There’s an interesting discussion on my Nov. 25 post in which I encourage people to buy lots of raw dairy products.
Mark McAfee includes a list of suggestions to would-be raw milk producers. His basic advice is that while it may be difficult to raise the money to buy cows and obtain land, you shouldn’t let that stand in your way. Be creative and persistent.
Interestingly, Mark of all people fails to mention the biggest pitfall confronting new raw milk producers: unfriendly regulators. Maybe he’s been living with that nemesis for so long that he simply accepts it as one of life’s daily irritations, like corrupted computer files and delayed UPS deliveries.
No matter. An Observer seems to anticipate this oversight, suggesting that Mark also advise would-be raw dairy producers to befriend their local dairy inspectors. Wonderful idea. Maybe start a little “Adopt a Regulator” campaign, kind of like the “Adopt a Highway” programs. Make some spiced eggnog (with raw cream) when the inspector comes to your dairy.
Amanda Rose suggests buying lots of liability insurance—clearly an excellent idea in our litigious society.
Concerned Person says producers should be sure to warn their potential customers of the dangers of pathogens, and pushes some kind of point-of-sale signage, courtesy of a Lauren Christopher law.
There are all sorts of excellent suggestions about the signage. An Observer points out that Big Pharma provides endless warnings on its network television ads pushing people to get their doctors to write new prescriptions.
Now there’s something we can learn from. If you listen to them, many of the Big Pharma warnings are pretty scary—heart, liver, kidney and other serious risks from the little pills. You can easily die from taking erectile dysfunction pills.
But what’s the bottom line? Sales are through the roof. People rush to their doctors seeking the latest and greatest. It’s obvious: no one reads or listens to the warnings or, if they do, they don’t believe the dire language.
The same thing would happen with warning signs over the raw dairy shelves in grocery stores. CP imagines possibly 20,000 of California’s 40,000 raw milk drinkers might be scared off.
Forget about it! People might read big signs the first time, but the warnings would quickly become part of the background and be ignored.
That’s why the authorities won’t go along with signage. They know people will ignore the signs, and that raw milk sales will continue to increase.
Remember, this isn’t about safety and individual responsibility. It’s about ideology. The ideology is that germs are bad and make us sick, and expensive drugs, never-ending vaccinations, and high tech make us well (and help the economy). When your position is based on ideology, facts are just an annoyance.
So the warning signs are only allowed for Big Pharma. No worry about people becoming healthier there.
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We’re getting a vivid reminder of the role of ideology in all this via the new revelations about melamine. We’re now told that trace amounts of melamine in U.S.-produced baby formula aren’t a problem, even though the evidence is that infants are affected disproportionately by even small amounts of poison. The stuff stays on store shelves, available to millions of consumers, and their babies.
We’re also repeatedly told by ag authorities in New York, Pennsylvania, and California that even a single cell of listeria monocytogenes in raw milk is so dangerous we should throw away the milk and shut down the dairy that produced it…even though scientific evidence is clear that low levels of listeria monocytogenes aren’t a public health danger (and no in those states has gotten sick from ingesting the stuff).
FYI – this outbreak report released last week by the CSPI may be of interest:
http://www.cspinet.org/new/200811251.html
"According to the foodborne-illness data crunched by CSPI in its annual Outbreak Alert! report, a pound of fish and shellfish is 29 times more likely to cause illness than the safest food category, a pound of dairy foods. After dairy, produce is the second safest category of food, followed by pork."
LOL @ "Adopt a Regulator." I did kind of wonder what The Observer was suggesting exactly. I assume it was a "dot your I s" suggestion.
As well, I agree big-time that the countervailing suggestion be taken up so as to warn also concerning slow-acting and ubiquitous refined sugars, flours, hydrogenated vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, etc. etc. not to mention the endless list of drugs, 80% of which treat symptoms rather than causes. Just one example – thanks in large part to the efforts of Mary Enig and Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation, trans-fats are now deservedly under a dark cloud. The other shoe not yet dropped, however, is to let the American public know that hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils have the same risks as trans-fats, and I defy anyone to get out of the typical American grocery store without loading up on a basket of these free-radical poisons.
Again, the lawyers and regulators take the easy way out when they take pot shots at the rare quick-acting problem with raw milk (assuming, here, the epidemiology gets it right), yet ignore the far more pervasive long-acting problems. The latter cause orders of magnitude more damage to the health of society, yet the former are high-profile whipping boys which make the lawyer and regulator enforcers, respectively, money and warm fuzzies, while the really bad actors quietly slip away to the bank with quarterly profit goals met and annual bonuses paid out. Warnings work for these guys and regulators seem to think they are important – why not use the warning device as well for raw milk and dairy??
