It always helps in a political struggle to have a model to base your strategies on. In my talk in Virginia at the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (VICFA) session last week, I made a connection, as I have in a few blog entries, to the Civil Rights struggle, as well as to the struggle of the farm workers led by Cesar Chavez via a national boycott of grapes between 1965 and 1970.

But I wonder if there may actually be another struggle that more accurately conveys the struggle over raw milk, and nutritional freedom in general, one that is generally seen as much less glamorous in historical analysis: America’s prohibition of alcohol between 1920 and 1933, via constitutional amendment. While alcohol in 1919 had much wider acceptance than raw milk today, there are some intriguing parallels, the most important one being that the government was seeking to deny consumption of a food product many people desire.

In the early 1920s, the government arrested thousands of individuals and business people for violating prohibition, and speakeasy’s were common in most cities and towns. (The VICFA session, in a state that bans sale of raw milk, had a bit of the speakeasy feeling, circa 2007, with raw cow’s and goat’s milk being served to all who wanted some.) By 1933, the government gave up. The push for prohibition had been overwhelmed by demand from consumers.

I wonder if something like that could happen with raw milk (and related products). More farmers today are being drawn to providing raw milk illegally to consumers by the simple fact of rising consumer demand. Even if farmers don’t feel strongly about nutritional freedom, it’s often difficult if you’re struggling at a subsistence level to reject offers of $5 a gallon or more for a product the corporate and government-controlled monopolies are paying $1.50 a gallon for.

The concern about being overwhelmed by consumer demand may help explain the increasing tendency toward intimidation by state and federal authorities, per my post of June 11. As several people noted, the government’s fear tactics are becoming ever more shrill, and suspect even by those who don’t know much about the issue.

The struggle to do away with Prohibition ended not with some kind of political victory, but rather an economic victory. The forces of supply and demand turned the tide.

The situation with raw milk may well end the same way, with the forces of supply and demand overwhelming the wimpy regulators. It’s not such a far-fetched idea. An excellent analysis of changing attitudes toward food by the media, in the current Columbia Journalism Review, concludes with a quote from an influential and experienced newspaper food editor about how locally grown food has moved from elite restaurants to wider distribution in Kansas: “When it’s in the supermarkets and the soccer moms are talking about it, you know it’s the start of something big.”

I think Mary McGonigle-Martin makes an excellent point about the necessity for people to be educated about how to handle raw milk. Actually, the same advice applies to other nutrient-rich foods; experts on raw juice advise newbies to limit consumption of certain juices, like beet and cranberry juices, early on, until their systems become adjusted.

All of which leads inevitably back to the larger issue of changing the research and health-care focus toward understanding the role of immunity and nutrition, as opposed to searching out every last bad germ. That’s why raw milk is such a useful symbol.