When I first started our organic dairy 20 years ago, I was mentored by Tony Azevedo. He operated an organic dairy near Merced, California, and had been in the dairy business his entire life. He was also a member of the CROPP Co-op at Organic Valley and was on a mission to get more organic milk for the emerging organic market. It was 1999 and he mentored me on ways to start and run an organic dairy, and it was Tony who provided me with an Organic Valley CROPP co-op contract. We were so excited. I listened to and leaned on his every word. There was one sentence that he repeated to me several times when we walked through his pastures. He said, “Mark, if there ever comes a day when the USDA does not enforce the 120-day pasture rule, organic dairies will be done and the niche will be lost. The pasture is the only thing that stands between organic dairies and the 15,000-cow CAFO [confinement animal feeding operation] next door.”

Tony explained that the pasture is nature’s acreage-stocking-rate ratio; it acts as a natural quota and limits production. If there is no pasture rule that requires pasturing of the cows, then anyone can buy organic feed and confine a huge number of cows and call it organic! Well, that day has come. It is here, and it is now.

Since Christmas 2017, California has lost 12 percent of its 119 organic dairies, and more are being lost every week. Wisconsin has lost untold numbers of family organic dairies and so has Pennsylvania. A friend of mine shared with me the sad news that in one Mennonite church alone, six Horizon organic contracts had been cancelled, leaving the organic dairymen with no place to sell their organic milk. Here in California, Horizon has cancelled 80 percent of all of their organic dairy contracts and told the dairymen that their organic milk was no longer needed because cheaper milk could be bought from dairies in Texas and Colorado. Organic processors in Wisconsin are now obtaining their organic milk from Colorado and paying five dollars per hundred weight just to ship it in, which displaces local organic dairies. Wallaby Yogurt in Northern California cancelled its organic milk dairy contracts and moved out of state because it was cheaper to buy organic milk elsewhere. The surviving and remaining Horizon organic milk contracts in California have been reduced to receive prices below cost of organic production. We all know what that means; that some organic dairymen will start cheating to survive or go out of business. That could be cheating by reducing the amount of time feeding their cows on pasture or feeding conventional GMO feeds at cheaper prices.

CAFOs WIN OUT

So what is going on? Years ago, back in 2005-2007, Cornucopia Institute, the consumer watchdog group, sued several large CAFOs because they had discovered that these large operations were cheating under the organic regulations. These CAFOs confined up to 15,000 cows each and also held organic certifications. The lawsuit alleged that the CAFO operations did not comply with the USDA-mandated 100-day pasture grazing rule (following the 30 percent dry matter intake standard), and that they failed to follow many of the other USDA organic standards. The judge agreed and mandated that the operations change their production processes. In addition, a $7.5M consumer fraud claim was assessed, and it was paid. The courts found that these CAFO dairies had “willfully violated 14 standards” under the USDA organic regulations. The CAFO operation in Pixley, California was immediately shut down by State of California Organic Enforcement (CDFA) and was not allowed to continue in operation. However, the Colorado operations were placed on probation and continued selling organic milk with protective lobbying in Washington, DC, thanks to plenty of legal maneuvering and behind-the-scenes negotiations.

How different the state of California acted versus the state of Colorado. The state of Colorado was permissive and passive, whereas the state of California was ethically decisive. The Colorado CAFO operations were able to champion the political conditions in Washington, and even more so under our current administration. They continue to operate with impunity against the USDA-mandated organic pasture rules. Experts and compliant organic farmers know that it is impossible to pasture 10- to 15,000 cows at one facility and have them receive 30 percent of their dry matter from pasture with the amount of available pasture these dairies have. It is also impossible to take this number of cows back and forth from pasture to the milking parlor two or three times a day. Cows cannot walk that far to reach the green pastures. Additionally, the 5,000-feet elevation where these dairies are located will not allow regrowth of the pastures fast enough to allow for a 120-day pasture feeding season, yet the CAFOs are issued a valid organic certificate from their local inspectors.

The Washington Post sent an investigator to Colorado years ago for week-long observation to verify that the cows were being pastured. They reported seeing only a small number of nonmilking cows (dry cows and heifers) on some pasture, but not the thousands of milk cows as ordered by the courts. It was also found that this CAFO invites its organic inspectors to perform their audit during winter months, which is the non-pasture season. Now that this CAFO in Colorado has been able to get away with willful non-compliance, other CAFO operations in Texas and Idaho have taken notice and followed their example. The “CAFO green light to violate” is shining brighter than ever.

It appears that our secretary of agriculture, Sonny Perdue, does not believe it is important to pasture cows, and has not made compliance with the pasture rule an important issue, although publicly stating that organic enforcement is a top priority. The policy at USDA is that “pasturing is overly prescriptive and hard for the larger dairies to perform.” Clearly, this is one federal law that they don’t like. The founders of the organic movement clearly had this on their minds when they created the pasture rule in the first place.

It appears that the USDA pasture rules must be followed by everyone except for big CAFOs, resulting in a devastating and drastic loss of many small organic dairy farms across the United States. The added 80,000 cows from the non-compliant CAFO operations have become the cheap “one-stop shopping source” for Group Danone, which owns Horizon Organic Milk, Stonyfield and other big box brands. These 80,000 CAFO cows are roughly equivalent to most of the California organic dairies put together! It is no wonder that organic dairies are being shut down. There is a massive national oversupply of organic milk and there are no supply limitations now that nature’s natural pasture rule limits have been removed.

When the founders of the organic movement originally designed the organic rules, the pasture rule ensured many benefits. Cows on green pastures made better milk with high CLA and good omega-3 fatty acid ratios. Cows on pastures sequester carbon and save our air from the ever-increasing burdens of carbon dioxide. Cows in CAFOs with their huge manure lagoons are part of the problem, while cows on pastures are part of the solution.

The pasture rule is also critical because of sustainable supply management. If there are no limits to production of organic milk, then it will become over-supplied and prices will drop, just like in the conventional dairy system with its chronic oversupply problem and below-cost-of production prices. Several years ago, most organic dairies received $35- to $40 or more per hundredweight for their milk. Now that price is dropping and in many places is $22 per hundredweight with some areas left with no market or buyers at all. Then the milk goes into the conventional markets at less than $15 per hundredweight.The break-even cost for production of organic milk is roughly $28- to $30 dollars per hundredweight if organic inputs are used.

REAL ORGANIC PROJECT

As a consumer of organic dairy products, you are left wondering what to do and whom to support? Organics should be about fair rules and evenly enforced regulations. As it stands today, it’s not fair and it’s not evenly enforced. When you have no enforcement of standards, you have no organic market.

There is now a movement to place an add-on label on organic products. One of the most popular is the Real Organic Project (realorganicproject.org). Its founders are some of the central and most important leaders of original organic movement. They founded the USDA organic program and now have grown disgusted by it, as the program sold out to the big business interests. Organic is supposed to be about vital living soil, plants, animals, the environment and humanity. Large CAFO corporate interests owned by Wall Street have no soul and are about one thing—making money and eating up all others.

Look for the Real Organic Project label and vote for it with your dollars. It means real organic and it means local.

REAL ORGANIC IS RAW

So far, this story has been all about the train wreck of ultra-high-temperature-pasteurized, ultra-dead, CAFO-produced “organic” milk; the deep throes of corruption, cheating and fraud in the current organic dairy markets; and the loss of family organic dairies all across America. But now let’s shift gears and briefly discuss real organic milk. The most important dairy product you can bring into your life is the “organic milk that still has the organic in it.” This milk is alive, vital, raw, pasture-fed, biodiverse, enzyme-rich, non-denatured, probiotic and straight from the farmer.

J.I. Rodale, one of the founders of the modern organic movement, said that “It is not organic to produce organic milk and then pasteurize it.” Taken in this context, it is no wonder that the pasteurized organic milk markets are falling apart. Those markets are based on long shelf life and not gut life. They are based on a race to the bottom and a market disconnection between farmers and consumers. They are based on processors making money while cheating farmers and denying consumers the whole food they need for good health.

In the final assessment, if you cheat Mother Nature, you will pay a dear price. That price is being paid by organic dairymen who thought they had a profitable and green niche product, but really did not have much of anything at all when processors dropped them in favor of huge CAFOs.

When desperate organic farmers call me for help, I counsel them to start making a farmstead cheese or start studying raw milk, reading the Raw Milk Institute food safety website resources, Weston A. Price Foundation information (realmilk.com) and learning about the gut microbiome—because if you are going to produce and sell raw milk, you will need to become an expert in raw milk food safety, how whole food is medicine, the gut microbiome, and the principles of good nutrition. You will need to start teaching and educating consumers to create a market for your products. When the teaching is done and the safe milking is done, you will have created a highly value-added market that will be hard to take away from you. No processor can take that away from you. Consumers will love you and be glad to pay you well. Being loved by consumers and being paid well are concepts foreign to the consumer-disconnected, processor-centric dairy industry. Consumer connected—that’s a real organic dairy!

Twenty years ago, our organic dairy left the deadly grip of the pasteurization-loving processors and went raw! All of my thanks go to the consumers who came to our farm and told me what they wanted. I listened! Real organic is raw organic. Our contract with Organic Valley only lasted a short time before all of our milk was flowing directly to consumers. In fact it was Organic Valley that kicked us out of the co-op when they saw our raw products sitting next to theirs on stores all over California.

The science of milk genomics and human health is just catching up to what we have always known: raw milk and other raw dairy products are medicine for the human condition and always have been. The last words of Dr. Weston A. Price were, “You teach, you teach, you teach.” Let’s gather friends to teach and build that market. With thriving raw milk sales, the world becomes a greener and healthier place for all.

