State of the food rights movement

David E. Gumpert, on the Complete Patient blog;

Sign from Rawsome Food club in California.

“It sure would be nice if the emerging food rights movement could always pick its spots to protest government brutality and criminality against farmers and food clubs. Note, I am choosing my words carefully here. Yes, when government agents from ten or more agencies steal hundreds of pounds, thousands of dollars, worth of food–not once, but twice in 15 months– that members of a club have contracted for, that is brutality and criminality.

I’m talking about the Rawesome Food Club situation, but it’s not just Rawesome that has been brutalized. It’s Denise and Joseph Dixon (Morningland Dairy), Barb and Steve Smith (Meadowsweet Dairy), Dan Allgyer, Michael Hulme, Wayne Craig, Mark Zinniker, Max Kane, Vernon Hershberger, Grassfed on the Hill food club. And their compatriots in Canada are intent on making an example out of Michael Schmidt. I’m sure I’ve missed some names here, and we don’t even know all those that have been hit hard by the ripple effects of the government clampdown on Rawesome and these other food clubs and farmers. Sharon Palmer was just one of many farmer suppliers to the food club. 

Why I am committed to seek co-operation with Government and Regulators [regarding raw milk] — Ontario farmer Michael Schmidt

This just in from Ontario raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt:

Raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt. Photo via Nelson Daily

I have to be thankful for the rather degrading and heated discussion following my post about the need to support Eric and Judith in their struggle to fight for their cow share operation in Alberta.

The discussion laid open the variety of positions dealing with the issue of how to deal with the current underground raw milk trade across Canada and across Province lines.

U.S. dairy “czar” perfomance review

Here’s a video of some disgruntled people in George who were forced by the government officials to pour out milk they’d bought and paid for, followed by an imagination of what U.S. chief dairy regulator John Sheehan’s performance review might be like — that’s from David E. Gumpert’s “The Complete Patient blog”:

“I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the annual performance review of John Sheehan, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s division of plant and dairy food safety,  America’s milk czar. But since the likelihood of that happening is much less than very unlikely, here’s how I’d imagine the conversation between Sheehan and Margaret Hamburg, the FDA commissioner:

Hamburg: So, John, I know you’re in charge of monitoring compliance with the PMO (Pasteurized Milk Ordinance). But all I keep hearing about is raw milk. You said here, in the goals you listed a year ago, that the “raw milk problem” would be on its way to being solved about now, that those “bandit” raw milk producers, as you referred to them, would be on the run, and within another year, raw milk would be nearly a distant memory.

Our duty to defy lies and intimidation

We need to stand up to "big dairy" by getting our milk straight from the cow.

Here’s the latest from David E. Gumpert’s The Complete Patient blog, based on David’s “state of raw milk” address to the recent Wise Traditions conference in San Francisco. Here’s an excerpt:

“….However, it is clear that the education will only work if consumers are walking the walk. As the double whammies of the federal court case against Mark McAfee and the New York court decision against Meadowsweet Dairy make clear, we are dealing with people who are desperate–perhaps more desperate as time goes on and they see public attitudes shift–to carry out the agendas of Big Ag and Big Pharma, and will stop at nothing to accomplish their agendas, including:

• Dishonesty, when they say that all raw milk contains pathogens, and they know it doesn’t;
• Misrepresentation, when they say people have been dying from drinking raw milk, when they know the only deaths came from imported bathtub cheeses made from raw milk, which serious raw milk producers disavow;
• Interfering in private transactions between consenting adults when they argue, and a judge agrees, that groups of individuals can’t buy whole food directly from farmers;
• Engaging in censorship by ordering small sellers of nutritional products not to post links to web sites that provide information on the benefits of real food.