Flutterby™! : Georgia vs freedom 2009-10-16 14:44:40.031025+00

Georgia vs freedom

2009-10-16 14:44:40.031025+00 by Dan Lyke 15 comments

Eric Wagoner is having problems with the State of Georgia seizing raw milk.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-10-16 15:47:22.452826+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Perhaps we need a law that allows a person to sign a simple form and take personal liability for their own actions.

If those cartons of milk had a sticker on them that said: "For non-human consumption" - would that have helped?

People that make good choices with their personal responsibility will thrive and reproduce, people that make bad choices will be a "self correcting problem", and reproduce less.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-10-16 17:05:32.703302+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger

In some place (North Carolina, IIRC) raw milk can only be sold if it has been dyed gray. I guess people don't like the idea of drinking gray milk.

As a kid, for a couple of periods of my life, I lived on my Grandparents (Mom's) dairy farm and drank nothing but raw milk. Mmmmm.. shake the cream back into the milk... Good stuff.

I don't see the big deal with raw milk. We sell raw chicken, beef, fish, etc (with FDA blessing) which if not correctly cooked are excellent sources of Salmonella, Listeria, etc. If people want to buy untreated milk which might be excellent sources of the same, I've no problem with it nor should the FDA. Let the FDA label it with their concerns and make them shut up.

It told me a lot from my youth that my maternal grandparents, who operated a small dairy farm and once drank nothing but raw milk, chose to drink processed milk except for my grandpa's occasional "milk and cornbread" glass, which he made from the raw stuff. They wouldn't stop us from drinking a glass now and then, but only the barn cats consistently got the warm, raw stuff. Come to think of it, those barn cats WERE really, really lively and healthy......

I don't consume milk nowadays for two reasons: homogenization and pasteurization. Both of those render milk completely unlike the elixir I had growing up, and make it totally not worth drinking.

And, yeah, pasteurization was a reasonable response to carrying open buckets of milk through cities that were still powered by horse and mule, but with modern sanitization practices the only reason to pasteurize is to keep dairies with less than acceptable sanitization and hygiene in business.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-10-16 20:29:38.2119+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger

the only reason to pasteurize is to keep dairies with less than acceptable sanitization and hygiene in business.

Which, from my rides through rural PA, seems to be about half of them. That's the number that seem to keep their cattle in more cramped conditions. The others (which I assume are also dairy producers) let their cattle to pasture which, if it isn't actually more hygienic, sure does smell better.

(I had raw milk the whole time I was living in Indiana -- till I was 8. Good stuff.)

I believe that most food laws have to do with squeezing out the small, independent, local producers. I can certainly assess the quality of a dairy farmer's operation, and make my own judgments, as can any other observant human being. By forbidding the sale of raw milk, the powers that be funnel more and more product through processors who enjoy effective barriers to entry in the cost of a processing plant. And power and wealth are concentrated, small artisan farmers made into employees in CAFOs.

I spent a few weeks in Transylvania a couple of years ago. Romania was in the process of joining the EU. Part of that process involved bludgeoning small farmers out of existence with draconian EU "health" laws that are crafted to assure that industrial ag has no competition from smallholders. Of any size.

meuon: Unfortunately humans can reproduce young enough and fast enough to thwart most effects of stupidity. For instance, humans can get pregnant younger than age 18 - prior to which no signed contract is valid. If we really did open the flood gates, thinking Darwin would take care of the stupud, it would probably backfire.

It's even beyond age and speed. We've structured our safety net programs to reward the impoverished who pop out kids to increase their welfare entitlements. Beyond that, the intelligent and prosperous are more likely to limit their reproduction due to their perception that we're already overpopulated. So we've turned Darwin on his head and are tending toward a population of the lazy, stupid and religious fundamentalist.

As much as I agree that people should have access to raw milk should they wish to use it, milk provides an excellent culture medium for a variety of pathological organisms.

Included amongst these diseases is Mycobacterium bovis or bovine TB. It is rarely transmissible from human to human, but raw milk and unpasteurized soft cheese provide a route for infection in humans. One of the problems with the epidemiology in tracing the outbreaks of M bovis is that it generally does not become symptomatic for months to years after infection, and can be difficult to diagnose depending on which body organ(s) the mycobacterium settles into. Bovine TB is becoming a serious problem amongst some Hispanic populations, particularly in lower California because of the proximity to Mexico where raw milk and unpasteurized soft cheese is widely used. But it is not limited to the Southwest, as more and more infections are also being found amongst Hispanics in NY, NY, and probably in other areas as well.

Listeria, brucella, yersinia, staph, strep, campylobacter, salmonella, shigella, pathogenic coliforms, TB as well as others can be and are spread by raw milk.

And yet I have friends who wonder why I read things like Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy The State

Are Mexican dairies required to test for M. bovis? I believe all u.s. dairies are.

I have no direct knowledge of Mexican practices for dairy herds. I can only guess that there are few if any requirements to test for M. bovis in Mexico based on the following from a 2006 article, "Recovery of Mycobacterium bovis from soft fresh cheese originating from Mexico."

"In Mexico, the incidence of bovine tuberculosis varies by region, with beef cattle in the northernmost states having the lowest prevalence at less than 2%. However, the prevalence of M. bovis in dairy cattle in Mexico is significantly higher, with an estimated infection rate in this population of 16-17%."