RESOURCES

1. milkgenomics.org/news-and-events/newsletter-archive/

2. www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-organic-milk-may-not-beorganic/2017/05/01/708ce5bc-ed76-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html?utm_term=.1eabbf3e2745.

3. realmilk.com.

The post Organic Dairy Was a Green Niche…Then Came CAFOs and Lawyers appeared first on Real Milk.

A REVIEW OF PART 1

Humboldt County is one of only three counties in California that currently ban the sale and production of raw milk. More than twenty-five hundred Humboldt County citizens have signed a petition to rescind this ban. Moreover, many citizens took the issue directly to the Humboldt County supervisors, requesting it be placed on the agenda. When the issue of the raw milk ban came up, it drew a large crowd of people to the supervisory meetings on both August 24, 2010, and January 11, 2011. Many public comments were made and the majority of people strongly urged the supervisors to rescind the ban on raw milk. Raw milk advocates also put together a thick packet of educational materials about raw milk and submitted this to the Board of Supervisors. However, this packet has since disappeared from the public record.

Several of the larger dairy farmers in the county were vocally opposed to lifting the ban on raw milk. However, some of the Humboldt County dairy farmers and other entrepreneurs have expressed a strong interest in producing certified raw milk should the ban be lifted. One of them has spoken out publicly and has the knowledge and experience needed to get a certified raw milk dairy into production within six to eight months. The Humboldt County agricultural commissioner and several officials in the Humboldt County Health Department urged the supervisors to maintain the ban on raw milk. In the end, the supervisors voted to leave the ban in place but also publicly stated they were open to hearing more from the raw milk advocates.

After investigating the situation in more depth, it appears that the bankruptcy of Humboldt Creamery and the sale of the dairy at auction to Foster Farms, may have been the most important driving force behind the supervisors leaving the ban on raw milk in place, but the purported reasons given by the supervisors were “health concerns.”

For more details on the forces behind maintaining the ban and the drive to rescind it, see Part I in Wise Traditions, Fall 2015.

TESTIMONIALS

It takes courage to stand in front of a crowded room in a public meeting and talk about the details of your own personal health issues, especially when your testimony is being televised to the entire community and video archived! In fact, most of us probably couldn’t do it under these circumstances. Remarkably, however, this is exactly what several Humboldt County citizens did at the Humboldt County Supervisor meetings held August 24, 2010 and January 11, 2011. Each in his own way, these brave citizens described their long-time health battles and how drinking raw milk had helped them overcome them when nothing else, including traditional medicine, had helped.

Here are some of these compelling raw milk testimonials:

NIEL GUNTON

“I’m not an activist or a representative of anybody. I’m just a consumer. I just want to make a couple of comments based on my own experience. My wife and I moved to Eureka last year from Medford, Oregon where I was able to obtain raw milk from a local farmer. And the reason I did that is I’ve had allergies my whole life, and particularly a post nasal drip which results in coughing and clearing my throat constantly, and it sounds silly, but it is actually quite a major impediment in your everyday life, when you’re having to do that. And I found for the first time when we moved to Medford that I was able to get raw milk. I had done some research and found out that (pasteurized) milk in general causes more mucus production, and during my research I found out about raw milk, and so I tried it, and lo, and behold, my allergies cleared up completely while I was on raw milk, and also my post nasal drip got much better. So, I’m just going from a purely pragmatic point of view since we moved down here whenever I try drinking even the organic local milk, I cannot sleep in my bed at night. I have to go sit up somewhere because if I lie down, the post nasal drip is so bad. And it is directly connected to (pasteurized) milk. I’ve not been able to buy raw milk since I have been here and that’s a fairly big impact on my life.”

DEEDRA THOMAS

“About ten years ago, I lived up here for six years and I just moved back a year ago but I did spend four years in Michigan where I was introduced to raw milk. I’ve had ulcerous colitis for twenty years and one of the things I can’t have is (pasteurized) milk because I have the gas and the pain and all that and it aggravates the colitis. But when I drank raw milk I don’t have those problems. And also with all the people who are allergic to milk or lactose intolerant, it’s not necessarily the milk itself but the unnatural things that are being done to the milk or the cows that’s causing the problems…”

SUSAN MOSKALY

“I’ve been living in Eureka since 2000. Raw milk came to my attention several years ago after becoming very very ill in 2002. I was eating the standard American diet and all of a sudden my digestive system just went haywire. I felt like I could not eat anything. It felt like my whole digestive system was coming to a halt. Whatever I ate I was allergic to. I was tired. I absolutely felt like I could not function anymore. I went to a million doctors. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. I spent thousands and thousands of dollars, had gall bladder surgery, nothing would help. Most people, when they get health problems where the traditional medical field can’t seem to help them, they start turning to other areas, and I started doing research on the Internet and I came across this raw milk movement, and I went, “hmmm.” People claimed to have had some wondrous results with their digestive systems so I did buy some (raw milk) from Organic Pastures (shipped in via UPS), and I tell you the truth, just like you probably, I was scared to death to drink any of that. I was absolutely scared to death to drink any of this raw milk. I’d take a little sip and say, “Oh my God.” I have to tell you when I started drinking (raw) milk, another reason I was scared is I used to get sick every time I would drink (pasteurized) milk. I would get constipated. I would get pains in my stomach. I would get gas. When I started drinking raw milk, none of this happened. And I have to tell you that since I added raw milk, and especially since I started seeing a doctor in San Francisco that actually prescribes raw milk, and I’ve added lots of probiotics eating pasture-fed raw egg yolks and other sources of probiotics like yogurt and sauerkraut, my digestion in the last four months has skyrocketed back to good health. It’s the best it has been in eight years.”

ALTERNATIVE HEALTH PRACTITIONERS SPOKE OUT TOO

Traci Webb, an ayurvedic practitioner and director of the Northwest Institute of Ayurveda in Arcata: “As an ayurvedic practitioner, I have been prescribing raw milk since 2002 as use for medicinal food and this began in Southern California in Orange County where raw milk sale and purchase was allowed. I’ve seen amazing, and what we might consider miraculous, benefits come from this very health promoting food. In Humboldt County I’ve been prescribing raw milk to clients on a daily basis. However, they have been having to purchase it out of the county, having it sent UPS to them for thirty dollars a gallon. This price is a little bit steep for some of these patients, especially since some of them are bed-ridden and disabled and aren’t even employed currently, and they’re relying on this food for their life and their well-being and their subsistence.”

Dr. Scott H. Winkler, chiropractor in Arcata, Humboldt County, California: “I have been trained in what’s been called alternative health but the difficulty with that is I think this is basic health as opposed to alternative health… one of the main problems with pasteurized and homogenized milk is it’s basically a poison to the system.”

In a 2015 interview, Dr. Winkler complained that people in Humboldt County were essentially being “forced” to buy pasteurized milk, and he described how it “messes up their biome.” He again emphasized that pasteurized milk is a poison to the system and stated unequivocally that he would recommend raw milk to his patients if the ban on raw milk were lifted.

CITIZENS DEMAND FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Many Humboldt County citizens have been very outspoken about the importance of being able to make their own decisions about what foods they consume. Here is what some of them said:

Kay Schaser of Eureka: “I wasn’t even a raw milk drinker when this issue first surfaced. I got involved solely because I didn’t think it was right for government to prevent people from drinking raw mik if they wanted to.” Schaser goes on to describe how she has now learned about the health benefits of raw milk and then states: “I asked you in a previous statement if you would stop trying to protect me from myself. I’m a big girl and I can make my own decisions.” Schaser received a hearty applause for this statement. In another meeting, Schaser stated, “Why would you want to continue standing in the way of your health-conscious constituents who simply want to legally drink milk of their choice? Some decisions are hard. This one is a no-brainer. Rescind the ordinance and move on.”

Melissa Duey of Carlotta: “I’m a consumer and I do not want to be protected from myself. I find these regulations and statements offensive and demeaning.”

Shelley Bjork also of Carlotta: “I would like to say that food choices are health choices, and I believe that the profit motive and the pressures that are on the agricultural industry are not always directing things in the best interest of the individual consumer.”

Xandra Manns of Eureka first described how she had been drinking raw milk for decades and raised two kids on raw milk after reading an article about how pasteurization destroys the nutrients in milk. She then stated: “I was really disappointed when I moved to Humboldt and found I couldn’t get raw milk, and I called a lot of the dairies to see if I could get raw milk from them. I found out they give their children raw milk to drink but we the public have to put up with pasteurized milk. I’m sure the county officials would just quake in their shoes if they saw what I do with raw milk. I feel like it’s like any other food, like oysters or steak. We are allowed to buy these foods raw and do with them what we want. We can put raw beef in a dehydrator and make jerky. We are allowed to eat oysters raw or we can cook them. I mean, we’re not stupid.” In a private interview later, Manns described how she makes yogurt and kefir from raw milk where the only source of heat is a heating pad.

Liz Lux said: “I’ve done more research on raw milk than anyone I know who drinks pasteurized milk. You’ll find that in the raw milk drinking community because we’re passionate about our health. We’re passionate about our rights to eat foods that we know are healthy.”

Susan Moskaly of Eureka: “I also have degrees in zoology and accounting from Ohio State so I’m a little bit educated, and so hopefully, I’m allowed to make my own decisions about things after a reasonable amount of research.”

