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.
He mentions leafy green and unpasturized juice…..so next they will “crack down” on people who own juicing machines and buy lettuce. Our government is nuts.
We must all remember that we live in the Age of Corporate Science. Many of these mainstream “researchers” are paid shills who have no right controlling our health and food freedom. And to people live Sherri above must be living on a different planet. Everyday we our surrounded by a creeping police state that seeks to destroy our access to real food. We our fed a constant stream of propaganda over the last 100 years that synthetic chemicals and “scorch the Earth” attitude is the right way to go. But in reality chemicals and pasteurization are dangerous and unnecessary. Bad bacteria comes from dirty factory farms and an abstinence of good bacteria is one of the reasons behind the huge rise in Autoimmune disease. Just read the Gut And Psychology book sometime.
Speaking of health freedom, check this out:
anh-usa.org/nyt-attack-as-dshea-under-threat/
Government agencies know nothing about real health so they should not have a say in how I manage my health.
Thank you for speaking up for this and shedding light into the dark corners!
We drank raw milk when I was growing up… Right there off the shelf from Alta Dena dairy in California. But no more, eh?
I am currently drinking grass-fed, local, same-day-fresh, un-homogenized, but pasteurized milk. I have been unable to find anyone in the area who offers any kind of herdshare program, and the local goat dairy folks are asking a prohibitive price (assuming my family would even go for goat).
Do you have any suggestions for finding a way to get to raw milk, beyond the “here check the web directory” approach?
Thanks again for all you do!
I thought of that, but there’s only two in Mississippi, both half the state away from here…
Call them anyway. They will most likely know where to find milk in the state. Also, many times you can join a co-op or buying club. They’ll know. If they don’t, call the Weston A. Price headquarters in D.C.
Wow – the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund map shows that “Farm Sales” of raw milk are legal in Mississippi… Which is NOT what my friendly dairy farmer said. Hmmmm….
The dairy in S.C. that we travel 240 miles round trip to go to is one of the small farms being harrassed by the Gov’t. The F.D.A. (which really should be called the Federal Dept. of Agriculture!) is trying to blame this farm for 3 people getting sick and trying to scare the rest of us by calling it an epidemic! Give me a break!! In the wise words of the late President Ronald Reagan, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Thank you, Sarah, for bringing this topic to light!
I just love the sympathy that they’re trying to generate with those camera angles!
Germs are not the problem anyway. He is approaching this from the standpoint that germs are the problem. Raw milk helps to protect and heal so that the germs that we come in contact with in our regular day to day don’t have a chance to affect us negatively. Pasteurized milk does not possess this defense, although it carries germs.
Sarah,
What happens when you get sick the first time you try raw milk?
What happens when you get sick eating raw spinach for the first time? Would you never eat it again??? Your comments are really ignorant and I noticed you didn’t quote any sources of your accusations. Maybe you would be willing to share the details how your son got sick from raw milk? Where the raw milk came from? How it was stored? Just saying ‘my kid got sick’ doesn’t prove anything… many kids get sick from many things.
Yeah, or peanut butter, or reese peanut butter cups, or lunchmeat, or or or………if fear of illness was to keep us from eating certain foods, there wouldn’t be much left to eat!
I would respond with rational thought just as I have had to do with every health problem my family has faced that mainstream medicine, government, and education had no true help to offer me on. And that includes situations where they claimed to have the answer and made it worse.
What would you do if doctors and teaches told you that you HAD to medicate your child and over years they claimed the same and that they needed to play with the dosage while your child grew worse and learned less?
Your decision to at one and the same time over-personalize your story for others to relate to and use as a standard of proof in and of itself is not making any sense nor even holding together in any form of any kind of a logical construct.
Sometimes you learn and grow from your experiences and sometimes you just turn into a person on a mission.
I recently had the privilege of attending a Rally for Food and Farm Freedom in DC in response to the charges brought against Amish farmer Dan Allgyer. It was so awesome to see so many come together in defense of raw milk and the freedom to choose what food we eat. I was so excited to meet Sally Fallon and Mark McAfee, among others, and hear them speak. At one point Mark McAfee turned around and spoke directly to the Capitol, and I couldn’t stop from tearing up. This is such an important battle!
I agree, this is a new phase in the war against raw milk, and it’s time for us to fight back with new tactics. The first thing we may need to do is to remove farmers’ names and locations from the RealMilk.com site, and replace them with the names of WAPF Chapter Leaders and personal friends of the farmers. New members will only be approved after several face-to-face meetings, and/or if they are friends of friends who are already buying raw dairy.
The second tactic, which is a little more complicated, involves getting doctors who are sympathetic to raw milk involved as allies, and private labs to do testing on raw milk samples. When co-op members get sick, they should go to these doctors for a check-up. And co-ops should send samples of the possibly contaminated milk to a private lab, and get the testing done themselves. Above all, we need to keep mainstream doctors and hospitals who are hostile to raw dairy completely out of the loop, and never, ever mention the names of raw milk farmers to them.
this is insightful. I used to have a source for raw milk… until the farmer got scared out of it by all the raids that were starting to go on. All it takes is one wrong word in the wrong ear and suddenly it is your farmer whose life is being destroyed.
thanks for keeping more of the *real* story on *real* milk out there!
I think I have BS poisoning. Or maybe government poisoning.
I gave an entire gallon of raw milk to my neighbor and friend when my boys were spending the night at her place once. I told her that she and her boys could drink it too. She smiled and said that would be awesome, but when I visited her last night – about a month later – she still had some of the milk left. I think about half a gallon, and without my even asking her, she said, “My body is so used to junk that I am afraid to eat or drink healthy food because I think it will make me sick.” This was a surprisingly intelligent statement, and I smiled at her. I replied, “That’s true, eating or drinking something like raw milk can cause a detox effect, which can feel like you have the flu, but when it’s over, you’ll feel so much better!” She shrugged, and said, “I get sick so much that I am certain I would get more than just the flu!” In her case though, she may be right because she goes to the doctor to get antibiotics for every little infection, and I am willing to bet that if she went in to the doctor’s office and told them that she drank raw milk and now has the flu, they would tell her that she has all kinds of diseases, and that would only bring disaster to my farmer!
On the other hand, I gave a gallon to another friend who is lactose intolerant. He spends 6.50 for a half gallon of lactaid milk, and when I explained to him that he could probably drink raw milk (which is 100% grassfed by my farmer) for only 4.50 a gallon, he was very willing to try. He tolerates it well, and thinks it is delicious, and when his mother heard that he was drinking it, she demanded that he get her some too! So I guess you win some and lose some, lol!
But really, I always wonder if I should bother trying to “recruit” people who are firmly dependent on the healthcare system like my neighbor. Those people seem more at risk of mentioning something to their doctor and leading to the government to harass the farmer…