Two years ago, Vermont farmer John Klar described on this blog how he had decided to challenge state efforts to prevent him from custom slaughtering animals on his farm. In this new piece, he provides an encouraging update to his efforts.
Klar raises grass-fed beef and sheep in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. He and his wife have also raised chickens and pigs, and made raw-milk artisanal cheeses from cows’ and goats’ milk. Klar practiced law until he grew ill in 1998 from Lyme disease, which caused him to succumb to severe pain from fibromyalgia syndrome, which he still battles. The clean food and routine exercise provided by his modest farming efforts have helped him to improve over the years: stress and food additives aggravate his condition.
by John Klar
John Klar, on his Vermont farm
Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets faces difficult times, as anemic milk prices and public outcry over water pollution from dairy farms converge upon the Agency responsible for regulating both. But after a period of wrangling over the extent Vermont should regulate the sale of meats slaughtered on-farm, Vermont’s small farmers appear to be agreeing to a compromise with the VAAFM under the leadership of Secretary Anson Tebbetts. This is good news for all “sides.”
Like many farmers, I have long sold animals (chickens, pigs, sheep, and cows ) for food that has been slaughtered on site. But about two years ago, I was shocked when a VAAFM inspector visited my home to prevent me from selling halves of beef (which I had advertised on Craiglist). This was a senseless restriction, as there is no sanitary difference between the on-farm slaughtering of a whole versus a half animal which would justify such a distinction. But this law severely hinders sales of on-farm slaughtered products, because few households can afford (and consume) an entire beef.
I was still free to sell halves, the regulator told me, if I ship my animals off-farm. The problem with this approach is that my customers wish to know that the animal did not suffer from the stress of transport at slaughter: this guarantees meat quality (which can be greatly compromised if animals endure stress at slaughter) as well as humane treatment. The statutes also limit how many on-farm slaughtered animals I can sell yearly, and impose a “sunset” provision which will prohibit all on-farm slaughter sales effective July 1, 2019 (6 V.S.A. §3311a).
In protest, I challenged the VAAFM to cite or arrest me for violating this law, and proclaimed that I would sell halves as I always had. I appeared at the Vermont Senate Agriculture Committee (with many other farmers), and complained about these restrictions on our traditional farming practices.
Despite some sympathetic legislative ears, the changes I demanded were not passed, and so I set out to sue the State of Vermont to uphold our rights to raise and sell animals from our farms, as we have always done. I organized a number of farmers, itinerant slaughterers and custom processors to pool resources and retain a Vermont attorney to carry our case before the courts. I lined up national press outlets to politicize our cause and called attention to these regulatory restrictions.
On the eve of launching our long-planned offensive, I was advised by several people that the new VAAFM Secretary, Anson Tebbetts, was a “good egg,” who should be given the benefit of the doubt and that I should seek his Department’s alliance for change rather than plunge into litigation.
And so I sent Mr. Tebbetts a letter outlining my aggressive plans, and requesting that the VAAFM meet with me on behalf of the farmers, to avoid such conflict. I am pleased to report that this olive branch was gracefully accepted. It is therefore appropriate to memorialize an understanding which must involve many in conversation before taking the shape of legislation that I hope will be introduced next year.
This commentary is an invitation for participants and the public to involve themselves in this process, so that a balanced regulatory structure may be instituted which will guarantee public health while preserving the Vermont tradition of on-farm slaughter.
The VAAFM does not draft legislation, but obviously its input is solicited by our legislature and its position merits consideration. Mr. Tebbetts has agreed to consider the small farmers’ concerns about existing legislation that restricts our sales to whole animals only; which imposes overall weight limits; and which is set to expire completely next year (meaning all sales of animals slaughtered on farm will be illegal effective July 1, 2019 unless something is done). Changes to these statutes would provide more latitude to small farm operations while retaining VAAFM oversight, and with ongoing conversation this will be achieved.
I am hopeful that a compromise will be achieved between farmers and VAAFM regarding on-farm slaughter laws, which can be presented with a common front to our legislature for consideration and approval. Sales of Vermont meats continue to grow, and many young people are choosing to embrace such small-scale farming alternatives to dairy.