Louis DeBart of McKinleyville, with a small gesture toward the county health officials who had recommended to the supervisors to maintain the ban on raw milk ban after citing the FDA and associated research, stated: “I’m looking at a different thing than you people; I’m looking at freedom.” DeBart went on to describe how he had grown up drinking raw milk in Del Norte County (the county directly north of Humboldt County) where his mother was a county nurse, and how they sold raw milk from their farm with no one harmed. DeBart then stated: “For God’s sake, leave me the hell alone, I’ve got enough people telling me what to do and God bless you all.”

DeBart’s candid sentiment has been echoed by multiple Humboldt County residents in private interviews. It is apparent that a significant portion of the population not only wants legal access to raw milk in Humboldt County for health reasons but they are also angry about the fact that this basic freedom, held by most Californians, has been taken away by a county ordinance.

Several citizens have expressed a strong desire to vote out any Humboldt County supervisor who does not vote to rescind the ban on raw milk or who tries to block or delay this important issue from being placed again on the official agenda. In fact, one person who is not yet registered to vote is determined to register specifically to take on this issue. They also said they would encourage others to do the same.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

The freedom to engage in entrepreneurship and produce healthy local foods that many citizens desire has been stifled in Humboldt County due to the ban on raw milk. Several citizens spoke out on this issue specifically:

Jessica Bittner of Bayside: “I believe in Humboldt County, we are progressive and concerned for freedom of choice for its citizens and those interested in promoting healthy, locally produced food. You may have heard from dairies that they have concerns but you may not have heard from some of the small local dairymen who are struggling for profitability and would welcome the chance to operate a grade A raw milk dairy right here in this county. So I ask for raw milk sales and production to be legal in Humboldt County, and I ask that you folks make the highest authority the already existing state
legislation. This should be your highest authority.”

Mike Fragga, a dairyman in Arcata, expressed a strong interest in producing raw milk on this farm: “Milk inspectors have warned me that I can’t even give the (raw) milk away. I can grow any crop on my farm and sell it but when it comes to (raw) milk, there’s this ordinance.”

In a 2015 interview, Fragga explained further that he has been told by inspectors that he could receive fines of one thousand dollars and actually go to jail if he sells, or even gives away, raw milk produced on his farm.

Daniel Pierce stated: “What you’re doing too is you’re stifling business. In India, they have this thing called paneer where you boil the (raw) milk and you add the lemon juice to it and you make a ball of cheese. It’s fresh cheese. Nobody’s making it here. You can’t take a barrel of raw milk around to someplace and do that. You’re stifling business and the reason this law was put in is because of what you heard here: we want all of your milk or none of your milk and that’s big business and that’s not fair. That has to change.”

Pierce’s comment, “we want all of your milk or none of your milk,” referred to an earlier comment by one of the larger dairy farmers that once a dairy farmer has a contract with Foster Farm’s Crystal Creamery, formerly Humboldt Creamery, they would not be allowed to sell any portion of their milk to anyone else. This issue seems to be a key factor in perpetuating the ban on raw milk in Humboldt County.

Kay Schaser of Eureka (in a written statement read publicly by her nephew): “Why would you want to stand in the way of industry by preventing Humboldt County dairymen from entering a growing niche market? Why would you want to stand in the way of commerce by preventing Humboldt County retailers from selling an otherwise legal product that their customers are asking for?”

HOW GEOGRAPHY MAKES THE SITUATION EVEN WORSE

The geography of Humboldt County makes it really hard for a citizen to drive into another county to purchase raw milk. The county covers more than one hundred thirty miles from north to south on the main artery Highway 101. The population centers are located in the middle of this, right along the coast. For a resident living in Eureka, the largest city, the closest place to buy raw milk is the Wild Rivers Market in Crescent City, California. According to Google Map, this is a one-hundred-seventy-mile round trip taking more than three hours to complete!

So, for all practical purposes, this eliminates the possibility of purchasing raw milk in another county for most of the Humboldt County population! Thus, the only way these citizens can obtain raw milk legally with reasonable logistics involved is to have it shipped to them via UPS from Organic Pastures. Unfortunately, the shipping charge more than doubles the total price when shipped directly to the consumer!

It should be noted that according to Tom Boylan, the store manager of Wild Rivers Market, some Humboldt citizens are so desperate for certified raw milk, they actually do make the more than three-hour trek to purchase raw milk, most often a case at a time. Each case contains four gallons of Organic Pastures raw milk. Before making the long trip, customers are encouraged to call ahead to make sure it’s still in stock, because they often sell out of it. They drink one gallon immediately but are forced to freeze the other three gallons to prevent spoilage. Although frozen raw milk is better than no raw milk, it is certainly not an optimal situation, especially after going to so much trouble to obtain it.

In contrast, for citizens living in Kings County California, where raw milk is also banned, the largest density of people live in or around Hanford. From there, it is only a fifteen-to-twenty minute drive into Visalia (Tulare County) to purchase certified raw milk legally.

ONLY FOR THE RICH?

At the end of his public statement, Niel Gunton pointed out that he could have raw milk shipped via UPS from Organic Pastures but it was very expensive to do so and simply too costprohibitive for most people: “I think it’s weird that I am actually able to buy organic milk from Organic Pastures at thirty to forty dollars per gallon (including shipping), and I think that is very biased toward the people who have the money to do that. I think that everybody should be able to buy this thing at the normal local rates from companies that are able to buy it in bulk, like the co-op or Eureka Natural Foods, because individuals cannot afford to pay thirty dollars per gallon but Eureka Natural Foods or the co-op could afford to get this stuff in at the bulk rate.”

For the record, according to a telephone representative at Organic Pastures in August 2015, to ship one gallon of raw Organic Pastures milk to Eureka California, the total cost would be $39.66. However, $27.66 of that total cost includes the UPS shipping charge for the weight of a gallon of milk plus three ice packs to keep it cold. Thus, the price of the raw milk itself is only twelve dollars per gallon, affordable for most people who put a priority on their health. Also, according to Mark McAfee, the owner and founder of Organic Pastures, the retail rate for a gallon of Organic Pastures milk usually ranges between twelve and sixteen dollars.

It is also important to note that raw milk can be purchased with food stamps from retail stores in all of California using a CalFresh EBT card except in the three counties that have banned raw milk. However, raw milk cannot be purchased with food stamps directly from Organic Pastures. This means that the poorest individuals and families in Humboldt County have no legal access to raw milk, even if their health practitioner has recommended it to improve their health.

One has to wonder whether the Humboldt County supervisors have seriously considered all the hardships put on their constituents who need and want raw milk to heal their body and maintain their health. One also has to wonder whether the Humboldt County supervisors truly understand the entrepreneurial spirit of Humboldt County farmers and consumers who want to support locally produced goods. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out in the next two election cycles.

References

1. jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkinscenter-for-a-livable-future/_pdf/research/clf_reports/RawMilkMDJohnsHopkinsReport2014_1208_.pdf, page 9. Accessed May 17, 2015.

About the Author

Cindy Ashy is a freelance writer living in northern California. Trained as a biologist, Ms. Ashy’s specialties include natural health, the natural world, cutting edge science, and investigative journalism. She can be reached at (360) 325-1081.

This article was first published in the Winter 2015 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

The post Raw Milk in California’s Humboldt County, Part 2 appeared first on Real Milk.

Humboldt County is one of only three counties in California, along with Kings and Trinity, to maintain a ban on the retail sale of certified raw milk produced in California. Humboldt County also requires compulsory pasteurization on all commercial milk products produced and distributed in the county.

Title V, Division 1, Section 512-4 of the Humboldt County Code reads: “All market milk, skim milk, and other fluid milk products sold, offered for sale, distributed or in possession for sale in the County shall be pasteurized as provided in the Milk and Milk Products Act of 1947 (Division 15 of the Food and Agricultural Code). This section shall not apply to any milk or cream produced and sold from dairies having fewer cows or goats than that defined as a ‘dairy farm’ in said Milk and Milk Products Act. Nor shall anything in this section be construed to prevent the delivery or sale of Raw Grade ‘A’ milk, not conforming to this section, to a milk products plant for the purpose of pasteurizing the same” (Repealed and Re-Enacted by Ord.1921,§1,01/08/1991).

Title V, Division 1, Section 512-5 of the same county code makes a violation of Section 512-4 a criminal act, punishable by up to a one thousand dollar fine or up to ninety days in jail for each individual violation!

ADVOCATING FOR RAW MILK

Toward the end of 2009, raw milk advocates in Humboldt County, spearheaded by Ursula Hunter, began approaching individual Humboldt County supervisors requesting a repeal of the ban on raw milk. In their discussions, they stressed the health benefits of raw milk and the importance that people be free to make their own decisions about what they eat. Six-term Supervisor Bonnie Neely agreed to let the raw milk advocates make a public presentation to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and she placed this item on the agenda for the August 24, 2010 board meeting.

Prior to the August 24, 2010 meeting, more than twenty-five hundred people in Humboldt County signed a petition asking the supervisors to repeal the ban on raw milk. The local raw milk advocates also invited Mark McAfee to give part of the official public presentation and to be part of the private meetings held with various officials in the county. McAfee is the founder of Organic Pastures, the largest certified raw milk dairy in California. He is also nationally known as an expert on raw milk.

There was a packed house when the raw milk agenda item came up, even though it occurred during business hours, and many people who wanted to attend had to be at work. Numerous citizens came to the microphone to add spirited comments, and the vast majority wanted the ban on raw milk repealed. Supervisor Neely made a motion to refer all the information received from the advocates to staff and have them report back to the board at a later time. The motion passed with a three-to-two vote.

