I just completed a followup column about Michigan’s raw milk war that’s been posted at BusinessWeek.com, and in certain respects, it’s more chilling than my initial column last week reporting on the raids, searches, and confiscations in Vandalia and Ann Arbor. So I want to explore the ramifications of what’s been going on, and think a little about where all this is leading.
I should preface what I’m going to say by pointing out that I tend not to have a conspiratorial view of government activities. More often than not, government officials tend not to be organized enough to carry out conspiracies.
That’s not to say government officials don’t try to send messages with their actions. Now that the Michigan situation has played out for nearly two weeks, I’m beginning to view the events of Friday October 13 as the launch of Phase I of a campaign of fear. The heavy-handed tactics of the Michigan Department of Agriculture had to have been approved at high levels of Michigan government.
The Phase 1 message of the sting operation may well have been to set an example of Family Farms Cooperative and Richard Hebron, to scare off other farmers who want to get into the raw milk business. It’s an attractive business to small farms because the margins associated with distributing milk at $6.50 a gallon direct to consumers are so much better than distributing it to a major dairy processor for $1.00 a gallon. So Michigan authorities may have intended to drive the fear of God into other farmers with dreams of going after a lucrative new market.
Other agencies use this scare tactic all the time. The Internal Revenue Service targets a few tax cheats in hopes of discouraging the masses from being dishonest. The prosecution of Enron and other corporate executives is another example of how the government tries to set some examples, so as to keep the mass of corporate executives from looting their companies.
But when MDA inspector Beth Howell served a Cease-and-Desist notice on Morgan & York, the MDA went a considerable step beyond setting an example, and in my view launched Phase 2 of its campaign. Phase 2 is intended to accomplish two goals: first, further isolate Richard Hebron and the other farmers in the cooperative; and second, intimidate Tommy York and his partner, Matt Morgan, so there will be no question of them, or any other Ann Arbor retailers, coming to the cooperative’s rescue and hosting the Friday distributions of the co-op’s products. So far it’s working.
The reason I find Phase 2 so disturbing is that, while Phase 1 is a fairly common tactic in law enforcement, Phase 2 is a tactic more common to police states. In dictatorial societies, you don’t just go after the troublemaker, but you go after the troublemaker’s friends and associates.
So I find myself thinking about what Phase 3 might involve, and here I know I’m becoming conspiratorial. One thought that keeps going through my mind is this: When the MDA confiscated Richard Hebron’s computer and business records, it acquired information about the identities and purchase habits, of each of the 800 or so co-op member families–in other words, important confidential information. Will the authorities now find a way to go after co-op members, and intimidate them? Let’s hope this is just a bit of paranoid fantasizing on my part…
One other thing I want to make note of, apart from all the conspiracy thinking, is an article in today’s Ann Arbor News about the Michigan raw milk case. It devotes most of its verbiage to assessing the safety and nutritional value of raw milk. It’s the kind of article the mainstream news media love to write because there’s a pro and con side. As a reporter, you interview those for and those against, and you have your story.
I suppose such articles can be educational, but I’ve generally avoided going down that path with the issue of raw milk because it doesn’t really lead anywhere constructive. I feel that, so long as raw milk isn’t a more serious health threat than other foods we consume (like spinach or hamburgers), then people should be free to consume it. If some people feel they are gaining health benefits from it or enjoy its taste and digestibility, then that should be reason enough for them to have the freedom to purchase and consume it. We know that different people react differently to various foods and nutritional supplements. I personally notice a lot more benefit in terms of energy from raw juice than from raw milk. But that’s me. I have heard enough from mothers of autistic children about the benefits to the children from raw milk to appreciate that there’s some kind of magic going on there. Such differences attest to our individual nutritional needs and requirements. Raw milk has become a symbol of a struggle over rights and freedoms, rather than a simple pro-con debate.
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