Last September 20, I posted an item that seemed humorous at the time, about Mark McAfee’s encounter with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the issuance of a press release concerning the recall of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. cream contaminated with listeria monocytogenes. FDA officials had asked Mark to write his version of a press release and, not surprisingly, he came up with language very much at odds with the FDA.
While it’s safe to surmise that no one at the FDA appreciated the humor of that encounter, what is perhaps most important about the matter at this point in time is that there are two press releases that resulted from the back-and-forth process still posted on the FDA web site. Both the press releases, dated Sept. 21 and Sept. 24, contain this sentence:
“The product [cream] was sold in retail stores throughout California and was also available worldwide via phone orders, and is not pasteurized.”
Wouldn’t you think that if the FDA had a problem with what Organic Pastures was doing, it might have adjusted that sentence to say, “…and was also available worldwide via phone orders, in violation of FDA regulations about interstate sale of raw milk products”?
The reason no qualification was included then, or ever related to Mark afterwards, is that the FDA had in fact approved OPDC’s labeling of raw milk for non-California sales as pet food back in early 2005. The whole matter actually started in April 2004, according to an FDA “warning letter” written to OPDC in February 2005 (which I couldn’t locate on the FDA web site, but which I have in paper form), demanding that OPDC discontinue interstate distribution of raw milk “in final package form for human consumption.”
The FDA’s press release of late 2007 said what it said because there was a problem with the cream, and not with anything else.
It would be nice to believe, as Amanda Rose and William Lind suggest, that OPDC brought this latest crackdown by law enforcement down on itself by somehow wink-winking or waving a red flag in front of authorities. Forget about blaming the victim. What we are dealing with here, as a number of individuals point out, has nothing to do with what’s legal or illegal (though it would be helpful, as Steve Bemis suggests, if federal law permitted interstate transport of raw milk into states that allow it).
There can be no doubt, after all that has happened over the last year-and-a-half, that we are witnessing a concerted, and desperate, campaign to place a huge lid on the growth in the consumption of raw milk. Pete Kennedy of the Weston A. Price Foundation called it correctly in my recent “Milk Wars” Nation article, when he pointed out that the authorities realize they can’t scare people away from raw milk, so they’ve moved instead to cripple the supply side.
The campaign is focused like two lasers on New York and California. The battles now going on are truly pivotal. Losses in one or both places will lead the authorities to pull the same tactics in other states. Wins will back them into a corner.
At this point in time, despite the expenditure of huge resources in manpower—the detectives out interviewing low-level employees of a small dairy at all hours of the night are just the tip of the iceberg—the bureaucrats may be getting uneasy that they are beginning to come up short. The California judge’s temporary restraining order issued last Wednesday, on top of the California protests and growing raw milk consumption, are communicating that message.
With their latest escapade, they have to be wondering what the hell is going on here. When FDA criminal investigators secretly question employees of most firms under investigation, the investigators typically find people who resent their employers, and are willing to tattle, and even wear hidden wires. And assuming the employers discover they are under investigation, they almost always want to avoid going public with news of a grand jury investigation—after all, it’s not good PR in most industries.
Yet in the case of OPDC, not only did the employees spill the beans, but the employer went around trumpeting to the media that he’s being investigated! And the request to an employee to wear a wire suggests the authorities don’t quite have “the goods” on Mark McAfee just yet.
The problem here may be that the bureaucrats in charge haven’t communicated to their underlings that this isn’t about violation of any laws, but rather about much more serious matters like rights and freedom and privacy. What the heck, let’s call it for what it is—a government vendetta.
But the threat is not what the government proclaims it to benot the small, local farm, not OPDC, not Claravale. Rather the threat is something as abstract as an idea. The government-industrial food complex is actually battling a notion, gradually creeping into America and elsewhere, that what they are doing is bad for us, good for them. They know that if that idea infects enough people, a revolution may occur. And these days, with counter-culture food ideas spreading like unfettered friendly bacteria, they may be feeling that the end could be near. To the industrial food complex, something must be done.
i am not asking this in any kind of defilement frame of mind. i am asking this frankly. if ya’ll know something to shut down this line of thought, then i’m sure you’ll let me know. promptly. and i will welcome it. but it IS a thought.
Does Mcaffee’s size and marketing strategy warrant this kind of treatment by the CDFA? I don’t think so. These growing pains are going to be a part of it if we want more of these kinds of large scale raw milk operations.
I prefer the herdshare model personally. It insures a certain quality of customer, as well as putting a face on the responsibility the farmer has to insure a quality product.
What I’ve researched has both startled and scared me. I too love my country, but am disgusted with my government. I have drawn the conclusion that my government doesn’t care about my family or our health; they care about the money in their pockets and retaining their power.
As a side note, the breast on my girlfriend’s 3-year old daughter began to swell after drinking milk sold at Costco. Her pediatrician advised her to switch immediately to Alta Dena. Why is that ok? Where are the government raids and prosecutions against the mega dairy farmers loading up their cows with hormones?
I’ll make my own choices and take responsibility for myself and my family, thanks very much. I just pray for the freedom to continue doing so.