At a later meeting, on January 11, 2011, several staff members from the Humboldt County Health Department gave a report essentially supporting the FDA party line and expressing deep concerns for the potential “risks” of drinking raw milk. Each one of them strongly urged the board to keep the ban on raw milk in place. Some dairymen and the Humboldt County Agriculture Commissioner also urged the board to keep the ban in place. Even though the supervisors stated many times that no action would be taken that day, a motion was made by Supervisor Jimmy Smith to maintain the status quo and keep the ban on raw milk in place. The motion passed with a five-to-zero vote.

Raw milk advocates were vocally upset by the fact that a vote had been taken when they were promised no vote would be taken. A lengthy discussion ensued about whether or not the vote really meant anything. At one point, Chairman Mark Lovelace stated, “Taking this action is essentially no action. . . it doesn’t change the ability of any supervisor to revisit this issue if they so chose.” All of the supervisors publicly vowed to remain open to hearing more from the raw milk advocates.

While raw milk advocates were understandably deflated by the results of those meetings, there is renewed interest in taking this issue back to the board and demanding even louder that the ban on raw milk be lifted. This issue is definitely not going away as it remains a major sore spot among a large segment of the Humboldt County population. Plus, the 2016 election is looming, and the ban on raw milk could easily become a key election issue.

MISSING FROM THE PUBLIC RECORD

With no payment from any source and a great deal of personal expense, the raw milk advocates spent thousands of hours working on the raw milk issue before they gave their public presentation at the August 24, 2010 meeting. An important part of this effort was preparing a thick packet of information on raw milk for the educational benefit of the supervisors, county staff and the public at large. They assumed the packet they worked so hard to produce would become part of the public record.

According to the advocates, this packet contained full length copies of peer-reviewed research papers supporting the health benefits of raw milk and published in respected scientific journals like the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. In addition, the packet contained other evidence on how drinking raw milk has improved the health of many people, official records from the CDC showing how clean certified raw milk production is in California, and other compelling information on raw milk.

In August 2015, when a copy of this packet was requested multiple times from Humboldt County, it could not be found by Tracy D’Amico, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ administrative assistant. She was very accommodating and looked for the packet at least three times. In fact, D’Amico sent copies of everything she found in the folders for both the August 24, 2010 meeting and the January 11, 2011 meeting, but none of the materials from the raw milk advocates’ packet were included in this official public record! Kathy Hayes, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ clerk, also checked and could not find the packet.

Since the packet of information was part of an official presentation to the board, put on the agenda by a supervisor, this is a very serious omission. It should have been included in the public record so that anyone at any time could review the information. The archived video of the August 24, 2010 meeting clearly shows nine copies of the packet being given to the board during the official presentation. Thus, there is no doubt that the advocates gave their materials to the board. Copies of the packet were distributed before the meeting as well. Materials provided by staff, dairymen and doctors are included in the public record so it is not an issue of the entire contents being lost. It appears only the materials provided by the raw milk advocates are missing.

WHY THE BAN PERPLEXES MOST PEOPLE

According to the latest estimate by the United States Census Bureau, the total population of Humboldt County is only 134,809. However, even with this relatively sparse population, there are a total of seven natural food stores in the county, with four of these offering a selection that rivals the best natural food stores in metropolitan areas. Furthermore, most of these natural food stores have been in business a long time, and they stay very busy.
Given the stats above, it is obvious that the Humboldt County citizenry shows a high propensity for natural food as they vote for it loud and clear every day with their pocketbooks. Therefore, when like-minded new residents move to the area, they find it quite surprising when they can’t buy certified raw milk at any of seven natural food stores, and they can’t even legally buy it from a farmer in the county. According to several employees at both locations of the Natural Food Co-op (Arcata and Eureka), tourists passing through also find the raw milk ban in Humboldt County a real head-scratcher when they see how devoted the community is to natural food.

What are the reasons this ban still exists?

UNFORTUNATE TIMING?

To many, it is perplexing why the Humboldt County supervisors voted on January 11, 2011 to maintain the status quo and keep the ban on raw milk in place. While their decision was purportedly due to perceived health risks, a careful examination of the official record, a reconstruction of the timeline, and dozens of interviews reveal that other factors likely played an even bigger role in their decision.

According to court documents, Humboldt Creamery led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 21, 2009. At the time of filing, Humboldt Creamery owed creditors about fifty-five million dollars. On August 27, 2009, Humboldt Creamery was sold at auction to Foster Farms for nineteen and one-half million dollars. This left them with no assets with which to pay the remaining thirty-five and one-half million dollars due creditors!

The bankruptcy of Humboldt Creamery followed on the heels of the sudden resignation of Rich Ghilarducci, who held the position of CEO for twelve years. A financial scandal soon emerged as it was determined that Ghilarducci had overstated the creamery’s inventory and accounts receivables while understating the accounts payable—that is, he “cooked the books” and had evidently been doing so for years. Ghilarducci was sentenced to thirty months in federal prison.

The community felt the pain in the aftermath of this troubling situation. Humboldt Creamery had been one of the biggest employers in the county and many people were suddenly without a job. Most of the fifty to seventy dairy farmers in Humboldt County had contracts with Humboldt Creamery to process their milk, but during this fiasco, they weren’t paid for about two months. It was also uncertain for a while whether Humboldt Creamery, considered a vital economic engine for the county, would survive at all. To make matters even worse, many of the investors in Humboldt Creamery who lost dearly after the bankruptcy were local people who live in Hum- boldt County. Reverberations of this financial and moral devastation were felt throughout the whole county.

Given the events described above, it is surprising that many people in the community do not fully realize how the timing of these events line up with the efforts made by the raw milk advocates to get the ban on raw milk rescinded. In many ways, the timing could not have been worse.

Humboldt Creamery led for bankruptcy only one year and five months before the raw milk advocates gave their public presentation to the board and formally asked the Humboldt County supervisors to rescind the county ban on certified raw milk. Moreover, their presentation took place only one year after Foster Farms bought Humboldt Creamery. The dairy community and many others in the community were still reeling from financial and moral devastation.

CRYSTAL CREAMERY

Foster Farms has chosen to keep “Humboldt Creamery” as a brand name but the creamery located in Humboldt County is now officially under the umbrella of Crystal Creamery, the milk division of Foster Farms. Crystal Creamery touts itself as the largest dairy in California, and it is looking to expand even more. Further, the Foster Farms corporate culture may be a far cry from the former Humboldt Creamery’s “fiercely independent” spirit that Rich Ghilarducci described in a 2006 interview with the North Coast Journal.

From the archived video of both the August 24, 2010 and January 11, 2011 meetings, it is clear that Humboldt County locals, including the supervisors, county staff, and citizens still refer to the creamery as “Humboldt Creamery” and still think of it as an independent entity, although county records refer to by its official name, Crystal Creamery. Proponents of the raw milk ban repeatedly referred to the “brand recognition” of the milk produced in Humboldt County.

PUBLIC COMMENTS REVEAL THE TRUE REASONS

With the events described above in mind, it is instructive to now go back and review the public comments made by local dairymen, county officials and supervisors at both the August 24, 2010 and January 11, 2011 Humboldt County Supervisor board meetings. In doing so, it begins to make more sense why it may not have been the best time to ask the county supervisors to rescind the ban on raw milk in Humboldt County. These comments also show that the purported reasons that most of the supervisors gave (perceived health risks) may have only been an excuse to delay action, take no action, or “maintain the status quo,” when in fact the overriding reasons were actually related to the recent devastation suffered by the Humboldt dairy industry.

For example, at the August 24 meeting, Jeff Dolf, Agricultural Commissioner, Humboldt and Trinity Counties stated: “I can appreciate the passion that people speaking for raw milk have for raw milk. My concern is for the dairy industry. I am concerned that if we were to change our county ordinance and there was an incident, or something happened, because of the strong brand identity that Humboldt County has with its dairy products, it could be devastating for our dairy industry. You are aware that the agricultural commissioner compiles crop statistics for agricultural products in the county. I’m sorry to report that last year the value of our market milk was down sixteen million dollars. If there was to be a change of our ordinance, and if there was an incident involving Humboldt County raw milk, I’m really very concerned for what’s left of our dairy industry and I believe that our ordinance helps to preserve that industry.”

He made a similar and equally strong statement at the January 11, 2011 meeting.

In a breach of protocol, but with the chairman’s permission, on August 24, 2010, Supervisor Jimmy Smith called two of the local dairymen to the microphone before other citizens who were there to make public comment, even though they were not on the agenda. Said Jim Regli, dairyman in Ferndale, California: “. . . I’m not speaking for all those dairymen but I have spoken to quite a few and they want this ordinance to remain mainly because of the fear of something happening to our market if someone consumes milk that is not pasteurized. Because of that fear, I hope this board keeps this ordinance in place.”

Regli emphatically emphasized the word “Fear!” and others repeated this word as well. It seemed to be a theme.

John Vevoda, another dairyman from Ferndale, referred to the Humboldt Dairy situation: “In light of what happened in 2009, and the majority of the dairymen really lost, you try going two months paying all your bills and not getting any income, we can’t afford something like that again. Public perception is they don’t care if it’s raw milk, pasteurized milk, what it is, it’s milk and we have worked extremely hard in the last year to build up our reputation outside of our area. Our organic milk now goes to the Los Angeles area, and if they were to find out that something bad happened up here, it could kill us. With that said, I’d like you to consider that in your decision.”

At the January 11, 2011 Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting, newly elected Supervisor Virginia Bass requested that two of the dairymen in the audience come to the microphone and give a summary of their opinion from the previous meeting and state whether that had changed. Neither of them had elected to make public comment during the public comment period, and they were not on the agenda.