In 1966, Vermont enacted sweeping meat inspection laws, but specifically reserved an exemption: “Animals slaughtered by a producer on his premises may be sold to a consumer in quantities of not less than one quarter carcass….” (1966 Public Acts No. 42, Sec. 16(c)). That was then and what is now is that the 1966 statute has been superseded by the current law, which prohibits even halves of a carcass. And if we don’t act soon, all on-farm slaughter will be illegal come 2019.
Our Vermont farmers produce safe and healthy meats. In a time of increased modern “practices” (like the RAPs), it is refreshing that farmers and the VAAFM seek together to preserve sensible traditions like on-farm slaughter.
God looks like they are one step closer to making the world vegan. We can’t let this happen.
Thanks for sharing this post, David, and to John for exploring options from grass-roots legal challenge to negotiation with state legislators, and writing about it. It is encouraging that your efforts may lead to compromise that benefits not only farmers but families who want to buy fresh local products.
I would like to hear from others what you think we could learn from John when multiple petitions to FDA regarding fresh unprocessed milk and its products are conveniently ignored by federal officials. My hope is that the proposed creation of a Federal Food Safety Agency under USDA does not further stall action on these petitions. Thanks, Joseph Heckman, for sharing the new Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations report in a prior post.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna887941
Best advice to dairy farmers. Sell out as fast as you can !!
From 650,000 dairies in 1970 to 40,000 today, dairies are dying.
My assessment, two things killed them, lack of supply management with massive over production and the pasteurizer which excuses dirty low quality milk, killed them.
No value added and massive over supply. No value No Farm.
Very sad indeed.
Mark,
In 1970 there were 122,194 dairy farms in Canada, in 2007 there were 14660 and today (2017) there are now10961.
https://www.milk.org/Corporate/pdf/DairyEducation-DairyFarmsEN.pdf
Based on the figures you provided the the number of dairy farms in the USA declined by 93% yet during that same time frame in Canada the number of Dairy farms decreased by 91% (virtually the same amount) under supply management no less! So your assessment that the lack of “supply management” is one of the reasons for the huge decline in the number of dairy farms in the USA is incorrect.
The above article I referenced also notes that Canadian dairy farms are becoming larger, the number of cows per farm has risen by about 205 percent, and the volume of milk produced per farm has increased by 547 per cent … Indeed, a trend that lends to confined animal feeding operations and that in turn leads to compromised milk quality!
There are respectively three main reasons why we are loosing dairy farms in both the US and Canada… decreased milk consumption, government cheap food policies, and economy of scale management practices.
Peg,
There are some really important things brewing in the UK right now with regards to raw milk.
Too early to share but, if it goes the way we hope, the world of raw milk as we know it will change. Big time.
Hey Mark, why don’t you just buy them all out. Bigger is better right? Spread
Peg: “I would like to hear from others what you think we could learn from John when multiple petitions to FDA regarding fresh unprocessed milk and its products are conveniently ignored by federal officials. ”
My opinion:
(1) Mark’s petitions were useful because they forced the FDA to articulate their reasons for opposing interstate trade. Michael Landa, Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, elaborated in his reply to Mark on November 25, 2014, and provided references. These arguments can be addressed.
2) The second petition took the wrong approach (I elaborated in previous comments – not certain if you want the whole thing repeated).
The opportunity still exists to try again, and this time addressing the issues which Landa raised. You, Mark, and I should talk.
Correction, I meant to write “recent petition,” not “second petition.” The 2017 petition by the RFCC which I was referring to would be at least the 3rd (if not higher), not the 2nd. My mistake.
“Control oil, and you control nations, control food, and you control the people” Henry Kissinger
“The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot
believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been
introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a
philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.” J. Edgar Hoover 1956
We are in the later stages of an agenda to destroy small farm agriculture. This plan involves financial stress, overregulation, denial of access to retail markets, ridiculous “food safety” claims, intimidation, coercion of state officials, federal (cooperative) funds to the states to “harmonize” with UN regulations that our government agencies have adopted, the land trust scams to take private land, and the destruction of anti-trust laws that our grandparents had in place to prevent things like “mega-dairies” who keep lowering the price small farms get, while producing sick milk, abusing animals and trashing the environment around these dairies (now being pursued by Walmart). Once the “traditional knowledge” of small farmers begins to be lost, people become dependent on the industrial food system and the government.
