It’s been nearly a year since I last posted here. A lot has happened in the world of healthy food and raw dairy since I last posted. Let’s see if we can do a little catch-up. DG
The sudden political clout of the foodie and antivaxx movements , symbolized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services (overseeing the FDA and CDC) seems to have come out of nowhere.
Of course, the foodie and antivaxx movements didn’t just come out of nowhere. Their popularization to the point where key leaders are preparing to take control of America’s most important governmental health levers, involved two key developments: the politicization of normally apolitical Amish farmers, who produce much of America’s raw milk; and shrewd politics by MAGA in grabbing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. away from his floundering third-party presidential run to support Donald Trump….while Kamala Harris disparaged him for his “junk science.” Throw in a huge dose of political cynicism (see the post-election photo above, showing Trump, Kennedy, and others celebrating Kennedy’s nomination with a fast-food feast, and you’ve got the upside-down situation where Donald Trump emerges from a dark presidential campaign featuring threats against the most vulnerable (especially immigrants) as the symbol for “make America healthy again.”
Back in 2015 and 2016, right around the time Trump was becoming a serious Republican candidate for president, a rumor began making the rounds among foodies: Members of the Trump family secretly purchased raw milk transported to Mar a Lago by a soft-spoken Pennsylvania Amish farmer, Amos Miller. Donald Trump was among family members and guests who supposedly enjoyed raw milk and other fresh organic foods from the Miller farm.
I checked the rumor out, and the best I could find was an article in a foodie publication that asserted Trump “is a consumer of organic food. His daughter, Ivanka, has said that the whole family consumes mostly fresh, organic meals which she often prepares herself.”
A legend was born, even if the reality was just the opposite: not only was Donald Trump not a secret raw milk drinker and organic food nut, but his food preferences were in the opposite direction, toward fast food, as one of his 2016 Twitter posts of him savoring a bucket of KFC chicken attests. Indeed, when he hosted young athletes from the Clemson champion football team as president in 2019, everyone feasted on fast food from three national chains. But like many aspects of the MAGA movement, reality didn’t matter a whole lot; the important thing was that many foodies were eager to anoint Donald Trump their leader.
The reality became so distorted that toward the end of his first administration, Trump’s Department of Justice filed a civil suit against Amos Miller, alleging that dozens of food clubs the farmer had set up around the country to distribute raw dairy and other farm-fresh products to thousands of consumer members were illegal. The DOJ action was one of several get-tough government actions against Miller that would continue under the Biden administration; at one point in 2021, Miller would be slapped with a $250,000 fine for selling meat that hadn’t been USDA inspected, and not long after that, his farm would be hit by a raid by USDA agents to completely shut down his meat sales. Miller continued to refuse USDA directives to use USDA-inspected slaughterhouses, arguing in his low-key manner that they employed acids to clean meat that were unhealthy for at least some of his food club members.
To Amos Miller and dozens of other sellers of raw dairy and farm-slaughtered meat, many of them Amish farmers, it seemed as if they had no friends in positions of power. Federal and state regulators under both Republicans and Democrats sometimes seemed to be trying to drive these farmer suppliers out of business.
Complicating the situation further, many of the customers of these farmers are parents of autistic children, for whom raw dairy of all types, including from camels, seems to lessen their children’s behavioral symptoms; the parents were increasingly outraged by the government attacks on their supply of raw milk. Some of them, together with other Amos Miller customers, helped the farmer raise more than $150,000 via Gofundme campaigns to help pay his legal bills.
Making matters worse, the Amish farmers, in efforts to maintain their identity as social outsiders living old-fashioned rural lives, avoided using tools our system makes available to establish influence, like high-powered lawyers, lobbying campaigns, and donations to political groups. As I described at various times, Miller would sometimes engage local lawyers to represent him in court, but sometimes he would come into court as his own lawyer. During the Covid pandemic, many in this foodie community joined the antivaxxers in rejecting Covid vaccines.
