Raw Milk more dangerous than nuclear weapons!!! Really!!!

by ScottK
(Merrickville)

Once again a small farmer is being prosecuted for providing shares of raw milk to his customers. Michael Schmidt of Durham Ontario has been selling 'shares' in his heritage breed Canadiennes to local consumers.

These people, presumably intelligent adults able to weigh the pro's and con's of consuming raw milk, have chosen an un-processed, un-pasteurized, and essentially REAL food, as opposed to the plastic, 'vitamin-enhanced' liquid that we see in the stores.

Various government ministries have come down on raw milk as a health hazard, claiming every disease from listeriosis to premature baldness is caused by consuming it.

The pamphlets and advertising I've seen produced by these agencies is reminiscent of the infamous 'reefer madness' propaganda of a by-gone era. God help us if al-Queda ever discovers the awesome destructive power of raw milk. We'd be goners!!

Here's the reality; pasteurization was introduced circa WWII for a couple reasons; first, un-pasteurized milk products do not stay fresh for weeks, so could not be shipped to the troops. And, with the advent of 'bulk collection' of milk, pasteurization was used as a substitute for sanitization. One farmer's bad batch could contaminate all the others, so the solution was to 'kill' everything, good and bad, in the milk, them add back artificial vitamins.

Unpasteurized milk from from a clean, well run dairy poses no more threat than any other unprocessed food.

This is not really about safety, it's about marketing. The Milk Marketing Board wants to retain control; that can't happen if, willy-nilly, we are allowed to decide for ourselves what food we eat.

10 US states allow and monitor the sale of raw milk; the raw milk products carry a warning label, describing the possible risks to consumers. Apparently they believe people can make their own decisions about what to eat, and the state limits its role to establishing guidelines and monitoring compliance.


This is all fairly hilarious when you consider the products our government does consider OK for sale, e.g. tobacco. I can pick up a pack of smokes anywhere, a product that is GUARANTEED to kill 50% of it's consumers, but I can't get raw milk because it's too dangerous.

Kind of makes you wonder if there is a Politician Planet out there where all these yahoos are bred and then dispatched to us. For you amateur astronomers in the audience, the Politician Planet can be detected by it's extraordinarily high rate of SPIN.