Pot ban lifted in Washington state

From Ria Novosti:

“December 6 (RIA Novosti) – On Thursday Washington State became the first state in America where it is legal to possess marijuana for adult recreational use, and hundreds of people celebrated shortly after midnight by lighting up and smoking joints together under Seattle’s iconic Space Needle.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store!” shouted Darby Hageman, according to The Associated Press.

In November voters in the states of Washington and Colorado approved legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use by people over the age of 21.

The new law went into effect in Washington on Thursday and goes into effect in Colorado on January 5.

Raw milk on the radio in Portland

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Click here to go to a page where you can hear the program.

B.C. crushes local food community

Hella D has a few choice things to say about recent developments in raw milk farming in B.C.:

Buying raw milk is a mundane, over the counter, affair in neighbouring Washington State, just a little south of Vancouver, which likes to promote itself as "the greenest city by 2020". Photo via Hella D.

“The past few days have been very disturbing, with a judge who is obviously in the pocket of the Milk Industry, refusing to even enter into a discourse about the situation of our local Community Supported Dairy. At the end of the trial he ordered our local Agister, Alice to stop milking our cows (poor cows) and she has been forced to resign as our Agister.

Seattle Times on raw milk mooovement

Here’s an excerpt from Maureen O’Hagan’s lengthy story for the Seattle Times titled “Is raw unpasteurized milk safe?”:

Click image above to go to Seattle Times page to watch video

“There’s long been a libertarian streak running through the raw-milk crowd. A Christian one, too. Now it’s attracting another demographic entirely: advocates of local food. Dairymen are seizing that opportunity. Five years ago, there were six licensed raw-milk dairies in Washington; today there are 28.

“Unpasteurized milk is a curious thing. It costs up to $13 a gallon. It says right on the carton: “WARNING: This product … may contain harmful bacteria.”

Yet people are passionate about it. Almost evangelistic.

So in early December, when the state announced that raw milk from Dungeness Valley Creamery in Sequim was linked with three E. coli cases, the reaction was, well … emotional.

Raw milk in the U.S.A. — CTV B.C.

Megan Stewart continues CTV’s ongoing enquiry into raw milk issues, this time taking a look at practices south of the border. Here’s an excerpt from her story:

The raw milk verdict in Ontario has been big news right across the country. Click on image above to go to CTV B.C. page to watch this video report

“When it comes to unpasteurized milk in Canada, law makers err on the side of safety, prohibiting people from selling raw dairy products and challenging the legality of a dairy co-op as a way for share-holders to get raw milk.

But south of the border in Washington State, regulators found they had to strike a better balance between individual freedom and public safety — otherwise an underground market for raw milk would thrive.

“I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right” — P.T. Barnum

Or, as it often seems in the case of attempts at slandering raw milk, “no publicity is bad publicity”. Here’s a story showing that, just because you operate in a jurisdiction in which raw milk is legal, doesn’t mean you’re not going to have the sort of problems with health departments that Home on the Range has been having lately. Again, this missive is from Gordon Watson:

“DUNGENESS — In the last month of 2009, the Dungeness Valley Creamery faced one of the worst things that can befall a small food business.

Now, in the first month of 2010, the family-owned dairy is awash in local love.

That’s not too strong a word for the response, after Dec. 2, from North Olympic Peninsula residents who drink the raw milk from the dairy just north of Sequim.