Enter Fox News and Tucker Carlson. One of Amos Miller’s run-ins with the USDA was sensationalized in a 2022 report by Tucker Carlson as if it was part of a Biden administration campaign against healthy food. Not long after, Los Angeles lawyer Robert Barnes, who had made a name for himself defending Alex Jones in libel cases brought by parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook in Connecticut, offered to represent Miller, who eagerly took him on. Miller apparently had had enough of the seemingly endless government assaults on his farm and network of dozens of food clubs, clustered from Los Angeles to Miami to Boston.
One effect of Miller taking on Barnes as his lawyer was to make Miller’s ongoing federal and state cases nearly regular news on Fox News. Another was that Barnes helped negotiate an arrangement to ease Miller into USDA meat inspections.
One important related development was the entrance of Robert Kennedy Jr. into the 2024 presidential campaign as a third-party candidate. Kennedy’s main claim to fame was as the best known critic of vaccines; he argued they were a cause of autism. But he was also a big proponent of raw milk, advocating for its legalization.
When Kennedy’s presidential campaign foundered, and he sought to align with Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, it was Trump who apparently went after his endorsement — and offered a high cabinet appointment in return. Kennedy then joined Trump in campaign appearances around the country, prompting Trump to advocate “make America healthy again.”
Then, just a few days before the election, an astounding scene played out on a North Carolina highway: a caravan of more than 50 Amish-driven horse-drawn carriages — each adorned with a huge American flag….plus a huge Trump-for-President banner — paraded by in a scene captured in a Tik-tok video. The Amish farmers came from Amos Miller’s home in swing state Pennsylvania to help in flood cleanup in North Carolina. What made the scene so astounding was that the Amish traditionally avoid any involvement in American politics, as part of their general reluctance to attract attention to themselves, even to the extent that they avoid being photographed.
What got them to abandon their make-no-waves tradition? Most immediately, it was likely Donald Trump’s willingness to align himself with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By the end of his own presidential campaign, Kennedy was polling at about 5% — more than enough to tilt the swing-state vote to Trump. And as they say, to the victors go the spoils, which for Kennedy and the foodie-antivaxxer movement means control of the vast Department of Health and Human Services.
What would it have taken for Kamala Harris and the Democrats to have lured Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and all the swing-state impact he likely had? It may not have been possible, but then again, given the Kennedy family’s super-deep Democratic ties, perhaps a commitment to a huge and coordinated federal research program to at long last figure out the health riddle that autism presents might have done it. Unfortunately, we’ll never know the answer to that question.
David thank you for writing about this.
Let this be a SHOUT OUT TO THE RFK TRANSITION TEAM.
I am your guy for national raw milk standards, farmer training and testing!!! We did it with Raw Milk Institute and we can do it for America. We have established standards, trained farmers and helped put many on farm labs on farms. We have done this!
I want to head up the NEW RMO or Raw Milk Ordinance commission. RFK…and Nicole I hope you hear this! You have my cell number. You have my email address and so does Jacob.
The PMO exists for the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. We need a Raw Milk Ordinance or RMO for the fare and appropriate standards for on farm raw milk sales and also larger retail sale of raw milk at the federal level. We also must tear down the CFR 1240.61 walls that separate farmers from their consumers! Standards and farmer training are needed along with routine testing. If not…America is going to have the biggest mess, you can ever imagine. Both RFK and Nicole Shanahan drink my raw milk that they buy in LOS ANGELES from Sprouts. I know, because Nicole was RFKs running mate and she came to our farm in Fresno in June of 2024 and did a documentary on raw milk. I talked at length to her and discussed to pathway to high quality safe raw milk for America. I am not sure if they just assume that retail raw milk can just appear with the signing of some HHS decree….that is not the way this will happen. I want to establish a RMO commission and do this hard work.
