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.
Thanks for the info. I can’t understand why anyone would think raw milk was bad for us.
It makes me sick that the government would even get involved in this. It obviously isn’t people’s welfare they have in mind – consider all the awful things they love pushing through the FDA as long as they get some pockets lined. The fact that some people still think we live in a free country is frightening. Turn off the TV, people. And let’s take back our freedoms!
Seriously!
I am a member of the Washington, DC area buying club whose farmer has recently been attacked by the FDA (even though he provides all of us with amazing, nourishing food). Thanks so much for drawing attention to the issue!
Thank you for this post!
Thanks for this post, Sarah. It’s terrible how these ambulance chasers are scaring people about raw milk.
By the way I’m glad you didn’t link to their website. They don’t need any Google juice from backlinks from us!
Heck no! No links from this blog! LOL
This video is amazing.
My response to BM himself:
I think we have to be pretty skeptical about YOU, Bill Marler! To say that your website Real Raw Milk Facts is “fair and balanced” is so absurd it’s actually funny. You’re a food safety lawyer, making a living off people who are suing raw milk dairies. Tell me that’s not biased.
Who in the raw milk industry do you know is being sued? And for what? I’m very curious.
I don’t know who all his clients are but he represents people who are victims of food poisoning.
Here’s an example of the kind of crap his firm publishes — this is an attack on Morningland Dairy, one of the raw dairies that got busted last year and are now struggling just to stay in business:
foodpoisonjournal.com/food-poisoning-watch/missouri-dairys-raw-milk-cheese-production-stopped-due-to-listeria-and-staph/
Here’s the Morningland Diary blog so you can read about what happened to them:
morninglanddairy.webs.com/apps/blog/
Honestly, I don’t know how Bill Marler and his cronies can sleep at night.
I don’t know how you people can sleep at night.
Mary, you took a chance on life, and life handed you a lemon. There is no way to make lemonade out of a sick child, and I am not belittling the suffering of you or your family. But you’re turning around and “distorting reality” as badly or worse than those you rail against. It is not a practical or a moral solution to put a gun to everyone else’s head and tell them that if they choose to drink fresh milk, you’ll blow their brains out. And that, at its heart, is what every law is about.
I just tried to respond with a comment but it is not showing up.
Sarah, can you please check your spam folder? I think my comment got labeled as spam because I included 2 URLs.
Oh please. You’ve never met the man.
Your comment, Sarah, that leads into your article makes it appear like you are warring against raw milk; I wonder if you should change that?
I just was reading the BS on the “Real Raw Milk Facts” website. They give all of these cases of “suspected” illnesses caused by raw milk. If you read their sources you will see that most are thought to have been caused by raw milk. Then go to the CDC’s web site and see all of the outbreak cases of e Coli that are confirmed and causes by the so-called regulated food industry. FDA, CDC, USDA are all arms of industrialized farms and factory foods.
Yes Rick. It is all made up. They are all suspected. None of it really happened. That is why the people made the videos. What is wrong with you people?
What is wrong with you? Seriously this trolling is beyond rude. Why would you even want to come to the people with their eyes wide open to true wisdom such that they have the ability to see the difference between “suspected” and “confirmed” and spout your passion for people to close their eyes and accept dogma from so-called experts who so very openly show their own flaws and their lack of respect for true science and their lack of integrity?
You are free to do as you will. Be we are also free to call you on it. I’m sure you and this horrible man in the video sleep just fine at night in spite of the lack of honesty and ethics on this topic. But I’m still going to pursue truth, reality and wisdom rather than buy into your dogma.
I imagine in your world, the government and big pharma have all the perfect answers and the flaws in that thinking that are leading us down a path of epidemics of diabetes, cancer, autism and auto-immune disorders all of which were at some point in the past extremely rare you feel no need to take responsibility for the harm you are causing. But I say to you, “go peddle crazy someplace else.” I am done with conventional government “wisdom” and the harm it is doing to millions.
I am in dead earnest when I say, “Thank God for those who have turned from all that and are helping us regain our health.”
Raw milk is nature’s original probiotic food. It is not an enemy, it is a cure. And in this video, it is the scapegoat. The underlying cause of virulent E. coli outbreaks is conventional factory farming, and people like this conveniently ignore the critical difference between grass-fed vs confined feedlot operation (CAFO) farming. There are two systems and two raw milks. Bad bacteria springs from the guts of CAFO animals given a regular regimen of antibiotics resulting in super antibiotic resistant strains. While no food is 100% safe 100% of the time, raw milk from grass-fed animals is safe, and raw milk from sick, stressed, crowded animals is not. Distended udders of conventional dairy cows like those pictured in this video are often infected with mastitis and their milk needs to be pasteurized, whereas pasture-raised animals have the right pH in their gut and are given the correct food for their species, giving their milk amazing benefits and imparting health and strong immune systems to those who consume it — fresh and unprocessed as nature intended.