John Vevoda stated that when the Humboldt Dairy went down in 2009, “. . . we didn’t get paid for about a month and half.” He went on to say, “. . . so we don’t want to take any chances. We’re not big gamblers. We’re all small dairymen and we can’t afford if someone were to get sick to lose the marketshare that we have now. Most of our milk is shipped out of the area, at least on the organic side, and we have an extremely good reputation. We don’t want to jeopardize that.”

The majority of all milk produced in Humboldt County is now certified organic.

At the January 11, 2011 board meeting, Supervisor Smith stated the following as he made his motion to maintain the ban on raw milk in Humboldt County: “. . . I stood by these guys when their industry was extremely strained and they’re still not out of the woods. . . but it’s in trying to maintain a strong industry that’s here as a big component of our economy so with great respect to your comments Mr. Chairman, I’m going to move that we retain the status quo as recommended by our staff.. . . that’s the motion, maintain the status quo and keep the ordinance in place.”

IS THERE MORE TO THE DAIRY FARMER SIDE OF THE STORY?

Milk is a highly perishable product. Therefore, if a dairy farmer can’t sell his milk right away, it goes bad or they have to sell it as powdered milk for a tiny fraction of its true value. To solve this issue, the vast majority of dairy farmers have a contract with a creamery, which sends a truck to their farm on a regular basis to pick up the milk and the creamery pays them for the milk. On the negative side, this means they essentially have one “customer” and they are beholden to that one “customer” for their livelihood.

The contract that a dairy farmer signs with a creamery almost always states that they cannot sell (or even give away) milk to any other business or individual. If they do so, they are considered in violation of their contract and they may lose their contract. If this were to happen, the dairy farmer may be stuck with hundreds of gallons of milk every day and no where to send it or sell it. Crystal Creamery (formerly Humboldt Creamery) works this way for most, if not all, of the dairy farmers they work with.

If a dairy farmer criticizes this policy publicly, or even merely says he or she would like to sell a portion of their milk to another source, this puts them on tenuous ground with their one big “customer,” and they naturally worry they may not have their contract renewed. This can also potentially happen if the dairy farmer publicly supports the idea of other dairy farmers selling raw milk, if their creamery is not in favor of this idea (most are not).

If a dairy farmer loses his or her contract with their creamery, they stand to lose not only their livelihood but also their way of life, a connection to their family history, and their ability to leave a legacy to their children and grandchildren. Many of the dairy farms in Humboldt County have been around for several generations, some going back to the 1800s. Humboldt dairy farmers come from industrious hard-working families who have been an integral part of the community for a long time, with deep-rooted personal stakes in the county.

As raw milk advocates continue to work on rescinding the ban on raw milk in Humboldt County, it will be very important to understand things from the perspective of the dairy farmers and others who have expressed “fear” in allowing certified raw milk to be sold and produced in the county. Perhaps there are ways to help allay those fears and accommodate everyone going forward, especially since Humboldt County is now further removed from the crisis that occurred in 2009 when Humboldt Creamery went bankrupt and was sold to Foster Farms.

AN IMPORTANT POINT

It should be noted that certified raw milk dairies in the state of California do not have to worry about a contract with a creamery because they are required to have their own creameries and bottle their own milk! There are also very strict standards in place, and actively regulated by California officials, to ensure a highly sanitary process, as evidenced by the stellar track record of certified raw milk dairies in California.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Many farmers and consumers living in Humboldt County have expressed a strong desire for certified raw milk dairies in Humboldt County. In fact, it is fair to say that they are begging for this industry to be born, and they correctly point out this cannot happen without rescinding the ban on the sale of raw milk in Humboldt County.

In her public comment before the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on August 24, 2010, Liz Lux stated, “In Humboldt Country, we enjoy some of the freshest air and cleanest water in the world. We have rolling hills of green and sun drenched dewy pastures. We have a community of people who use discretion in choosing which foods to consume. We have a history of supporting dairy farmers in this great land of Humboldt County. To me, this sounds like a recipe for the freshest, most delicious, and healthiest of conditions on which to build a raw milk dairy farm.”

Lux’s comment was met with resounding applause. Several other speakers talked about the economic advantages of allowing certified raw milk dairies in Humboldt County. One speaker from Eureka asked the supervisors, “Why would you want to stand in the way of dairy farmers from entering a growing niche market?”

In an interview, Mike Fraga, who runs a goat farm in Arcata, expressed an interest in starting a certified raw milk dairy. In fact, he has already looked into what’s involved in doing so in California and he seems to have a good grasp on the details of what that entails. Fraga currently has about three hundred goats. He milks approximately sixty percent of these goats and sells the milk to the Cypress Grove Chevre creamery, which in turn, produces several types of popular goat cheeses. Fraga also stated that he has enough land to expand his business should he decide to do so.

The Jose Homem Dairy, located in Arcata, has expressed a desire to sell certified raw milk too if the ban on raw milk is lifted. Several others have privately expressed a similar interest but they are hesitant to express this publicly at this time, some of them believing it could affect their creamery contracts or their relationship with other dairy farmers in the county. However, they seem to think it would become much easier to express their opinions openly if just one certified raw milk dairy were to become established.

Fraga points out that it would be easier for someone with a smaller operation to get started selling certified raw milk because the investment in the new equipment needed would be much lower. He also points out that a certified raw milk micro-dairy, with just a few cows or goats, could be used as a financial stepping stone for expanding into a larger certified raw milk dairy.

Mark McAfee has personally pledged, both publicly and privately, to help anyone who wants to start a certified raw milk dairy in Humboldt County should the ban on raw milk be lifted. Multiple people in the raw milk community report that McAfee has been exceedingly generous with his time in the past. One person commented privately, “For Mark, it’s not just about business. His whole heart is in it and he truly wants to help people.” Thus, there is ample reason to believe that McAfee is sincere and will follow through on his promise if the opportunity should present itself.

David Lippman, general manager of North Coast Co-op (now retired), publicly stated at the August 24, 2010 meeting, “Our membership includes thirteen hundred families in Humboldt County. We get constant regular requests from our members and shoppers for raw milk. I would simply urge the board to give people in our county the same choice that they have in almost every other county in California.”

Rick Littlefield, owner of Eureka Natural Food Store, stressed freedom of choice in his public comment at the same meeting, “We almost never get involved in political issues but we see this as more of a personal right. . .so on behalf of our customers. . . why would our county supercede the state and federal government in this case. Now nobody’s blaming you because you didn’t pass this, it’s been here for over fifty years, but it is time to let it go!” Huge applause followed his statement.

In a recent interview, Littlefield continues to stress freedom of choice. To that end, he points out that the right to make decisions about your own health has been a battle since the formation of our country when physician Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, advocated for this right to be included in that document. His motion failed by only one vote! We continue to fight for this right in various iterations, including the right to drink raw milk!

(Read Part 2 here)

About the Author

Cindy Ashy is a freelance writer living in northern California. Trained as a biologist, Ms. Ashy’s specialties include natural health, the natural world, cutting edge science, and investigative journalism. She can be reached at (360) 325-1081.

This article was first published in the Fall 2015 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

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The raw milk legislation “Home Dairy Farm Bill” (AB 2505) would allow direct-to-consumer raw milk sales by dairies with a maximum of three cows or fifteen goats. Farmers would be required to: ensure annual testing for tuberculosis and brucellosis; adhere to bacterial standards (no more than 15,000 bacteria per ml or 10 coliform bacteria per ml); include a warning label on raw milk stating that unpasteurized milk may contain disease-causing microorganisms; and only sell directly to individuals in face-to-face transactions.

This bill, and the collaborative process behind its creation, is a promising sign that it is possible for farmers and public health officials to work together to find a solution that meets the demand for raw milk and contributes to the economic prosperity of the small, local dairies. Over the past three years, many farmer groups, state organizations and other stakeholders have been involved in the drafting of this legislation.

It is unclear whether the CDFA will officially support the bill once it is up for discussion in the California Assembly’s Agriculture Committee, but members of the Committee have already expressed interest in the bill. It is expected that the legislation would apply to approximately 1,000 home dairies in the state of California.

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of the nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation. Donate to help fund research into the benefits of nutrient dense foods.  http://www.westonaprice.org/lab

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“I’ve been a drinker of raw milk for years,” says Morell. “After a while, the merge of my coffee craft and raw milk logically came together.”

Currently, DRIP’D is on a waiting list for raw milk but once spots open up, Morell and Kim hope to source from Claravale Farm in Paicines, CA. To create lattes and other coffee drinks with raw milk, baristas will have to learn to steam it at lower temperatures – which will not only avoid pasteurization, but also results in drinks that are smoother than the average cup of joe.

Morell says that they already have customers coming in to DRIP’D to inquire whether the raw milk drinks are available yet, so demand won’t be an issue.

http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2013/05/30/sfs-first-raw-milk-coffeeshop-opens-raw-milk-pending

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation

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Christopher Hall, a regular contributor to The New York Times, recently chronicled his cheese tour through California’s dairy fields. Hall visited five farms from the Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail Map, sampling delectable cheeses, meeting the craftsmen, and learning about the land and animals from which the cheese is produced.

Two of the producers he visited gave him samples of cheese made from raw milk: Barinaga Ranch in Marshall, CA and the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company in Point Reyes Station, CA.

