Twice Bitten

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Twice Bitten

The Right to Choose

April 1, 2008

By SHARON PARQUETTE NIMTZ

For a few of us, drinking a tall glass of milk from the cow we or someone

close to us milked last night is as natural as eating the green beans we

just picked from our garden. And if we don't drink milk, then ladling off

some cream to pour over our oatmeal or into our coffee is just the way it

is.

Goldie's out there in the barn getting ready to have a little snack and

to give milk again, and we're eating breakfast and will shortly pull on

our barn jacket and step into our barn boots and get on with the business

of the day. Or our neighbor will. We don't even think about it. It's just

the way things are, and it's just the way they should be — down home,

close to the bone, not even a conscious choice.

But for the majority of us that's not the case. We get our milk or our

coffee cream from the refrigerator case in a store, and for the majority

of us that's not a choice, either. It's just the way it is. We don't give

it a thought.

Given a choice between store-bought and farm-fresh milk, most of us would

continue on our well-trodden path, that way of doing something that is so

familiar we don't need to take any of our scarce-afforded, already

chockfull time to think about it.

But, forced to make a choice? Now that's another thing. The two sides

part from the mainstream, and that's good — it's good to be informed and

to make choices for one's self and demand to be able to make those

choices.

But some swerve so drastically they become a fringe, a lunatic fringe

given to hyperbole — which doesn't prove their point — and

hatefulness.

That's when we're apt to get pompous about it, authoritarian and

paternalistic and bossy and worried about others who didn't make the same

choice we did. Those people are doomed, we say — either from drinking the

milk of many cows from many farms that has had the last vestiges of life

boiled out of it, or from getting so dewy eyed about sweet little Bossy

they don't realize the deadly germs that may lurk in her milk.

But the important thing here is to protect our right to choose.

And that's what the Farm Fresh Milk Restoration Act of 2008 attempts to

do. The name sounds like a song by Bruce Springsteen or an essay by

Jefferson, doesn't it? But no, it was written by Vermont farmers

in cooperation with Rural Vermont, an organization that works ceaselessly

in its quest to keep Vermont green and covered with farms. More power to

them, and may they succeed.

They're the ones who worked with Schenk, my old and revered friend

of American Flatbread fame, a poet and an entrepreneur, a baker and an

earth hearth maker, to allow your neighbor to sell up to 100 chickens to

you and your favorite restaurant without the state or federal inspection

that is prohibitive to small farmers. It offers a preferable chicken any

day to one stuffed into a cage under a roof all its born days.

The main responsibility of the Farm Fresh Milk Restoration Act of 2008 is

to the farms — to help them become more viable and successful, which

means producing good and healthy food to satisfy demand.

If a dairy farmer who is pinched in dealings with middlemen and state and

federal agencies when selling milk to be pasteurized and homogenized by

Big Dairy interests had the chance to sell unpasteurized milk right off

the farm at an average of $5 per gallon to people who are clamoring for

it, wouldn't that make business a heck of a lot more satisfying?

And wouldn't that satisfy a demand in the community for farm fresh milk?

Yes, indeed, it would.

So Rural Vermont and the farmers designed this bill to allow the farmer

to sell as much unpasteurized milk as they can to people who came to the

farm to buy it, and the farmer could advertise and abide by a set of

standards to ensure milk quality and safety and submit to inspection

twice a year by a committee of peers and experts, who would in turn

report to a state committee — neither of these committees to be

governmental committees.

And here's what happened to it, as far as I can gather.

The House Committee on Agriculture took a really good look at it,

listened to lots of testimony both pro and con, much of it from people

who said raw milk will kill you or raw milk will cure you, then doubled

the amount of unpasteurized milk a farmer can sell — to 50 quarts a

day.

In the process they realized that the ban on advertising was

unconstitutional — First Amendment stuff, freedom of speech — so up go

those roadside signs and notices on bulletin boards.

But the real sticking point was they could not decide if the Agency of

Agriculture — whose charge it is to protect the public's health — must be

involved in oversight, at least by a thread. And then the bell rang, and

it was time to send this bill to the Senate. And nothing must interfere

with that transferal.

