My family has been drinking grass-fed raw milk for almost 20 years now. Since that time, I have watched the war against farm-fresh dairy evolve from something the government basically ignored (because there were so few people doing it) to the present day policy which is to harass and illegally shut down small dairy farms across the county essentially bankrupting them in the process.
Remember the old quotation from Gandhi?
First they ignore at you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
We are clearly in the last phase of the war against raw milk and there is no doubt that the right for the consumer to choose healthy farm fresh foods will win. But there is still a long way to go.
This new phase of the raw milk war now involves consumers as well as farmers. Considered off-limits in the past, consumers are being harassed and threatened with trumped-up charges like allowing local farmers to deliver on their property.
Government officials are writing up phony cease and desist letters in the name of the FDA even where the FDA has absolutely no jurisdiction in order to frighten consumers away from procuring dairy from their own privately owned cows tended by farmers contracted with via herd share agreements.
Clearly these are desperate measures by a government that realizes they are losing the battle to scare consumers away from this healthy, nutrient-dense food.
In the early days of the war, government warnings that raw milk would make you sick and that those who drank it were playing Russian roulette with their health were enough to scare the majority of consumers away from seeking and trying it for themselves. With distrust of the government at an all-time high, these tactics are no longer working.
One gal new to farm-fresh dairy told me recently that if the government was against raw milk, that must mean she should drink it and that it was good for her!
With the old battle strategies ineffective, this new phase against raw milk involves trying to reason with consumers to dissuade them logically from consuming raw milk.  This “I’m one of you and here are my concerns” approach seems very real and sensible at first, but in reality, it is the propaganda snake simply shedding its skin and taking a new form all in the name of confusing the consumer into inaction.
Take a look at the slick, professional video below by “Food Poison Expert” and attorney Bill Marler. This short clip demonstrates this new approach to divert consumers away from raw milk very clearly. His website “Real Raw Milk Facts” even goes so far as to use the lingo of the Real Food movement.
Be warned if you are new to raw dairy. This tactic is just the same old raw milk propaganda repackaged in a more subtle and insidious way to infiltrate and fight the raw milk war from the inside and on the fringes of the Real Food Movement. Will it work?
Not a chance. Consumers are becoming way to savvy nowadays to fall for this type of baloney. But it is helpful to expose the new tools of war just the same.
People like him make me amazed that we all aren’t rejecting food altogether and popping a fully nutrionalized gov’t made pill every morning like Stepford Wives. Ugh, feel like pulling out my hair, nah, I like mine, maybe his though.
Amazing how this totally uninformed guy can come off with an opinion which is not based on any fact, is rooted in scare tactics and devoid of knowledge.
Does he really think that e coli comes from the milk itself. NO. It comes from the feces. Does he really think that the raw milk dairies can’t wash down a cow just as well as any other dairy.
My goodness. By his telling a cow would spurt disease right through it’s udder. If that was the case we would be lacking in new cows. LOL, so not the case. Totally disgusted by him and his uninformed nonsense.
That’s why he started out making the point that both the source of milk and poop are close to each other. What he left out was that the reason they find so much e. coli in unpasteurized milk is that the cows are possibly knee deep in the e. coli-rich crap. And if not, they’re being fed grains which do not promote a healthy cow gut. Of course there’s bad bacteria found in the milk. The animals are sick! I don’t want raw (or pasteurized) milk from a sick animal.
We can go back and see our govt has pushed the opposite of health and freedom for decades..this is a generational issue and it is time to wake the hell up..and the masses are most indoctrinated in the public indoctrination systems..
We’ve been buying our raw milk from a retail store in our area. They have to put stickers on the bottle that say drinking this may be hazardous to your health and drink at own risk. We then switched to getting milk from our CSA and my husband noticed the missing stickers. He said, “How will we know it’s bad for us without the sticker!!!!”… We had a good laugh.
That’s too funny!
Reminds me of Florida, where people do the *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* and sell raw milk “ONLY FOR ANIMAL FOOD – NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION”.
If the government is against it, then I’m for it! They are a bunch of lying heathens. How did we ever get to this point.
Excuse me….. would someone please hand me a glass of RAW MILK from my very own, pastured and dearly loved cow? My stomach is a little upset after hearing this uninformed man spew lies about raw milk…… raw milk always helps my tummy feel better.
They aren’t lies Laurie. Just because you haven’t become ill from raw milk, doesn’t mean other people haven’t. It is a high risk food because cow shit can get in the milk. Bill Marler speaks out for all the people who are lured into trying raw milk (all of it’s wonderful health claims) and almost kill themselves or thier children. There is another side of the story on raw milk.
If you talk to an actual farmer producing grassfed raw milk, they will tell you that you’d have to SHOVEL the feces into the milk for it to make anyone sick. And that simply is not happening.
Mary, a family member has a small family farm. And I have been part of the milking process while visiting. It is a bold-faced lie to say that poop gets into the milk. The farms that the informed consumer gets their raw milk from is not a factory farm where the cows are standing knee-high in crap. So, before you go stating incorrect facts, go and see where the ultra-pasturized stuff comes from and then go to a small “true” farm and see first-hand how a cow is meant to be milked.
Mary, there are always 2 sides to every story..People react differently to foods, where someone can eat fish and another person is allergic, the same goes for raw milk. As an owner of a small organic store in Florida I sell LOTS of raw milk, both goat & cow as well as farm-fresh eggs. I go to all of my small family farms to personally see the conditions & make sure that i choose wisely for my customers. I can assure you that if the small family farms are making their living by selling thier “raw products” they are diligent in making sure that their milking facilities are ULTRA CLEAN (udder disenfectants are used, pails are sterilized & dump bags are attatched to the back side of the cow!)…if they are not, the farmer is out of business! I doubt very seriously if big cow patties make it into the milk pail!! What a joke! Look around at all the commercial foods that are constantly being recalled for contamination. I wonder how the human race survived for all those thousands of years before Gov’t told us what we should eat! I bet YOU are a Big Mac/chicken nugget eater, aren’t YOU????
Wow. That was pretty slick, but even if I didn’t already know that it is propoganda, he would have lost me at “dangerous like sprouts & leafy greens”. Dude. Seriously?! And the sad thing is the pictures of the cows that have been bred for commercial dairy use, with the profoundly distended udders (which always stay infected. Hmmm.) are passed off as if “that’s how cows look”. Booooo.
It is a personal choice the government has no right to meddle with.
I remain skeptical the comsumption of raw milk is prudent, but it is absurd that it is criminalized. Get the government out of the way and consume at your own risk!
If raw milk was as dangerous as they make it out to be, the human race would never have survived to discover pasteurization…
After all the nonsense I have seen of late from the gov’t I am inclined to agree with the lady that said “If the gov’t said not to drink this then I know it must be good for me!.” I wonder if in sending illegitimate cease and desist letters the farmers have a case for harassment charges on the agents sending them. Might be worth looking into.
Two things really bug me.
First, rarely is there a comparison of risks between conventional, factory-produced milk and pasture-fed dairy milk. I would never drink raw milk from dairies that confine their herd indoors.
Second, rarely is there any mention of the power of accountability when consumers buy directly from the farmer. With conventionally produced milk, the consumer only knows in which supermarket the milk was purchased. I am in a buying group that accounts for more than 50% of the farmer’s sales and we are all connected through a Yahoo Group. If anyone gets sick, we all know about it before nightfall, and the farmer will be out of business. THAT is a for-real incentive for the farmer to produce clean milk!