Barinaga Ranch sits on 100 acres of organic sheep pasture. Hall and the other visitors petted the sheep, toured the pristine creamery retrofitted with steel cargo containers, and sampled Txiki – an aged, raw milk cheese with a nutty taste that Ms. Barinaga has been making since 2009. Ms. Barinaga, who is of Basque descent, explained that the cheese was inspired by other semi-hard Basque cheeses similar to tommes but is unique, in part, because Basque-Americans do not have strong cheesemaking traditions. Rather, it is more typical for Basque immigrants to herd sheep raised for meat, not milk.

Hill’s final stop on the cheese tour was Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. The farm made its debut in 2000 with a creamy, pungent raw milk blue cheese. Point Reyes Original Blue cheese won the Best Cheese/Dairy Product award at the 2011 Fancy Food Show in Washington D.C. In addition to sampling the farm’s cheeses throughout a four-course lunch, Hall toured the farm and witnessed the birth of one of the farm’s new calves.

Hall’s account of the delectable cheeses made from raw milk at some of California’s most pristine dairy farms exemplifies how the raw milk movement is taking root in the foodie community. Read more about Hall’s journey through California’s dairy land here:

See the story: Five Stops on a California Cheese Trail

Realmilk.com is a project of the nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation.

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Update, Fall 2011: See update within Rawesome Updates

Update, Fall 2010: See update within Rawesome Updates

Update, Summer 2009

Good news from California. Sharon Palmer appeared at an arraignment before the Ventura County Court and had her case dismissed by the judge. [See Wise Traditions Spring 2009 issue for background on the case.] Sharon had earlier been charged with “processing milk or milk products without pasteurization” and “processing for resale milk or milk products without a license”—both felonies under California law. The March 11 hearing marked the third time Palmer had been arraigned; the Ventura County Prosecutor’s Office did not send a prosecutor to any of the arraignments. The bad news is that under California law, the prosecutor has up to three years to reintroduce the charges against her. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has yet to return any of the computers or business records seized during January 28 raids of both Sharon’s farm and the home of her daughter Jennifer Prince.

Update, Spring 2009

On December 18, 2008, Santa Paula dairy farmer Sharon Palmer of Healthy Family Foods (HFF) was arrested by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department (VCSD) for “selling raw milk.” Officers stopped her car about a mile from her farm, handcuffed her and eventually drove her back to her premises  here they, along with four other government agencies including the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), conducted a search of her dairy processing plant located on the farm premises. After searching the plant and questioning the farmer, her children and her farm employees, Palmer was arrested and taken to the Ventura County Jail where she remained for twelve hours before being released on her own recognizance. Her release papers stated the formal charges against her were for “processing milk or milk products without pasteurization” and “processing for resale milk or milk products without a license”—both are felonies under California law.

Palmer’s dairy business consists of selling pasteurized goat cheese at farmers’ markets and distributing through a herdshare agreement raw goat’s milk and raw goat cheese to members of the Los Angeles-based Rawsome Food Club (RFC). Palmer and RFC split the cost on the purchase of one hundred goats which she keeps on her farm along with sixty other goats in which she has a full ownership interest. At the time of the arrest, Sharon had a permit to sell at Ventura County farmers’ markets, a pasteurizer license, and a milk products plant license which enabled her to make cheese at a plant near her farm. In September 2008, Sharon moved out of the plant with the intention of transferring her cheese-making operation to the processing plant she had just built on her farm. Since the new plant at the farm was not yet licensed, Sharon froze batches of cheese she manufactured at the old plant to sell at farmers’ markets as a way to carry herself financially until the new plant was approved to be licensed. The only cheese she processed at the unlicensed plant was the cheese distributed to the Rawsome Food Club.

Palmer’s intent was not only to get a milk products plant license but also a license to sell retail raw milk. In November 2008, her inspector conducted an inspection of her milk barn and processing plant for licensing; the inspector told her that everything looked good and that she would call Sharon if she could think of anything that still needed to be done to have the facilities in compliance with licensing requirements. The inspector called a week later requesting a technical drawing for her supervisor but asked for nothing more.

The state investigation into Sharon’s farming operation began during the first week of December 2008 when a detective from the Agricultural Crimes Unit of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department (VCSD) went to the farm in response to Sharon’s complaint that some grain had been stolen. While the detective was at the farm, he witnessed a member of the Rawsome Food Club picking up raw milk and raw cheese; the Sheriff’s Department then informed CDFA. Instead of contacting Sharon to ask her what she was doing, CDFA along with VCSD and several other county government agencies launched an undercover investigation into her business.

On the morning of December 18, undercover agents from CDFA and VCSD bought cheese at the farmers’ market from Healthy Family Foods (HFF). Agents also obtained HFF cheese at the farm after Sharon refused to sell it to them saying she was not licensed to sell on the farm; the agents insisted that they needed the cheese right away for a holiday party so Sharon gave them the cheese at no charge. The sheriff’s department used the “buys” as grounds for arresting Palmer that afternoon. In addition, agents from CDFA and the Ventura County Health Department shut down the HFF table at a local farmers’
market that day, confiscating about $1000 worth of cheese.

Palmer appeared at a scheduled arraignment December 26, 2008; but no charges were brought against her at that time. She made another court appearance on January 15, but again no charges were filed and her arraignment was postponed until March 11.

If the Sheriff’s Department believed they had obtained enough evidence from the December 18 raid to warrant charges being brought against Sharon, its subsequent actions indicate otherwise. After securing a warrant, VCSD executed a second search of Sharon’s farm on January 28. The department also executed a search for HFF records at the home of her daughter, Jennifer Lynn Prince. Prince has worked parttime at the farmers’ markets for her mother; she also has a full-time job working at home for an out-of-state bank. The officers seized her work computer which contained no records of HFF, leaving her unable to work. VCSD also seized Palmer’s computer and business records which, according to Palmer, only dealt with pasteurization charts.

CDFA has told Sharon that it will not act on her license applications until the litigation against her is resolved. Palmer’s inspector, with whom the farmer had a good relationship, has been kept out of the loop during the entire investigation by CDFA. Sharon has not distributed any dairy products to the Rawsome Food Club since the day she was arrested. She has been dumping all milk produced since that day as well. CDFA has admitted in the recent past that herdshare agreements are legal. Moreover, Sharon has never sold any cheese produced at an unlicensed facility to the general public. General Counsel Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is representing Sharon and is attempting to convince the Ventura County Prosecutor’s Office not to pursue charges against the farmer.

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Update, Fall 2011

California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) enforcement actions weren’t limited to Rawesome. The agency sent a cease-and-desist letter to a Mendocino County herdshare operation and worked with the district attorney’s offices in El Dorado and Santa Clara Counties in investigating shareholder dairies. The DA’s office in both counties each sent a letter to a shareholder dairy within its jurisdiction warning the dairy that it was violating state laws. In the case of the Santa Clara County dairy, Evergreen Acres Goat Farm of San Jose, the letter demanded that the dairy stop distributing raw milk immediately with the threat of criminal prosecution if it didn’t.

The May 18 letter to Mike and Jane Hulme, owners of Evergreen Acres, accused the Hulmes of illegally manufacturing and selling dairy products. The letter informed the Hulmes that “the unlicensed manufacturing or processing for resale of any milk or milk product is a crime, punishable by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and/or imprisonment of up to one year in the county jail.”

In a subsequent meeting at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, an official from CDFA informed the Hulmes that while it was legal for goat owners to board their goats at the farm and to have the Hulmes milk their goats, the owners could only drink the milk from their goats at the Hulmes’ farm; once they left the farm with the milk, Evergreen Acres had become a dairy processing plant and was violating the law since it did not have a license. The official did not give the Hulmes any public health reason for this distinction.

With licensing not being an option due to cost and zoning issues, the Hulmes and San Jose goat owners Ian Gerbode, Sara-Jane Skiwski and Sarah Sullivan filed a lawsuit against CDFA and the County of Santa Clara, asking for a declaration by the court that the boarding contract the goat owners had with the Hulmes was legal. The suit, filed July 22 in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, asks for a permanent injunction against the State of California and Santa Clara County to prevent Defendants from commencing or continuing any enforcement action against the Plaintiffs “or anyone else in California who wishes to engage in the conduct engaged in by Plaintiffs.”

In commenting on the threatened prosecution that led to the lawsuit, Mike Hulme pointed out, “There is no injury here; no one has become sick from milk produced at the farm. There have been no complaints from either the goat owners or the city of San Jose. The only conclusion I can draw is that this is a politically motivated action by the district attorney and CDFA to effectively put a small family farm out of business.”

CDFA has drawn widespread criticism for its stance on herdshares and there is evidence the agency is reevaluating its position on shareholder dairies. At a meeting held with raw milk producers and consumers on August 23, CDFA Secretary Karen Ross said that she wanted to form a working group on herdshares in California and have the group draft a report with recommendations on the issue. An attorney for CDFA admitted at the meeting that there was no law on the books covering herdshares. Ross said that she wanted the report from the working group to be finished four months after the members of the group get started on the project.

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Update, Fall 2011

On August 3, 2011 federal, state and local government officials raided the Rawesome Foods store in Venice, seizing food, records, computers and cash from the store. The officials seized almost the entire food inventory at the store, dumping out all the raw milk on the premises and carting the rest of the seized food out on trucks that were suspected to be heading towards a county landfill. At the same time this was going on, police were arresting James Stewart, Sharon Palmer and Victoria Bloch.

