MO Homestead & Raw Milk battle

I hear you!
I too have made cottage cheese that way.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

From Teddi's FB page

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I am not against all goverment regulation but the anti-raw milk crowd has blown the dangers all out of proportion. This whole hysteria started after WWII and there are so many other food products or consumables that are far more dangerous and yet you can consume them free of the hype.

Require a warning label on raw milk products and be done with it. Undercover milk agents nabbing teenaged girls? Missouri like most midwest states has a very large meth problem...seems to me our law enforcement efforts are a bit mis-directed.

I will venture to guess some of you who are so anti-raw milk pop Tylenol or take other OTCs, eat sprouts, hamburger, drink alcohol or use tobacco...I'll take my chances with milk.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Seems like a lot of folks on here drank raw milk while growing up. However, I suspect it was predominately in a rural situation on a dairy farm or homestead with a family cow. I have the theory kids raised under those enviroments probably grrew up with a more healthy immunity system than those raised up in urban areas.

Like the case of milkmaids who, once have contacted cow poxs, didn't fall prey to small pox.

As I kid I likely ate more than my share of dirt. I remember some of us kids having fresh cow manure fights to where mother would make everyone strip down to their underwear in the back yard and then hose them down before being allowed into the house. Garden was heavily fertilized with cattle manure and no doubt some ended up in the vegetables consumed. We went swimming in the same pond the cattle drank out of (and would dump at the same time).

From birth to about the age of six we lived above a old blacksmith/machinist shop. Electric but no running water. No icebox, so everything was pretty well obtained meal to meal. Milk was via a creamery across the road. This wasn't a very large building and at one time eleven people lived there. During WW-II help was so scarce (they had a small forage chopper box construction business) relatives use to come from Milwaukee on weekends to help out. Story goes most of the younger kids slept on floor mats in one room and it was described much as a pile of puppies settling down for the night.

The business was sold and we were on two dairy farms before moving to Florida. As I recall on the trip down we had stopped at a diner for breakfast and I said the milk tasted 'funny'. It was, of course, not raw milk but pasteurized. Even then they had those small packages of coffee cream and dad put one of them in my milk. Did help the taste.

Long and rambling but trying to point out many urbanites today may not have the immunity system to handle less than absolutely clean raw milk.

And I point out at time TB was a scare sitution in the US, and it would be transmitted in unpasturized cow milk. Probably 99.9999% eliminated today in the U.S. but I read somwhere suspected TB is the leasing cause of rejection of applicant immigrants.

The one thing that'd really solve this problem would be to pass a national law...

a caveat emptor rule... let the buyer beware...

...from this day forward, citizens will no longer have the right to sue, if they get sick and die, from any food, no matter where it was bought...

You eat a hamburger with raw meat in it, and die, too bad... get some off tasting spinach, and get the droopsy drawers, oh well... get a case of TB or salmonella or whatever from raw milk... forget about it...

Of course, getting any kind of law passed restricting peoples right to sue for imagined or real damages has zero chances of passage ...unfortunately, the general consensus of the population at large is Safety trumps everything else, and they want legal recourse, if they get a hangnail...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

I think texican has hit the nail on the head as the reason we must have regulation and inspections on our food. I think there would be a shift away from some foods if the consumer felt that their foods were uninspected and unregulated.
If you think about Mexico's water. It only causes droopsy drawers, but most people avoid it. If the worst thing you'd get was a bit of ecoli on your spinach. But you know that isn't it at all.
We know that 99.9% of meat is safe to eat raw. But we cook it. If unrefrigerated raw milk sold out of a parking lot were that safe and we cooked it first, no problem. But this thread is about someone that is putting the cottage milk business at risk.
Any time you put a food product at risk of making someone ill, you damage that market.
If you want to build market share of a product you sure don't peddle it in a parking lot.

Markets react to regulation and to the lack of regulation. As soon as Michigan Dept. of Ag quit checking the viability of seed sold here, Home Depot began shipping their outdated grass seed to Michigan.
The same thing would happen to our food. Self regulation doesn't work in the real world.

The guy that is paralyzed from some campylobacter he got from drinking raw milk wouldn't call it a hangnail.

I don't think you can taste e coli on spinach and you can't taste campylobacter in milk.

Ahh, for a return to the good ol' days! Upton Sinclair wrote a book about them. It was called "The Jungle." Might want to check it out!

(You have much greater faith in the integrity of producers than I do.)

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

dang haypoint...where did i miss the fact that the milk being delivered in the parking lot had exceeded safe handling temperatures?

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

are you the only one that is allowed to speculate?

Texican...that would work but there are many cooties out there that can't be tasted or viewed with the naked eye. You may think that you're buying a 'clean' produce, but microscopically it's a mess. What then?