https://rawfarmusa.com/blog/the-rfk-jr-campaign-visits-raw-farm-usa
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=nicole+shanahan+raw+milk+and+market+McAfee&&mid=7A32AA95764E26879BA97A32AA95764E26879BA9&&FORM=VRDGAR
Not good Mark. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/11/raw-farm-dairy-recalls-raw-milk-because-of-contamination-with-bird-flu/
right on cue >>> there’s Mary in her role as bearer-of-bad-news. Wilhelm Reich had a name for your character, ma’am = “the emotional plague”. Such People who cannot stand others experiencing the joy of living. Millions of folks in America are getting healthy as they consume REAL MILK : miserable naysayers such as thy-self, lost that contest
the socalled “birdflu’ is just another attempt by wicked people at the levers of power in high places – the bought+payedfor media – to ruin the health of Americans. November 5th came and went … the world did not end
This too shall pass.
in British Columbia, I lost the last round in Supreme Court. doesn’t matter. We have over 40 raw milk dairies operating both as genuine herdshares, as well as simple sales. The Health Authorities are leaving us alone because we have reached critical mass. Over 7000 people on the Facebook group Raw Milk BC
Mary,
Would love your endorsement for leadership to assure testing of raw milk, farmer training and high standards. Please see this CDC study on breast feeding when a mother has Covid. It says…keep on breastfeeding because mammals don’t transmit virus through raw milk, they transmit and provide the antibodies to the virus that the mom has. Cows do the exact same thing. HPAI cow’s milk is rich in antibodies protecting against illness from HPAI. It is “farmers over pharmacies” time. Food is Medicine. Covid and HPAI are both influenzas. We are still mammals and cows are still mammals.
Would love to have Bill Marler’s support as well. You don’t need to love raw milk to support the best possible standards, farmer training and testing. Raw milk is not going away. It is up to us how it goes. I want the best possible raw milk for any consumer that wants it and all farmers that are committed to that journey. RFK is fixed on that goal. I want Raw Milk to be safest and the best it can possibly be.
I think I have shown the perseverance, ethics and pioneering spirit to lead this movement at Raw Milk Institute. PubMed studies show that these RAWMI standards work well. We can even do better!
Be reminded….Carrots are killing Americans. Thats how badly we need to rebuild the GUT MICROBIOME and regain the immunity that has been lost. Safe clean raw milk does this better than any other food. That is its role on earth. It is the first food for mammals and its job is gut microbiome and immune system building. Farmers need great standards, training, better support and more technology to get this right. I want to go and get this done for both farmers and their dear consumers.
https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding-special-circumstances/hcp/illnesses-conditions/covid-19.html
Bird flu is for real. This from a recent FDA commissioner: “California has recently seen a significant rise in detections of H5N1 in dairy herds. Experts believe that animals at as many as half the dairy farms in California are infected. That is why it is important to pasteurize milk, which kills the virus. (All milk sold across state lines is pasteurized; 30 states allow the in-state sale of nonpasteurized milk, which is labeled “raw.”) Two states, Colorado and Pennsylvania, have agreed to test pooled milk from all farms before pasteurization to monitor spread. Bulk milk testing should be mandatory in all states with dairy farms to determine the full extent of the infection on these farms and also allow us to contain the virus. As if to underline the importance of such a mandate, bird flu was detected in raw milk bought retail last Thursday from a dairy producer based in Fresno, Calif.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/opinion/vaccine-bird-flu-pandemic.html
David,
However, PCR does not detect active H5N1. All pasteurized milk pooled in California has PCR detected H5N1. That is because of milk pooling of so many dairies together and PCR detects only dead pieces of genetic data….no live or viable virus is detected by PCR. What is needed is a test for NS1. That protein test detects if the virus is able to grow and make illness happen. H5N1 becomes inactive by the antibodies in the mammal and the H5N1 rapidly becomes not viable and incapable of causing illness. A meta-analysis performed by Coleman Scientific for expert testimony for Delaware Legislature reveals that H5N1 is respiratory and not food born in transmission. https://www.colemanscientific.org/blog/2024/4/7/where-is-the-evidence
Last time I checked…we don’t snort raw milk…we drink it. All nationally reported illnesses since April of 2024, have been very mild and mostly cause pink eye which resolves quickly. These are farm workers that are in direct contact with affected cows. This same report shows a long list of anti virus bioactives that control and neutralize virus in raw milk and consumers. Those bioactives are made inactive by heat of processing. Check out the report!