Stewart, the owner of the Rawesome store in Venice, had defied an order by the Los Angeles County Health Department prohibiting the re-opening of the store after it was temporarily shut down by a government raid on June 30, 2010 (see Fall 2010 update below for background). He believed the court had no jurisdiction over the club and reopened the next day. Government officials seized records and a computer from Stewart’s home as well, in addition to taking nine thousand dollars in cash he had on his person. Stewart was charged with thirteen felony and misdemeanor counts, the majority of which related to the production and sale of raw milk and raw milk products. Bail was originally set at one hundred twenty-three thousand but was later reduced to thirty thousand dollars. Before he was released, Stewart had to prove to the judge that the bail money did not come from his business proceeds, a treatment mostly reserved for drug dealers.

Palmer, the owner of Healthy Family Farm in Santa Paula, had been raided three times before by government officials and had been arrested in 2008 for the production and sale of raw dairy products. Like Stewart, the majority of the ten felony and misdemeanor counts she was charged with were related to the production and sale of raw dairy products. Bail was set at over one hundred twenty thousand dollars but later reduced to sixty thousand dollars. Palmer also had to prove to the judge that the bail money did not come from her business proceeds.

Bloch, the Weston A. Price Los Angeles chapter leader, worked for Palmer as an independent contractor taking orders, signing members up for Palmer’s CSA and being responsible for communications for the farmer. Bloch was charged with three felony conspiracy counts related to the sale and distribution of raw dairy products and labeling violations. The three underlying crimes that Bloch was charged with “conspiring to commit” were misdemeanors. Bail for the WAPF chapter leader was initially set at sixty thousand dollars but she was released on her own recognizance.

Much of the illegal activity the three were accused of centered on a herdshare contract the Rawesome Club in Venice had with Palmer. Rawesome owned forty goats that were boarded at Palmer’s farm. As part of the contract, Palmer was to provide raw dairy products to the Rawesome members. Criminalizing Rawesome’s use of its property is an ominous development for food freedom of choice and the sanctity of private contract. An agreement like the one Rawesome had with Palmer was the only way its members could obtain raw goat milk and raw goat milk products within the state of California (see Sharon Palmer case, Summer 2009 update for background).

There were nine different government agencies taking part in the investigation of Rawesome and Healthy Family Farms including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and the California Franchise Tax Board. The questions now arising involve who funded the investigation and why the state of California is putting so much time and resources into the investigation at a time when the state is in such poor condition financially. There had not been any complaint about anyone becoming sick from consuming the food produced at Rawesome. The Rawesome raid was the most extreme police state action taken yet in an effort to criminalize the activities of those who have opted out of the government-sanctioned food system.

A pretrial hearing has been scheduled for the Rawesome defendants in the Los Angeles County Superior Court October 6.

Update, Fall 2010

In what has been a year of increased raids and enforcement actions against raw milk producers and distributors around the country, no action has been bigger nor received more attention than the raid on the Rawesome Food Club in Venice. On June 30 federal, state and Los Angeles County officials executed a criminal search warrant against Rawesome, a private food buying club whose store was not open to members of the general public. The officials were accompanied by police who entered the store with guns drawn; this was captured on video and later viewed by thousands on the internet.

According to Aajonus Vonderplanitz, president of Rawesome, the officials seized seventeen coolers of food, mostly raw dairy products and honey—even though the search warrant only called for the officials to take food samples. The county health department issued a notice that the store was now closed. Among the government agencies represented at the raid were the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), and the Los Angeles City District Attorney’s office.

Rawesome has many affiliated private food buying clubs around the country. Vonderplanitz has long stood up to any federal, state or local government agency harassment of club members and the farmers providing them food. He stated that the raid on the Venice store was most likely due to his recent actions to protect dairies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Illinois that had been raided by state and federal agencies.

On the day Rawesome was raided, state and county government officials also executed a criminal search warrant against Santa Paula farmer Sharon Palmer; it marked the third time a criminal search warrant had been executed against Palmer in the past year and a half. Her suspected crime was boarding goats owned by Rawesome and providing raw milk and raw milk products to its members. Shortly after the raid, Rawesome and Palmer mutually agreed to terminate the boarding contract.

On July 1, an attorney for Rawesome along with store manager, James Stewart, appeared at a Los Angeles County administrative hearing to address a violation cited against the club for operating their store without a permit. The attorney challenged the jurisdiction of the county over the store; the county officials ignored the challenge and instead presented statements admitting violations for Stewart and the attorney to sign. Both refused, with the attorney informing the officials that the store would be open to its members. On July 3, Rawesome reopened without incident.

The raid on Rawesome was widely criticized for its police state tactics; possibly for this reason none of the agencies participating in the raid followed up with any further action against the buying club. Instead, the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety was the next to go after Rawesome, issuing a closure notice to the store on August 18 for alleged building code violations. Rawesome is working with a building and safety engineer to establish that the property did not violate building or zoning standards.

The fallout from the raid extended beyond California; some of the raw cheese confiscated during the raid was manufactured by a farmstead cheese operation, Morningland Dairy of Mountain View, Missouri. When a sample of the dairy’s cheese taken by CDFA tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, the Missouri State Milk Board and FDA pressured the dairy to recall over 60,000 pounds of cheese. There had been no reports of anyone being ill from consuming the Morningland Dairy cheese.

Vonderplanitz stated his intent to sue the government agencies and officials involved in the raid. In his words, “We have a David and Goliath situation here. We must produce the funds to produce this raid in judicial and civil courts now before we do not have another opportunity.”

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TESTIMONY BEFORE THE CALIFORNIA SENATE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON FOODBORNE ILLNESS

April 15, 2008

Thank you, Senator Florez, for the opportunity to testify before the joint committees today.

At the California Senate hearings on raw milk, San Francisco consumer Christine Chessem, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy, Michael Schmidt of Glencolton Farm in Canada and Collette Cassidy of Claravale Dairy stand behind Senator Dean Florez.

My name is Sally Fallon. I am testifying in my capacity as the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education foundation; as the founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, which advocates the consumption of unpasteurized whole milk from pasture-fed cows; and as secretary of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which provides legal defense of farms engaged in raw milk production and direct farm-to-consumer sales. Most importantly, I am testifying here today in my capacity as a mother.

And it is as a mother that I will start with three testimonials typical of those we receive almost every day. One comes from a physician who prescribes raw milk to his patients, often with remarkably beneficial effects. One dramatic case involved a nine-month-old boy who had had three ear infections in three months. The child had received a number of formulas based on processed cow’s milk and soy protein, and the mother had even tried pasteurized goat milk. With each formula the child suffered recurrent vomiting, diarrhea, failure to gain weight and thrive, and he had been ill with either viral or bacterial infections almost continuously since early infancy. After the mother switched to a formula based on raw goat milk, however, the diarrhea and vomiting ceased and the child began to gain weight. One year later he has normal growth and is perfectly healthy.

The second comes from a Weston A. Price local chapter leader who reported on a two-year-old boy with very serious asthma. After the mother put the boy on raw cow’s milk the child went through the entire winter without a visit to the doctor for any reason and no asthma attacks—except for one, a serious attack that occurred after the boy consumed pasteurized milk while on a family trip.

The third involves an autistic eight-year-old boy who had not spoken a word since the sudden onset of autism at the age of two. After two months on raw cow’s milk, all autistic behavior disappeared and the child began to babble as a prelude to speech. The only dietary or treatment change was a switch from pasteurized to raw milk.

Liz Reitzig (left), Bowie, Maryland chapter leader and president of the Maryland Independent Farmers and Consumers Association (MICFA) with Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy, Sally Fallon and Michael Schmidt of Canada at the California Senate hearings in April.

Now please imagine the joy and relief that raw milk has given to the families of these children—an end to suffering, an end to worry. Family life can be normal and happy again. It is testimonials like these that make us so passionate about having access to raw milk, and so concerned about the manner in which access to raw milk has been undermined in the state of California with the stealth passage of AB 1735, a law that mandates standards so strict that commercial production of raw milk will become impossible. Our experts here today will testify to the fact that the 10 coliform limit is not only unnecessary for the safety of raw milk, but would actually make raw milk more vulnerable to pathogens.

Make no mistake, those who worked behind the scenes for the passage of this law, and our opponents testifying today, do not want the sickly, asthmatic or autistic child to have access to Nature’s perfect healing food. Although couched in terms of public safety, AB 1735 has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with protecting California’s annual $4.5 billion industrial dairy industry, which has to be propped up with an average of $1.6 billion in subsidies every year. This is a modern day example of sacrificing our children on the altar of Baal.

The 10 coliform standard is a “test of sterility,” designed not to ensure the cleanliness of a farm but to verify the effectiveness of a processing facility. The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance allows 100,000 coliforms per ml in raw milk from the dairy farm. This 10 coliform standard was not designed to test the cleanliness of a farm, but the effectiveness of the sterilization process at the milk processing plant.

It is inappropriate to use a “test of sterility” on raw milk, which is not a sterile product, but a probiotic product. Non-pathogenic coliforms are what consumers are seeking when they choose a raw milk product. Coliforms protect us against pathogens and produce many important nutrients in the digestive tract. They are our friends, not our enemies, and they are being increasingly used by doctors to treat everything from intestinal problems to wounds. Obviously it is unscientific to claim, as our opponents do, that these same coliforms in milk are dangerous. The medical paradigm has changed; germs are no longer the enemy.

You have, of course heard many arguments painting raw milk as a deadly poison, one that has no health benefits. These arguments can only be made on the basis of extreme bias against raw milk, found in numerous articles published in the scientific literature and on government websites. The committee needs to be aware of the double standard applied to raw milk compared to other foods. The most glaring example of this double standard can be found in the FDA PowerPoint presentation on raw milk prepared by Mr. John Sheehan, posted at realmilk.com.