So what we have is not enough to free a small farmer from Big Dairy

interests, but just enough to enable an even smaller farmer to sell

enough milk to get by.

Every last one of them wants an overseer made up of their peers, to make

sure that a " dirty " farmer does not cast shame upon all of

their good efforts by causing illness. They totally distrust government

bureaucrats, who often act as bullies, but they will sooo have to get

over it, because it looks like the Agency of Ag must and will be

involved, at least by a thread, not that the agency itself is all that

keen on adding a new level of jurisdiction. So let it be by a

thread.

Not everyone is worried and disappointed.

" I would be mortified, " said Stacey Elliot of Chittenden,

" if anyone got sick from my milk! We're so careful about how we

milk, how we take care of the animals and their health, and most small

producers feel the same way. So the lack of oversight doesn't really

bother me because I know I'm doing a really good job. "

Stacey and her husband, Tim, have a tiny but busy farm in Chittenden,

with chickens, pigs and, since the promise of doubling the amount of milk

and the right to advertise, two cows. " We're almost selling out of

Godiva's milk, so we went out and purchased a new Jersey last

weekend. "

At the average of $5 per gallon charged by most farmers for unpasteurized

milk, even 87 gallons could bring in close to $500 extra per week which,

though a pittance in farm money parlance, could go some way toward

healing the sting of those constant breakdowns of machinery that are such

an aggravation in a farmer's life.

" But, " says Kaiman of Jersey Girls Dairy in Chester, who

is the sine qua non of the unpasteurized milk revolution in Vermont,

" it doesn't go nearly far enough. "

milks 20 to 22 Jerseys morning and night, four at a time in her

milking parlor and sells most of the milk to an organic dairy — " And

I don't make a cent, " she claims — and the rest to enthusiastic

customers who drive up her rutted road to buy the milk farm

fresh.

spent an enormous amount of time working with Rural Vermont

formulating the Farm Fresh Milk Restoration Act of 2008 over the past

three or four years, and she is desperately disappointed that she won't

be allowed to convert to selling all of her milk from the farm — at least

this year.

Everyone concerned is hoping against hope that all of the Farm Fresh Milk

Restoration Act of 2008 will become a reality in 2009.

's little Jerseys are beautiful and calm and friendly. Perhaps I

became overzealous as I petted one's big golden head and neck, for she

wrapped them right around me and nearly lifted me off my feet.

laughed.

" She wants to climb right into your lap, " she said.

Pollard's story is slightly more dire. He plunked his dozen or so

sweet little hand-milked Jerseys down on an isolated Mount Holly farm

last year and does not sell their milk to Big Dairy, but only to his own

so-far-short list of farm fresh milk customers.

His milking parlor is so clean I wondered where he milked his cows. I

would have no qualms about spreading a gingham cloth and picnicking

there.

But he doesn't seem discouraged, and he does have hope for next

year.

" Legislators are hearing that more and more people are demanding the

personal freedom to choose their own food and a year from now I think

they're going to hear it even stronger. "

I spoke to some passionate drinkers of unpasteurized milk.

Jaynie in Springfield told me, " I buy my milk from

because I know how she treats and feeds her cows and also how careful she

is when she milks. "

Jaynie was a registered sanitation and health inspector in Massachusetts

before she moved to Vermont, and it's ironic that she describes herself

as " … a bit of a germaphobe before I got trained. But the more I

learned, the more I realized how important it is to build up our

immunity, both by eating live foods and by exposing ourselves to the real

world and not this sterilized world so many people

embrace. "

She's not happy that the testing and standards have been stripped from

this year's milk bill. " I think that the testing was the public's

safety net from preventing just any farm from selling their milk. There

are many, many farms that I have visited that I wouldn't think of

drinking milk out of their bulk tank. "

That observation is worth following up.

" Pasteurization … gave farmers license to be unsanitary, "

ael writes in his excellent article in the April Harper's

called " The Revolution Will Not be Pasteurized. "

Read it to get a new perspective on the synergy between human bodies and

microbes, especially those provided to us by raw milk, which

calls the " ur-food. "

He quotes an expert as saying, " bacteria are … so important (to us)

that researchers studying the microbes living inside us say it's unclear

where our bodily functions end and the functions of microbes

begin. "

Think about that. Does a wound heal or does an eye blink because our body

functions that way or because it benefits a body of microbes — those very

microbes that are being pasteurized out of our food supply — to make it

happen?