There is no one guarding the chicken house so to speak. I’ll never forget when Maine’s organic darling Chellie Pingree voted for the Food Safety and Modernization Act, an act just now coming into force that will further place a nail in the coffin of small farm agriculture. Even then people would rationalize that she voted that way for food safety, refusing to believe that she “got the call” and was told how to vote.
Ken,
The difference between retirement of Canadian dairy farmers and USA dairy farmers is this.
Canadians retired rich with good strong balance sheets. American dairy farmers went bankrupt.
The younger generation tends not to follow their fathers footsteps and they leave the farm.
I do concede to your point about nearly identical loss of dairy farms by percent over the same time period.
But….retiring rich sure beats retiring in bankruptcy with severe depression or even suicide.
I have not met an unhappy Canadian dairymen yet ( except for Michael and that is completely warranted )
Mark
how comical, Mister McAffee! = you now siding with one of the most mollycoddled bunch of crybabies in the world – farmers who hold Canadian dairy quota. For 2 decades, you preached relentlessly about the power of the consumer, especially all those “young moms”. Well, north of the 49th parallell there’s one big reason why that same demographic cannot get REAL MILK, legally. that is = because the race traitors ensconced in the high places of this sorry Dominion know better than anyone, that they’d be supremely embarrassed, if competition were allowed for local dairies producing the good stuff. It’d be one more epic fail for communism, among so many others.
I strongly recommend that Organic Pastures send you on a Fact-finding excursion to New Zealand … one of the countries which tried the dairy quota system then ditched it. It would be MOST educational to get a few quotes from dairymen there, who used to hold quota, but have now gone over to producing REAL MILK for real, local folks – by which I mean white people – rather than sending the cream of the champaign in to the maw of Red China
Not a week goes by but we see in the national newspapers here, another editorial calling for common sense to put an end to that perversion of common sense. Dairymen and milkmaids, too, put in their 2-bits’ worth, too … giving away how terrified they are of what they know is coming – unwinding of the communist milk supply racket.
Sure: those who sold their quota already are in Fat City. But they’re whistling past the graveyard … it’s all over but stipulating the dollar amount it’ll take to buy them all out. Uber outflanked the taxi licence racket so taxi licences which once changed hands for hundreds of thousand$, are now worthless. The govt. will simply throw money at the problem = it’s the Canadian way.
How much actual value did the piece of paper permit from the central govt., = the quota = add to the production of milk and its products? Zero. Those same products would have been produced anyway to meet demand from a genuinely free market.
Gordon, I’ve probably told you this before but I’ll say it again, sometimes you make too much sense for our little brains to digest. Don’t stop
Just please turn down the racist overtones, truth is white people are no bigger or better than any other other race or nationality even if we have the most guns and bombs. Things change, and do all the time including your own blood line. Love it and learn.
Just curious Gordon, but what are your bloodlines, where did your ancestors come from? Do not answer if you don’t feel comfortable with it or don’t want us to know. I’m proud of mine no matter what anyone else thinks. Portuguese born and bred 100% but our ancestor’s ancestors might have been from somewhere else
I felt bad leaving off my previous comment, with such a simplistic solution to Mr McAffee’s good question : ‘How would you stabilize milk prices for farmers so they don’t go bankrupt?” Today I came upon a brilliant essay by a man with impeccable credentials for telling America what it NEEDS to hear. Although I disagree with Chris Hedges about “global warming’ I most strongly urge people to read it.
his scenario for the country AFTER the Global Monetary Reset, includes local dairies/ food suppliers as crucial
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=172677
As I previously stated Mark, “For those dairy farmers in Canada that had milk quota (a non asset) given to them and then turned around and sold it 30-40 years later for millions of dollars, on top of the value of their livestock and land are no doubt wealthy individuals with a healthy nest egg. That was a short-term gain at someone else’s expense; namely, todays younger farmers in Canada who are compelled to pay those millions of dollars so they can produce milk!”
Classifying quota as a retirement asset is ludicrous and the fact that a select and limited number of individuals are making a healthy profit on it is unconscionable…
One problem with Canada’s quota system that one seldom hears about is that it keeps women out of dairy farming. Fathers who hold quota bequeath their quota to their sons when they die, not to their daughters, even if those daughters want to farm. It happened to a good friend of mine. The only way she can be a dairy farmer in Canada is by running an illegal herdshare – she cannot afford to buy quota at today’s prices on the exchange … or wait another 15 yrs to get to the top of the marketing board’s wait list. Or, she could marry a dairy farmer, I suppose, but she’s already happily married to a complete non-farmer – he has his own full-time career off the farm.