The Weston A. Price Foundation has presented to the Committee a slide-by-slide response to this document. In it, Mr. Sheehan cites 15 studies to support his statement that “drinking raw milk is like playing Russian roulette with your health.” In analyzing these studies blaming milk for illness, we found that not one of them proved that pasteurization would have prevented the illness. In almost half the studies Mr. Sheehan misrepresents the conclusions of the study, and in fully 80 percent of the studies there was no valid positive milk sample to implicate raw milk. One-third of the studies ignore other more probable vectors of disease in what constitutes clear examples of bias. In one of the studies, the “outbreak” blamed on raw milk did not even exist. The public deserves better from our public servants.

Lately, we have seen many reports in the media about outbreaks attributed to raw milk. On inspection, we find the same clear pattern of bias, double standard, and possibly even fraud regarding these reports. The modus operandi is as follows:

• When testing raw milk, use cultures to promote pathogen multiplication and highly sensitive milk testing techniques that find pathogens in extremely small numbers, levels that would not cause illness. (Any substance you test will show pathogens if the test is sensitive enough.)
• Use new rapid testing techniques developed for the food industry, which tend to find false positives. This method is currently being used in Pennsylvania to harass raw milk dairies, finding pathogens and rescinding licenses with independent tests come back negative and no one is getting sick.
• When there is an outbreak, use food questionnaires that leave out likely vectors of disease but always include raw milk. In a recent outbreak in Pennsylvania, one member who got sick reported receiving a call from the health department. The department wanted to know whether she had drunk raw milk. She replied that she hadn’t but that she suspected undercooked chicken from a local restaurant. But once she replied negatively to the question on raw milk, the department was not interested in pursuing the questioning further, not interested in tracking down the chicken.
• When there is an outbreak, test raw milk products first, and test them in the home setting rather than from the shelf. If a person is infected and has handled a raw milk product, the product will test positive for the organism. Omit testing other foods or raw milk products on the shelf (not handled by the consumer) but report a positive lab result for the raw milk product. This method has been used to implicate Mexican style raw milk cheese in numerous reports.
• Omit subjects who got sick but did not drink raw milk. The 2001 Wisconsin outbreak cited on the CDC website is a good example of this. People who got sick but did not drink raw milk were not admitted to the hospital and did not become part of the official record.
• Ignore equally likely or more likely sources of infection, such as visit to a farm or petting zoo, tap water or other foods.
• Assume that statistical association constitutes proof. It is easy to create a statistical association with raw milk using the above techniques.
• Issue inflammatory press releases against raw milk, which are not retracted but left on government websites when the dairy is exonerated.

The industry has used these techniques to make raw milk the whipping boy for outbreaks caused by other foods. It is clear that in recent months government agencies are making a well-coordinated effort to blame some of their most serious problems, such as listeria and E. coli O157:H7, on raw milk. The fact that only raw milk was quarantined during the 2006 California E. coli outbreak attributed to spinach is an excellent example of these biased tactics.

Meanwhile, problems with pasteurized milk tend to be glossed over or underreported. Recently three people died from listeria in pasteurized milk in Massachusetts. On February 24, 2006, Wal-Mart in Vidalia, Georgia pulled pasteurized milk from shelves due to foul odor. At least one child was seriously sick, a fact that was not reported in news releases. A voluntary recall was announced three days later—there was no sense of urgency. In fact, Wal-Mart was  applauded by Commissioner Tommy Irvin. There were no government recalls, no warnings to the public to avoid drinking pasteurized milk. More of the double standard. In 2006 pasteurized milk caused illness in 1,300 inmates in 11 California state prisons, yet we heard no outcry to remove this dangerous product from the market.

Another example of the double standard comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website, which warns against raw milk as a source of salmonella. Yet a few points later the same document states that unpasteurized milk (in the form of breast milk) is the safest food for infants and that raw breast milk prevents many health problems, including infection by salmonella. Everything that we have learned about the health benefits, immune support, probiotic qualities and anti-pathogenic components of raw human milk over the last 40 years applies equally to the raw milk of other species. Studies showing that babies given pasteurized breast milk have more infections, more health problems and do not grow as well compared to raw breast milk apply equally to the milk from other species.

The FDA calls drinking raw milk “risky behavior.” A 1999 FDA survey involving 19,356 adults in eight states found that 50 percent consumed uncooked eggs, 20 percent consumed pink hamburgers, 8 percent consumed raw oysters, while a mere 1 percent consumed raw milk. A 2008 study of 4548 young college students reported that 53 percent consumed raw cookie dough, 33 percent consumed eggs with runny yolks, 29 percent consumed raw sprouts, 11 percent consumed raw oysters, clams or mussels, and 7 percent consumed rare hamburger. The study did not report raw milk consumption. Yet none of the common “risky behaviors” has prominence on FDA’s website for food safety—only raw milk is singled out—and there are no pasteurization requirement for common “risky behavior” foods.

Government officials also insist that raw provides no health benefits compared to pasteurized and ultrapasteurized milk. (It should be pointed out that most milk today is ultrapasteurized, a process that rapidly takes the fragile milk proteins to a temperature well above the boiling point.) The evidence for the superior health benefits of raw milk comes in the form of scientific studies published in peer reviewed journals, and it corroborates the hundreds of testimonials that we have received on the benefits of raw milk from young and old, some of which you will hear today. Opponents of raw milk are uniformly condescending towards individual testimonials, dismissing them as anecdotal. Yet for the individuals and families involved, these testimonials are pure science—objective conclusions drawn from before-and-after observation of conditions incumbent on a single variable, the addition of raw milk to the diet.

The second document presented to the Committee is a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the Weston A. Price Foundation, which addresses the safety, health benefits and economic considerations of raw milk (posted at realmilk.com). This document is fully referenced and contains all the scientific studies that we know about. In it we provide the math for that $64,000 question—what is the safety record of raw milk versus pasteurized and versus other foods on a per-serving basis? The Centers for Disease Control estimates that on a per-serving basis, one is ten times more likely to become ill from Listeria monocytogenes by eating deli meats than from consuming raw milk—and this estimate is based on the exaggerated and biased reports mentioned earlier, which blame raw milk but do not prove that it caused an illness. Here we have yet another example of the double standard applied to raw milk. Where are the FDA’s charges that deli meats are “inherently dangerous and should not be consumed?” Where is the FDA’s exhortation to “everyone charged with protecting the public health” to prevent the sale of deli meats to consumers?

By our calculations, pasteurized milk is 1.1 to 15.3 times more dangerous than raw milk on a per-serving basis. Even using government statistics that inflate the danger of raw milk, it is easy to calculate that one is over 2000 times more likely, on a per-serving basis, to contract illness from other foods than from raw milk. In fact, the only way to reduce the risk of food borne illness to zero is to stop eating and die of starvation. . . . or to consume raw milk on a regular basis to ensure immunity to pathogens.

Our PowerPoint presentation details the health benefits of raw milk in studies going back over 80 years. Raw milk is superior to pasteurized milk in building strong bones, preventing tooth decay, supporting normal growth and development, preventing asthma and allergies and providing protection against infectious and chronic disease.

The latest study comes from Europe, where investigators found, in a study of 14,893 children aged 5-13, that consumption of raw milk was the strongest factor for reducing the risk of asthma and allergy, whether the children lived on a farm or not. The benefits were greatest when consumption of raw milk began during the first year of life. About five million children in the US are afflicted with asthma and 5,500 people die from asthma each year. About 1250 people in the US die from food-borne pathogens from all sources with virtually no deaths from raw milk. Thus, the risk of dying from asthma is over four times greater than the risk of dying from food-borne pathogens from all sources, and infinitely greater than the risk of dying from raw milk. Yet defenders of the dairy industry insist that children should not have the right to consume raw milk, even hinting that parents who love their children enough to give them raw milk are guilty of child abuse.

Our opponents today will insist that raw milk is inherently dangerous and that there is no way to make it safe. These arguments are based on 40-year-old science and a discredited medical paradigm. Raw milk is inherently safe, safer than any other food, and we have the technology and knowledge today to get safe raw milk to children in every part of the country. Our opponents will insist that raw milk has no health benefits compared to pasteurized. They will omit mention of the many studies which show that pasteurization destroys the vital qualities of milk, reduces nutrient assimilation, and renders it allergenic and difficult to digest. In response to this attitude I quote Sinclair Lewis: “It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.”

All smiles after obtaining a temporary restraining order for AB 1735, the sneak attack legislation against raw milk, are Gary Cox, counsel for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), ex-assemblyman Rusty Areas, Collette Cassidy and Dr. Ron Garthwaite, owners of Claravale Dairy, Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures Dairy Corporation, and Ken Gorman with the FTCLDF.

A final argument against raw milk goes like this: If raw milk results in an outbreak, this would cause people to stop drinking milk altogether and adversely affect the whole milk industry. I hope your intelligence is not insulted with such an argument today. The industry does its best to publicize any possible problem caused by raw milk in an effort to staunch the declining sales of pasteurized and ultrapasteurized milk, a product that fewer and fewer consumers can tolerate.

In summary, I urge the joint committee to work towards overturning AB 1735 and doing everything in its power to support raw milk in California. Opposition to raw milk is illogical, it is unscientific, it is expensive, it is heartless and cruel. The child who benefits from raw milk—perhaps even whose life is saved by raw milk—may be your own child, or your own grandchild, or even a child or grandchild of our opponents—our efforts are dedicated to all children. We have the knowledge and technology today to get safe raw milk to every child who needs it and we ask that you work with us, not against us, to achieve this important goal.

More updates on AB 1735.

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