Where can I get this "clean" produce Tonya? Dozens just got E-Coli from Romaine lettuce.

If you want to buy pasteurized milk products or juice..great, I generally do myself. But this focus on raw milk is just a bit over the top. I dont ascribe to the suposed wonderous health benefits of unpasteurized milk personally but I sure like the taste and I resent busybodies trying to put their paranoia on everyone else. I chew tobacco too..its bad for you, if you dont like the risk dont use it...but then I dont refrigerate eggs either and just like using unpasteurized milk..most of the rest of the world doesnt either.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Here we go again.

Texican, why ban lawsuits? There should be liability if you harm someone. Eventually as more people go out of business, word spreads and people are more careful. Now everyone looks to big daddy governmen to protect them - both the producers and consumers.

It is impossible to have enough inspectors and bureaucrats to PREVENT all bad in the world. Though the worshippers of government sure want to try. And when the inspections and regulations fail to do the job, the solution is always more inspections and regulations.

It will be interesting to see what happens when our overdependence on government leads us to bankruptcy. When there are no more raw milk sting operations, there will be dead bodies all over the streets, right? I thought state governments were having to make drastic cutbacks. That needs to happen alittle sooner, it looks like. Or maybe their still gettiing enough money from the federal government which can just print it.

I've always wonderd about baiting people into breaking the law. Could spend all day arresting people after letting a hundred dollar bill fall out of your pocket. Or a woman could offer certain services for a buck and we could jail guys all day long. We need protection!

By the way, Forerunner, well said. Amazing that you have to say such things on a homesteading site in the land of the "free".

One more thought. How is it that people who are educated by the government are so stupid that they need the government to approve the food they eat?

How would people ever find out exactly what made them sick, though?

Usually, in the case of a serious illness with public health implications, the Health Department conducts an investigation.

D'ya think a producer is going to let you, Joe Citizen, on the premises to take samples and have them analyzed? Especially if the results might harm their business?

And without evidence, how are you going to prosecute?

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

Personal Responsibility.
Ignorance of the Law gives no one the right to break it.
Yes the government is evil and trying to take out rights.
BUT
Two wrongs do not make a right.
I totally agree with above statement.
I totally agree the government is corrupt.

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I am sure of two things: There is a God, and I am not Him.
The movie Rudy

Ah, but I have! Had a great Uncle that worked in a meat processing facility, way past Sinclairs book, and convinced me eating canned/processed meats was risky...
[I really do need to google myself up a nice 'facetiousness' smilie!]

I have little faith in anything or anyone besides myself. If 'cooties' or 'goat pills' fall into my milk pail (I milk daily), the dogs get a treat.... apparently dogs like cooties, and sometimes just can't resist a goat pill snack... so a cootie and goat pill smoothie hits the spot, or so they tell me!

We can't have both, food safety on one side, and food 'un-safety' on the other, without lawyers getting involved. The people who have millions invested in their dairies dislike the notion of hobbyists playing dairy farmer and having a "Spinach Fiasco" situation. (Last years spinach problems with e-coli destroyed the fresh greens market). Most people (disclaimer!) assume whatever they eat or drink, is safe. If they get sick, for whatever reason, they expect to get justice and file suit against whoever has the deepest pockets. Lawyers love deep pockets.

People who are willing to 'take the chance' on miraculous properties of raw food should 'be on their own', if they want un-treated, un-pasteurized milk and other foods. I don't know, maybe someone can tell me... is there a real-time test one can do on a daily basis to check for the safety of raw milk? Everything I've read leads me to believe that one must send the tests off to a laboratory. If I'm wrong, it won't be the first time... maybe first time today, but it's still young...

I may be an overly rational thinking six moves ahead (think: chess) kind of guy, but it is beyond me why anyone would risk their farm for a handful of coins. If a person was risk averse and took out a policy with riders insuring against lawsuits from illness resulting from raw milk or other products, I could understand it... but, the premiums would kill whatever miniscule profits could be obtained. And, on profits, if people are honest with themselves, and include everything involved with the costs of production, including labor and fuel, the cost benefits ratio is very very low, unless you have some well healed customers that can pay many multiples of the normal price.

Tonya, and others... cooties, e coli, salmonella, they really don't bother me that much... figure I've had all of them... I get mildly uncomfortable for a day or two and it passes... and then, eating the same foods the next week, no further issues... I don't know if you can build up a resistance to 'cooties' and their cousins, the way you can other diseases or not. I do drink copious quantities of vile and disgustingly hot habanero sauces, and do 'shots' of tobasco red juice! Now I can't say how someone without a cast-iron stomach would react...