John, it’s implied that controlling the food means controlling the seeds, and they are already well on their way to that. Save your own
Well, “they” are now in the business of controlling the food AND the seeds. This is compelling reading. I’m going to put up a couple of quotes from the article, and then place the link to the entire article at the bottom of the page.
*************************************
” . . . a largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes, or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’).
“Of course, let’s not also forget that the GMO venture, like the original Green Revolution, often works with bio-pirated germplasm: little more than theft from the Global South to be tweaked and sold back as hybrid or patented GM seeds to the Global South (read The Great Seed Piracy).” **Link to The Great Seed Piracy: https://towardfreedom.org/archives/environment/vandana-shiva-the-great-seed-piracy/
“GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so: the companies that push GM are located firmly within the paradigm of industrial agriculture and associated power relations that shape a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy resulting in strategic surpluses and scarcities across the globe. The choice for farmers between a technology that is so often based on broken promises and non-GMO agriculture offers little more than a false choice.”
“Consider too that once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back.”
“There is much evidence showing that GM and non-GM crops cannot co-exist. Indeed, contamination seems to be part of a cynical industry strategy.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/gmo-agriculture-and-the-narrative-of-choice/5646067
There are many good links embedded within the article which are worth reading, as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/21/most-common-childhood-cancer-partly-caused-by-lack-of-infection
Fascinating read.
Lack of early immune system exercise and exposure to diversity of bacteria is found to be the source of childhood onset Leukemia! UK scientist finds after 30 years of study.
Hey Watson,
What’s your answer to the conventional world of milk? How would you stabilize milk prices for farmers so they don’t go bankrupt?
well, Mark, start with your own experience … ie, the McAffee homestead, about 2 decades ago, when your family could see the writing on the wall and decided to get out of apples and go into REAL MILK. From a baseline of having genuine CAPITAL, ie – a piece of land bought and payed for – Organic Pastures Dairy created its own customer base where there was none before. With your brilliant marketing skills ( and I mean that sincerely ) OPD became a price MAKER, instead of a price TAKER … compelling those who wanted the good stuff, to pay everyone along the supply chain, properly. As long as governments get out of the way, the free market works very well.
The supply quota rackets in Canada, for milk / eggs / other commodities are long past broken. But consumers are so bamboozled by a lifetime habit of buying de-vitalized foodstuffs, that they don’t know any better.
Human engineered systems grow ’til they reach a point of diminishing returns. They they reverse in a feedback loop. The CAFO concept reached that point about half a century ago, but has been sustained because of massive hidden subsidies, skewing the economics of the entire agricultural system … especially : corporations paying dividends derived from stealing nutrition out of the very mouths of our children. Confer with Schumaker’s book “Small is Beautiful” in which he coined the word : “dis-inter-mediation”. Instead of monster CAFOs producing milk then shipping it across the continent and back, a local dairy serving its neighbourhood will work. Anywhere from 6 cows in milk, up to 40. In that model, the consumer has to be educated so as to be willing to pay to the true cost of the food value. If that sounds too idealistic, a good illustration of its possibility, is ; that the 3-year transition period has now ended, so that trans-fats are illegal in processed foods. Artisanal bakeries are doing VERY well these days, getting the prices they set for gourmet products. Same for REAL MILK
The view out my front window is of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where supertankers go by daily. It takes them about 6 miles just to stop, before they can begin to turn around. 70 years since Dr Johanna Budwig did her research and started warning against hydrogenation of food oils, society now admits its mistake and is correcting. When I went to SFU = half a century ago = Professor Marshal McLuhan was telling us then, that computers were sounding the death-knell of ‘mass production’. Same is happening with “pasteur-ized” milk mass-produced for the masses.
… it’s too late to help those farmers … they were bankrupt long ago, but didn’t know it. They embody what’s wrong with America. This country is on the slippery slope into the pigsty prophesied in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We’re entering the Kondratieff winter … things aren’t going to get better for farmers ’til after the next big crash. As hard as it is to swallow = Best thing they can do is manage an orderly retreat into formal bankruptcy
Re. Kondratiev (Kondratieff) Waves
Indeed, “if one meddles with nature, it (nature) can be merciless during the correction”.
http://www.thegoldandoilguy.com/financial-winter-nearing/
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article214410944.html
when I saw the highly biased and un-researched anti raw milk OP ED piece in the Sac Bee last month by the pediatrician I could not let it stand. It was literally the same old CDC, FDA anti raw milk vomit being spewed onto the public.