Jaynie has a nice perspective on pasteurization.

" Pasteurized milk is a mixed bag, " she said. " It's like a

Petri dish — you're basically sterilizing everything, and hoping that it

won't get contaminated after sterilization, because it's a bacteria

breeding ground, there's no competition. Raw milk has its own

fighting-back capability. "

And that's no laughing matter: two people died in Massachusetts just

after Christmas from drinking contaminated pasteurized milk. This is

likely to happen more often as we continue to put more trust in zapping

our food to kill bad bacteria, and pay no attention or little to the

processing of it.

Gumpert wrote an article for the Sunday Boston Globe a few weeks

ago called " Got Raw Milk? " and conducts a lively conversation

about the subject on his blog, thecompletepatient.com.

He says, " The CDC doesn't seem to know which foods cause the 76

million (annual, food-borne) illnesses, but based on various studies, the

main culprits are deli meats, hamburger, seafood, and various prepared

foods from restaurants and fast-food outlets. I don't hear anyone

proposing to prohibit children from consuming any of these

foods. "

Why do some continue to see only danger instead of benefit in

unpasteurized milk?

" Our public health and medical establishments continue to operate

under assumptions stemming from outbreaks of illness a century and more

ago, " Gumpert writes. " The reality today, thanks to

refrigeration, improved sanitation, mechanization and a serious

commitment to quality by a segment of dairy farmers, is much different,

and much less threatening.

" Of the benefits of raw milk, most proponents agree that milk in its

natural state is full of beneficial enzymes, vitamins, proteins and

bacteria — most of which are altered or killed off by pasteurization. A

growing body of evidence from university research conducted around the

world suggests these nutrients help counter conditions as diverse as

asthma, allergies, colitis and diabetes. "

In other words, all the chronic illnesses that have crept up on us over

the last 50 to 100 years.

One of the tenets of the original Farm Fresh Milk Restoration Act of 2008

stipulates that consumers should buy their milk directly from the farmer

and suggests some guidelines to look for when you visit the farm. Make

sure:

Cows graze on pasture when possible and are fed hay when in barns during

winter.

Cows receive minerals as supplements or from mineralized soils and

plants.

That grain feeding is a minor dietary component.

That teats of cows are clean and dry before milking.

Cows are milked in a clean barn or milking parlor.

Milk is kept chilled.

Farmers are working " in tune with nature " to ensure the absence

of pathogens — that is, cows are not pushed to produce large quantities

of milk, the soil is fertile and cows live in a low-stress

environment.

Indeed, when I spoke to Chuck , who has written several letters to

the editor of the Herald warning of the dangers of raw milk, he said he

had grown up drinking raw milk and had never been ill from it.

His concern, he said, " is for young parents who latch onto the

latest fashion, thinking it sounds cool, and say 'oh, let's go get some

raw milk,' never thinking to inspect the cows and the milking

process. " Which of course we all agree with, but it is a good

reminder.

As is this: The goal of increasing the amount of raw milk that can be

sold in Vermont is not to take pasteurized milk off the shelves, or to

convert pasteurized milk drinkers to unpasteurized, but to give consumers

the choice and the right to buy from their local farmers those foods they

choose to consume.

Prohibition of any food, whatsoever, creates cognitive dissonance in this

brain.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the Senate approves the slim bill

this year, and that both Houses buckle down with Rural Vermont to finish

it next year, to provide a wholly satisfying Farm Fresh Milk Restoration

Act of 2009!

Thank you, Rural Vermont.

Thanks for your comments and questions, e-mails and calls. Keep them

coming to me at the Rutland Herald, P.O. Box 668, Rutland, 05702 or email

me at snimtz@....

Don Neeper

Senior Software Engineer

SofTechnics, a METTLER TOLEDO Company

dneeper@...

don.neeper@...

http://www.OhioRawMilk.info/dneeper