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.
I blog often and I truly thank you for your information. This article has truly peaked my interest.
I’m going to take a note of your website and keep checking for
new information about once per week. I subscribed to your RSS
feed as well.
I happen to be commenting to let you know of the outstanding discovery our daughter had reading through your webblog. She came to understand plenty of issues, which included what it’s like to possess a very effective coaching mood to make other people clearly thoroughly grasp certain multifaceted subject areas. You undoubtedly surpassed our own expected results. Thanks for coming up with the important, trusted, edifying not to mention cool guidance on the topic to Mary.
well, I figured that after I had read through all that and had already shown how up in arms I was feeling I ought to go all the way and read through the facts of the case as I could find them on the web of the vocal and determined opponent who joined in the discussion over and over again to claim that we raw milk people are all crazy or stupid. There is some significant documentation available online through the website of this awful lawyer who I’m sure believes it is a great thing if she remains rabidly determined to believe raw milk is evil and to want to lay blame and extract money for her illness.
It is really a very sad story and not just because of the blame being laid on the doorstep of all raw milk, which is enough to get me going anyway.
Among the wordy, poorly written document that the website shared there were a few flies in the lawyers honeypot of perfect proof and it would behoove all of us to remember that what a lawyer must do in court to “prove” his case does not bear the least resemblance to the burden of proof that the scientific community is supposed to hold themselves to before they allow themselves to consider something proven. It is a sad and dangerous state of things that has so many negative consequences that so many are called “experts” or “scientists” while what they really do is to disregard the real rules of the scientific method.
The report starts with the assumption that it is about cases of campylobacteriosis among people consuming raw milk. It defines “cases” in two different ways, one of which is people reporting symptoms but not being tested (or not testing positively) for the germ they want to blame. The majority of their “cases” fall into this second category. And one “case” is a person who maintained that he had not drunk any of the milk. So they start out right at the outset trying to manipulate their audience with devices that ought to be called out.
At another point in the report they get to admitting that they did test actual milk samples from the dairy and at a far later point in the report get to the results of that which was that the samples they took were negative.
They reported testing a sample from the home of a “case” but only one. That sample tested negative in their first test and then the report goes on to spout out a bunch of other testing that sounds like it is actually changing what they were testing for and is never explained in the report. With the little bit there was of their own lingo to say what they wanted to about the positive test results they wanted to claim it sounded almost like they were saying there was some DNA that might have allowed the milk to be susceptible to campylobacter. Surely that is not what they meant. That is too absurd even for these agenda driven people. But goodness knows that they did not have to make it hard on the layman on purpose and if they wanted to they could have and should have written what they meant plainly in a convincing manner. “This can’t be said in plain English” and “You aren’t intelligent enough to look at this evidence” are the arguments of weak minded individuals.
So I had to go looking elsewhere for what they meant and discovered that the method they used to claim the milk was campylobacter positive is a method akin to finding two bone fragments and building a dinosaur, which we all know is later followed by having to correct the mistakes of the the imagination of the original expert who “figured out” exactly what that dinosaur looked like or even which one it was. The found two DNA fragments that they believed to be a part of the makeup of the campylobacter strain they had hoped to find.
I hope I never get convincted of murder by a court allowing evidence that shows human female wielded the murder weapon without any DNA specific to which human female wielded it.
From their poor methods to their poor timing to their mischaracterizing what they really proved… and all the way down to the “professional-trust-us-to-decide-for-you-jargon” what was proven by the report was that I have no need to respect the lawyer or the so-called scientists behind the website or the lawsuit or that report. None of it proved even that the dairy in question was the cause of the illness, much less how many cases of the illness there really were or anything else for that matter. It was just sad and self-defeating. Made me want to cry for the sick lawsuit woman and for the sad state of rational thought in our society and in our government and in our courts.
For all I know she may have gotten it through the milk, but even that allows for it entered the milk after she got to her house. And since she is the only victim of their 16 claimed “cases” that has the resultant syndrome that caused them to decide which strain they had … well I could go on and on. There are so many holes in their methodology and in the story that it was truly just pathetic.
And for anyone who didn’t know campylobacter has been claimed to be the most common form of food borne illness in the state of California and it does have other risk factors and causes that are seen far more often even when compared to those cases “suspected” of being caused by raw milk.
Campylobacter can be “caught” through contact with farm animals and pets; and through consuming meat, mushrooms, poultry, shellfish, and even water (including icecubes).
@ Jenn Wolf, I’m right there with you. he made himself “not credible”. He just did a very poor job of making his argument. but then I guess his intended audience was those who don’t bother to really think things through or educate themselves.
many good points have been brought up about all the fallacies in his presentation. It just makes you wonder. I hope and pray he is wrong in believing the majority to be that poor at reasoning and that we are right that people are learning to spot this stuff even if they never paid attention to it before.
I’m probably really late to the conversation here, but I had a question about low-temperature pasteurized (non-homogenized) milk… is it still a big NO-NO? The closest raw milk farms are over an hour one way from where I live, and I’m trying to work out a way to afford buying healthier-than-organic milk without spending a lot on gas too. VERY tight budget these days! Thanks!