There are two systems, and the industrial model is failing us. There is a built-in accountability in direct, farm-to-consumer relationships. The flaws inherent in the industrial model are what need fixing, with its sick animals, centralized supply chains and long-distance shipping, resulting in vast amounts of many types of foods getting contaminated year after year. The spinach and sprouts he mentions are just the carriers of bacteria originating from bad, industrial, unnatural farming practices.
What doesn’t get mentioned in mainstream reports of food safety problems is the sorry state of humans’ immune systems due to dead, depleted, compromised, sterilized food — which is the ironic outcome of resulting efforts to make the food supply safer by deadening it. While it may seem to some that the solution is to sterilize our food, what we need is to address the underlying causes by overhauling our industrial food system, seeking local pasture-based farms as our primary food sources, and strengthening our bodies with good, clean food that has healthy beneficial bacteria. Not all bacteria is bad; good bacteria is essential for life.
I was recently reading at David Gumpert’s blog and Mark McAfee (sp?) was there commenting. Good stuff. Mark makes some excellent points about the goodness of raw milk.
Marler is indeed a bozo. His science (from U-Davis) is probably slanted in his favor from the get-go and is most likely bogus and/or bought and paid for. Let us never forget that science is for sale. Always. To the highest payer.
After watching Marler and some of his minions trash raw milk at several web sites and blogs over the past year, I’ve come to the realization that he is more like an ambulance chaser, and he is DEFINITELY an attorney. They love to twist facts and make things what they aren’t. That’s how they make their money, no?
And I also agree with the poster who mentioned that photo of those grotesquely huge utters on the cows (besides, I prefer Jerseys, Guernseys and Devons any day of the week to Holsteins). That is a disservice to all dairy farmers, not just dairy farmers who sell raw milk. Chalk up a couple of points for stupidity on the part of Marler & Co. ! What a dirtbag organization he has – and now a web site, to boot. I hope no one click on his web site because that will only encourage them with hits.
D. Someone that doesn’t even post there name calling someone else a bozo. You are all a rude, mean bunch of people. There are no facts twisted. You just don’t want to hear them. It goes against the raw milk dogma that has been drilled into your head. I’m sure you believe raw milk has the capacity to kill pathogens. This is the biggest myth that WAPF spreads.
You misunderstand, Mary. It’s about beneficial bacteria vs. pathogenic bacteria and which one has the upper hand, in the cows as well as in people. In HEALTHY cows and people it is the beneficial bacteria that have the upper hand and are able to displace the pathogenic ones. And this fact is not a myth. Indeed, it’s pretty mainstream — just look at all the yogurt commercials!
Mary McGonigle-Martin, why are YOU on this blog BEING RUDE.
I live in California, home of Organic Pastures, Mark MacAffy’s dairy. He has been going around to all of our WAPF chapters and doing a power point on raw milk and the war against it. He has some great stuff to share. The one fact I took away, not one case of food poisoning in California due to drinking raw milk in over 40 years! He said his herd, a closed herd, is tested constantly, not just by him but by the state and they’ve never found one thing. I’m sure our other raw milk dairies in California test the same. I do believe that small farmers, selling off their farms may not be so clean. I’m sticking with OP because it is sold commercially so therefore really tested frequently.
Mikki,
Mark has been saying his herd is “closed” for years now but he has also talked about bringing in new cows. He got press bringing in cows in what he called an “organic cow rescue” or some such, where he bought organic cows at auction 18 months or so ago. You can’t have both: if the herd is closed, you grow your own cows, you don’t buy them at auction.
We also know that Mark outsourced product from 2005 through 2009. Past 2009 we have no confirmation and he will not allow consumers access to his proprietary Milk Pool records in Sacramento that would prove he no longer outsources.
In any case, he had to outsource to meet demand WAY BACK in 2005 and his market has grown quite a bit since then.
You can also do a little search of government documents to find that pathogens HAVE been found in OPDC products and environment: campy and listeria in cream, O157:H7 in the cows, and campy in the cows. Oh, but, you know, the listeria case was outsourced cream and so that doesn’t really count, if you ask Mark.
All this is to say, “Know your farmer.” I got to know my raw dairy farmer here in California and I say “Get a goat.”
Amanda
People should also know that there are no testing protocols that guarantee safe milk. Safety happens only in the hands of an extremely careful farmer.
OPDC has an on-farm test for O157:H7 that was made for apple juice and never tested on raw milk. We can’t know if it actually works.
In California, the state will come to a dairy about once a milk and pull a fluid product sample to test. That one half gallon in a month is hardly a thorough testing program, considering milk from the same bulk tank as that sample could be contaminated and the sample clean just because of the possible uneven distribution of pathogens.
In general, there is no guarantee. It’s a risk. Shoulder the risk if you wish.
Amanda