I also got emails from raw milk groups saying…Mark you’ve got to address this guy. The Sac Bee published my response.
I’m glad to see you and Mark standing up in support of raw milk and other fresh foods.
The problem is, doctors are in the business of selling drugs, not selling health and I doubt if any of them across the nation will take advice from anyone who doesn’t have bigphRMa stamped on his forehead. That’s just the way they are. We all have to hope that there are enough people who seek out alternative sites to get their nutritional information, rather than depending on a doctor for advice about foods.
Medicine is not what it used to be, sadly. We have more doctors, more hospitals (huge ones), more clinics, more urgent care units – – and the most sickly population anywhere in the world, not to mention the highest death rate. I will never understand what it’s going to take to get people to realize this fact, but most of them (I think) are just too busy to care to look at facts and statistics in order to learn the truth. That is what the medical industry counts on.
You left out a few facts in your article.
Bill needs to update since the 2016 recall was an outbreak with children developing HUS.
http://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/organic-pastures-recalls-raw-milk-again/
Mark,
Excellent letter, glad to see it published.
I also sent the pediatrician a copy of my recent journal article Securing fresh food from fertile soil, challenges to the organic and raw milk movements
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renewable-agriculture-and-food-systems/article/securing-fresh-food-from-fertile-soil-challenges-to-the-organic-and-raw-milk-movements/18325E375E068A538E07EF4E6F6ABA22
CDC: Canal Water Started the Yuma-linked E. coli Outbreak
http://www.growingproduce.com/vegetables/leafy-vegetables/cdc-canal-water-started-yuma-linked-e-coli-outbreak/
Ok everyone,
This is the ultimate attack on everyone. I think that everyone here will have consensus on this.
https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/science-times?partner=applenews&ad-keywords=APPLEMOBILE®ion=header&asset_id=100000005955815
When the Russians have more ethical integrity than this Administration, we know that we are in serious deep shit.
The Trump Admin attending the WHO conference tried very hard and even used tarrif threats and withdrawal of military support to attempt to encourage more use of baby formulas and did not support breast feeding!!!
The Russians stepped in and said that they could not do this and that breast feeding was very important. The Russians sided with our allies and saved the day!!!
Can we all agree that this administration and its support for the market share and profits of baby formula makers,….over the last 40 years of medical consensus that strongly encourages breast feeding is the ultimate indictment of Trump! Can we all agree on this for the sake of humanity? This president is making choices that will sicken children in order to assure corporate profits. Yikes OMG.
Every time you think we can’t sink any lower….we do. It seems the U.S. tried to sabotage a resolution supported by the rest of the civilized world encouraging breast feeding…..and threatened tariffs and withholding aid to small impoverished countries that supported the resolution. This is the action of an outlaw fundamentalist country, except our fundamentalism isn’t religiously based, but profit based: do anything and everything to support the major corporations that produce infant formula…..and screw the health of infants. Truly shameful.
Here is a better link to the article, I think:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html
Mark, while I completely agree with you on this despicable arm twisting tactic, I remain skeptical about the messenger. The NY Times is mostly a propaganda mouthpiece and should never be completely trusted “just because they reported it in the newspaper.” Ditto for The Guardian, they are both owned and controlled by Trump haters.
One aspect that goes unmentioned yet I think is paramount in the decision of 3rd world country mothers, is that they can breast feed for free and maybe just can’t afford to buy baby formula.
Before you question trustworthiness of NYTimes and The Guardian, you should provide evidence of where they went wrong on this story about breast feeding. What do you have? Hopefully something more than your personal prejudices. If you read the articles, they are well documented with named sources quoted throughout.
No evidence David, just a general observation and perhaps personal bias. I’ll just toss out one example which again I have no evidence but.. Abbot Labs probably donates to every major candidate so why highlight that they donated to Trump? Just saying…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/08/trump-administration-opposes-breastfeeding-resolution-report
Here it is again. better link.
If you love kids this should really piss you off!!