here’s Gordon Watson’s analysis of recent news spinning in the B.C. media over allegations of illness from raw milk from “Home on the Range” and how those have played out in the local media:

Scott Freeman, the man at the center of raw milk controversy in Colorado. Complete Patient photo.

“In December / January,  BC Health Authorities trotted-out so-called “lab results”, which seemed to show that milk from our dairy was ‘contaminated’. Samples of our milk were seized, and tested up to 6 days later, after being kept at the wrong temp. Then the fabricated results were blazed to the media as though our Agister was  putting out ‘dirty diseased milk’.  I  pointed out that these people  – who are supposed to know all about food safety –  had not bothered  to handle the samples as they were bound to,  under the Milk Industry Standards Regulation.

Campylobacter at Colorado raw dairy; Food Network airs raw milk TV show

Here is an excerpt from the latest post on David E. Gumpert’s “The Complete Patient” blog, one of the world’s foremost sources of raw milk news. The curious thing is that “The Complete Patient” doesn’t show up much on my Google alerts for raw milk in spite of the fact that David is always writing about it. I wonder if this is something like Amazon’s recent — and supposedly accidental — delisting of a whole slew of gay and lesbian titles. 

“There have been a couple of very interesting glimpses into the real world of suspected pathogens and regulation around raw milk this weekend.

First and foremost, there is Scott Freeman’s disarmingly candid account (on the second page of comments, following my previous post) of what’s happened at his Kinikin Corner Dairy in Colorado (logo pictured above) since he began learning about possible campylobacter illnesses from among his shareholders. Before I say anything else, I want to thank Scott for sharing his experience. He’s dealing with a huge amount of stress and uncertainty right now—the Colorado Health Department’s lab analysis of his milk hasn’t yet come back—yet he took time to share with us. He could have shut down his phones and gone radio silent, but he didn’t. Very brave.

Big picture, what I get from his account is both the huge amount of responsibility Scott feels and his determination to do the right thing. He’s not defensive, nor is he locked into a particular ideological approach.

Three other things stand out here: