Article - Raw Milk Drinking Returns, Should It?

[darius]

Well Paul, Congrats!

[Helen]

How exciting, Paul! Congrats!

I wish I had your guts

[sstrantz]

http://thebovine.wordpress.com/

[ArnaudForestier]

Thanks, Helen and Darius.  I'm very excited; part of a puzzle I've been simmering on for quite a while.  It's a fantastic program, I've come to know the people involved via the grazing community, and I'm eager to become a student, again. 

I hope to manage my own small herd of selected breeds, and otherwise walk as lightly as I can on the Earth while doing it all.  Raw milk, derived sustainably.  That's my goal.

[McCreamy]

Congrats!!! Way to live the dream

[Boofer]

Bingo, Boof and Darius.  It's never raised.  It's an uphill battle to educate, and truly reach people, but I'm hopeful that so long as raw milk producers understand they (we, I hope - see below) have to work doubly, triply hard to provide top-notch, clean milk, I think the game will be won, eventually.

Boof, crazy you're mentioning Organic Pastures.  Just been exchanging with Pav today, and a couple of local friends, on how they do what they're doing.  Might as well make the announcement now, I've been accepted into the UW Madison School for Beginning Dairy & Livestock Farmers, emphasis in Pasture-Based Dairying.  I won't have a ton of cash on hand, to try and achieve a dream.  The portability that they of Organic Pastures do is something under very close study for me these days.  Today, to be exact, so pretty wild, your synchronicity, Boof.

As always, Paul, at your service....

Congrats.

Study hard and take copious notes (Yeah, like you need to be told.  ).

-Boofer-

[ArnaudForestier]

Thanks, Boof.  Looking forward to it.

Study hard and take copious notes (Yeah, like you need to be told.  ).

Hahahah, well, in the words of the immortal Jim Carrey, "they're on to me...." 

Yep, I came to college relatively late in the game (many lives ago, Berkeley, middle '80s, but still in my mid-twenties), so I came back with a bit of a frenetic vengeance, shall we say....I tend to be, uh, an overpreparer, to put it kindly.

[Boofer]

I tend to be, uh, an overpreparer

Say it isn't so. No, really, it hardly shows. 

-Boofer-

[ArnaudForestier]

Really?  Wow, thanks, man.  I had hoped so. 

Say, in keeping with the "close to the vest thing," I'm buying a wardrobe for my studies.  I was thinking conservative, along these lines:



I mean, I realize I come from a city background, and don't want to stand out.  Looks good, yes?

(sorry....my hijack stopped....back to Wayne's raw milk...thanks for the indulgence, friends... )

[Gustav]

I have a dairy farm of my own with jersey's here in south africa & 75% or more of my client's want raw milk instead of pasteurised. They say that there isn't anything better than the 1/4 - 1/3 pf cream that seperates to the top the next morning in the fridge. I don't sell pasteurised milk unless someone requests it.

I will post a pic to show what it looks like. Mmmm... Creamy.

[MrsKK]

HUGE Congrats, Paul!  Now me, I'm just seat of the pants with this dairying thing, but it works for me!

Thanks for sharing the articles, folks (sorry - I can't remember exactly who posted both of them).  Raw milk is so awesome - if it weren't for my cow, I wouldn't drink milk at all (get serious digestive issues from P/H crap) and I never would have learned how to make cheese in all likelihood.

Gotta start getting people from the Dairy State to stand up for their raw milk rights!  Go Kentucky!

[Sailor Con Queso]

I truly believe that if the Governor of Wisconsin had had the spine to sign the raw milk bill last year, that the raw milk flood gates (pun intended) would have been opened in many states across the country. If the Dairy States takes the lead, how can other states, like Kentucky, ignore that?

We have cow shares here, but they are really borderline from a legal standpoint. The Milk Safety Board generally looks the other way until someone sells enough to be on the public radar. I know more than one farmer that has lost his farm, including an Amish farmer in northern Kentucky. The irony is that NOBODY here has been successfully prosecuted, but the legal fees are huge and can easily force them into bankruptcy. I love raw milk and can certainly be very vocal when necessary, but I'm not a protest organizer. IMHO, someone, or some group needs to setup a legal defense fund to fight back. Encourage dairy farmers to sell raw milk thru the cow shares and lease programs. If they get stopped or arrested, the legal defense fund would be there to help them out. Our country was forged on civil disobedience. We need to have another Boston Tea Party and start pouring industrialized milk overboard.

This is all about greed and the big milk producers, not public health.

[darius]

Sailor, the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund does exactly that... Unfortunately, funding is voluntary but if we all kicked in just $5 it would make a huge difference.
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/

[linuxboy]

FTCLDF does this, and Aajonous also helps. In PA, there's a group who's using a similar private club structure. There are many suits pending. The real core issue behind the situation of right to consume and right to produce and sell is the modern interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and the crazy was Wickard v Filburn came together in the 1940s.

One way or another, this is going to come to something even more serious fairly soon. Food modernization act sort of makes it all an inevitability.

[ArnaudForestier]

Absolutely agree with everything you said, Sailor.  Doyle's 11th hour reversal was, it seems to me, nothing less than caving to those industrial producers; had zero to do with public health.

In fact, this site, and map, guides a lot of my thinking going forward; exactly what you're calling for, a Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  MN allows farm sales; so does every state bordering my home, save Michigan.  If we can't do it here, as sad as it would be for me to uproot once again and move, we will go where we can do what we believe in.  Re: the current WI bill pending on raw milk, one farmer I know, who has withstood a lot of attempts to shut him down, loathes the current bill - "they're trying to make it a privilege, that was never less than a right." 

I love my (relatively new) home; love its pastoral quality, its care about good food, its love for farmers.  But the industrial paradigm is strong, and there are a lot of interests allied against raw milk, smaller, family farms, and the small, cheese and other value-added products producer.  We vote with our pocketbooks. among other things.  This really is an important issue.

Edit:  whoops! cross-posted some info.