…"eating sterilized, irradiated, pasteurized, preserved, GMO foods will decrease your immunity and invites illness".
Spending a sunny afternoon in front of a Safeway with this kind of sign would be daring for me, but I’m real tempted. Now, who makes a nice sign?
And this was for organic poultry in western France, I wonder what other "feeds" are contaminated and in which countries?
http://cbs4.com/consumer/tainted.baby.formula.2.871279.html
People are warned and yet the stuff is still used. Will the "labels" protect the formula companies from suit? Shouldn’t they have been pulled off the market?
David K- A sign like that would open some peoples eyes. Perhaps increase the demand for noncontaminated/healthy foods.
It was a report on the levels of melamine now being allowed in infant formula. I think it was reported by the Associated Press. I think I remember you having a few desparaging remarks for the AP which is why the whole timbre of the report suprised me.
The report stressed that, previously, officials had maintained it was impossible to set a ‘safe’ standard for melamine and that now, seemingly suddenly, they have decided there is a ‘safe’ level. The report also makes note that there’s no new research to support any ‘safe’ level.
The appalling part was at the end though. The report told parents, in no uncertain terms, that they MUST continue to feed their children formula. It stressed that mixed diets and home-made food will lack proper nutrition for an infant and that American-made formula (even if it contained melamine) is safer and healthier.
I was alternately furious, grateful I didn’t have an infant, and appalled.
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I’ve got something to add as well about the pharmacuticals. I was perscribed a set of blood pressure medications that, within a day and a half of taking the medication would leave me with stomach cramps so severe I couldn’t eat or even stand up. I read over the included information and my reaction was indicitave of an allergic reaction.
I went to my doctor about it and he told me there was NO WAY that those medications were causing me that problem and that if I didn’t take them I would have a stroke in five years.
What benefit is there even to the warnings if the family doctor doesn’t even acknowledge their existance?
(PS, I’m sorry if my spelling is terrible, it’s early and my mother’s parakeet took a chunk out of my finger over Thanksgiving š
How did we arrive at this point in time that we can no longer produce enough food to feed our selves? Was is it not past and present US farm and trade policies?
I hope that by pointing out these dire problems and asking how we got here doesnt label me as just an antigovernment raw milk drinker.
Here is another mind bending article revealing TPTB at work. I wish it were’t so.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20081130_Melamine_scare_difficulty_of_policing_food.html
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And to elaborate a bit on what Alexis Bogue reported above, it was Dr. Stephen Sundlof, FDA’s director of food safety, who is reported to have said this: "Switching away from [U.S.-manufactured] infant formulas to alternate diets or homemade formulas could result in infants not receiving the complete nutrition required for proper growth and development."
Yes, it is true that one could produce an inadequate baby formula in one’s own kitchen, but in light of the fact that the FDA’s new, baseless standard allows manufactured formula to be poisoned with melamine, Dr. Sundlof’s statement rings hollow.
sorry
I suppose the reason I am in favor of a simple label that clearly states, in plain language, what is contained therein, is because every consumer may then, at his whim, be warned off, or do the due diligence and discover for himself whether he ought to eat it, or scoff at it.
What we have in play, however, is a base sense among government people that their view of what shall be eaten must prevail, so the only functional approach can be one that achieves that end. Simple labels, if one is bent on control, will never do. They will always, in the government mind, offer an "unrealistic sense of security in the sale."
What the core of the movement (I like your phrase!) is saying is that we are being hoodwinked. A government-industry alliance has decreed that food coming from unnatural ag practices which is then deconstituted, reorganized, chemicalized, heated, and otherwise processed, is "normal" and therefore requires no health warnings, while a natural product like raw milk is treated as a virtual poison. Again, a very simple look at the incidence of disease in recent generations, and the utilization of medical care to "manage" that disease, ought to warn any sane person off the government/industry line.
I’ve had it up to here with "effective" labels.
Does that mean that the FDA actually has an ideology that can be identified?? I thought it was simple, corrupt, market protection and greed.
One of the charges that has been leveled at OPDC in the FDA Civil Lawsuit is:
1. Making and selling a new unauthorized FDA drug.
I think I will submit an application for new drug to the FDA….called "RAW MILK DRUG".
Lets see how the FDA responds to that idealogy.
That would create a massive headache for somebody….but what a move. They brought it up, I didn’t. Oh the claims I could and will make. They will then say that the claims and science are invalid. That would bring them out into the light so we can see the color of their eyes and the content of their souls.
Melamine is just fine…..raw milk is liquid death….are we dealing with humans here??
Mark McAfee
NAIS, FDA, WTO, NAFTA, IMF, FDIC, TARP all important sounding acronyms but.
NONE DARE CALL IT INSANITY IN A TIME OF UNIVERSAL INSANITY