DJ... I couldn't agree more, and thus, my argument! Why would you risk your farm, to sell something raw and fresh, that you cannot guarantee (for your own financial security) won't make someone sick... for whatever reason.

Folks want to dance with the devil, and then complain when they get burned.

Btw, I AM a raw milk advocate... love the stuff.

However, I am about as Risk Averse as a person can be, especially when it comes to my place. I'll gamble, with pocket change, or loose bills in the wallet, but not on my hard assets. I've been 'homeless', and didn't like it.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

we dont normally agree on the raw milk issue...BUT this time i do...and informed consumer should have the right to buy milk from me. I would NEVER take milk to a road side stand to sell....um... EW?...and who wants the hassle of delivering anyway...im busy enough...you want the milk come and get it and bring your jars...

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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Jefferson
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It all comes down to economies of scale... If you produce only three gallons a day, your overhead costs are pretty much the same as if you produced 50 gallons. Btw this is goat milk.

Goat milk usually does bring a premium. Cows milk in the store has been less than 3$/gallon for the longest... this price is lower than it was when I worked at a real dairy 30 years ago.

Anyone selling for 1.20 is holding on to dear life...

Just saying how much my costs are, and thus, why I'm not trying to make money at it!

A 'micro-dairy' with cows couldn't survive at 1.20/gallon... someone's going to have an outside job... expenses keep rising and milk keeps dropping... somethings gotta give.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

The milk was brought to a parking lot to be handed out to customers who pre-bought it. The gals hung around long enough to know that a couple customers were no-shows - that could be a while?

It's a home-spun operation, wouldn't expect any industrial refrigiration or high-tech thermometers monitoring the milk. Just kinda back-to-nature backpacking or the like.

If the govt is smart enough to set this whole thing up and that is the most likely possibility based on guesswork;

It's not too hard to guess milk delivered to a parking lot & waiting around long enough for customers to be deemed no-shows would allow that milk to flutuate in temp quite a bit......

That's the problem with guessing or supposing.

Not arguing with you, we have our opinions and that is cool.


As to the Minnesota case, sounds like a 5th person has come down with the same e.coli.

News reports that the govt is looking to crack down on raw milk in the state, and that the rules allow for only 'occational' sales on the farm, not a regular business of sales. Again, a _very_ unclear language for the rules. I don't know how such a poorly worded thing can be upheld either way, but likely with a toddler in the hospital and 4 others sick and a rather anti-govternment sort of person running the dairy, I'd bet the government's responce will be to cut down on the loopholes allowing raw milk sales.

As mentioned by others with much better wording, if you are for raw milk sales, a measured, rational, clear response would be needed, not the couple of oddballs who are anti-govt and not working the issues. And trying to find loopholes in wording. The issue will need to be addressed head on by those who support raw milk to keep it around.

Myself, I grew up on the farm just as someone described, went barefoot in the cow yard after a rain so my boots didn't get dirty, and drank raw milk from the cow as I grew up to the age of oh, 9 or so? So I don't recoil in horror at raw milk.

Seems people have changed tho, don't know why pressure cookers or acids are used in canning, and don't have a tollerance to some bugs.

Something that bothers me is groups like no-nais, or non-gmo, or non-pesticide groups, that get on their bandwagon & tell the public how much better their raw organic back to nature way is....

without telling the public that there are dangers, that the easist way to get e.coli is from organic produce, that there are real dangers - small or not - to raw milk, and that insects & other baddies can infiltrate raw organic foods.

There ain't nothing on this world that is perfect, and sometimes the back to organic folks fudge over a lot of their responsibility on that.

Raw milk proponants share their responsibility in that.

Ask the folks in Minnesota who are healthy and enjoy their raw milk. But ask the parents who's toddler is in the hospital too?

There are risks and rewards to anything, and the organic crowd seems to have their cover-ups too.

Again, I'm not really strongly for or against raw milk availability - I can see both sides, and it seems to be a balancing act to me.

When problems and rule-breaking happen, it's going to go harder for raw-milk fans. Just how society works. Or maybe endures - not sure society always 'works'.

No agenda here on my part, just find this an interesting topic and like to add a little to it - no harm in that.

If you like raw milk, I think we've gone through a period of the rules being relaxed the past 10-15 years. I think that's going to swing around the other way from these sorts of cases. Couple years ago someone was passing TB around by making cheese in the bathtub??? Things like this will only add up and make rules tighten up again. Right or wrong, that's how it looks to me.

--->Paul

Teddi Bechard reported a few hours ago on FB that the judge hearing the criminal case filed by the city against the Bechards aquitted the case because the city failed to prove the case

:banana02:

The battle is not over, they still have a State case to deal with.

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