Jacob Grier

The second time gun-toting, badge-flashing federal agents came to visit Amanda Hall, at least she had some idea of what it was about. A few weeks earlier, after she had gotten home from her job at the Organic Pastures dairy farm in Fresno, California, and was about to head off to school, a pair of men met her at the door and handed her a subpoena to testify before a grand jury of the United States District Court for reasons they chose not to divulge. (“Don’t talk about it to anybody,” she was told.) They had gotten her name, as well as that of one of her co-workers, who was similarly visited at home and subpoenaed, by calling the dairy and recording conversations in which they posed as potential customers. Now, with the subpoenas served and the court date coming up, they had a few preliminary questions to ask her.

Well, not exactly a few. Hall, a 23-year-old mother of one who manages Accounts Receivables and acts as a sales consultant for Organic Pastures, sat with the men—who identified themselves as special agents of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations—for 15 minutes as they repeated the same question about the legality of her employer’s interstate shipping procedures, “trying,” she says, “to have me change my answer.” They didn’t get what they wanted from the session, but as they were about to leave, one of the agents suggested Hall wear a wire to a meeting with her boss. “It’s funny,” she says. “I’d been sitting there telling them that these people were basically my family,” and now she was being asked to spy on them. “How much is it worth to you?” she asked, just to see what they would say. The answer came (“It wouldn’t be millions, but we could make it worth your while”), Hall politely refused, and the agents went off into the night. A few days later, just 24 hours before the grand jury was scheduled to convene, Hall was informed that her testimony would no longer be needed.

That’s from John Schwenkler’s excellent article about crackdowns on raw milk for Doublethink. Read the whole thing here.

CBS reports that Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced legislation that would liberalize the state’s raw milk laws, allowing farmers to sell unpasteurized dairy products of all kinds, not just milk and aged cheese. If the bill passes, it will be thanks in large part to Mark Nolt, the Mennonite farmer who has been arrested, convicted, and had more $20,000 of his equipment seized by farm officials. His civil disobedience and unflinching defense of the freedom to sell directly to consumers has been admirable and it would be great to see it pay off.

Nolt’s case was the lede in my raw milk article for Reason.

I’d never noticed that organic milk has a longer shelf life, but this is interesting:

Organic milk lasts longer because producers use a different process to preserve it. According to the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, the milk needs to stay fresh longer because organic products often have to travel farther to reach store shelves since it is not produced throughout the country.

The process that gives the milk a longer shelf life is called ultrahigh temperature (UHT) processing or treatment, in which milk is heated to 280 degrees Fahrenheit (138 degrees Celsius) for two to four seconds, killing any bacteria in it.

UHT pasteurization has a greater impact on flavor than the standard process, so, oddly enough, organic milk is in one way less natural than conventional.

[Thanks to Julie for the link.]

I was able to stop by the raw milk rally today after all. It was a small but enthusiastic group of people dedicated to defending the rights of consumers and farmers to exchange a natural product despite the government’s warnings of its dangers. It was a fun event and it was a pleasure meeting the people involved in this “raw milk rebellion.” Plus I got to enjoy another small taste of Hedgebrook Farm’s fresh, tasty milk.

One of the women there, happy to hear that I’d just written an article in favor of legalizing raw milk sales, asked me what other topics I cover. “I write often about the rights of smokers to enjoy tobacco,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly dubious. “I used to know a tobacco farmer, and I understand that it’s his livelihood, but that’s a tough thing to support…”

Consistency is a rare thing.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend, but it should be an interesting experience:

FOOD NETWORK WANTS TO TELL YOUR STORY
Raw Milk Rally on Capitol Hill, Monday June 2

Dear Raw Milk Lovers:

The Food Network is working on a show about raw milk and how it has changed people’s lives. As a part of this, they want to show their viewers the political side of the raw milk battle. To do so they are hosting a raw milk rally and would like to invite you to demonstrate your support for raw milk, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, which will be filmed as part of a documentary about the growing consumer demand for raw milk.

This will be a chance to tell your personal story on national television, about how raw milk has helped you and your family achieve better health or heal from chronic disease. Or, why you feel it should be an available choice to all who want it. The main purpose of this event is to help spread the word via our stories to be aired on the Food Network.

CAPITOL HILL RAW MILK RALLY with Special Guest Speakers:

Richard Morris, Author of A Life Unburdened

Liz Reitzig, President of Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association

DATE: Monday June 2, 2008

TIME: 9:45/ 10:00 am

WHAT TO BRING: Pro raw milk signs/t-shirts, raw milk fed babies, raw milk flyers, brochures etc. If you can, bring some raw milk in a cooler so we can offer tastings to passersby that would be great!

Real Milk Rocks T shirts (for $20.00) and A Life Unburdened books will be on sale at the event.

WHERE: Meet on 3rd Street SW Corner.

So we can get a feel for who is coming: Please email kimberly@hartkeonline.com if you are planning to attend.

Raw milk dairy farmers in California have lost the restraining order that has been preventing the 10 coliform limit from taking effect:

A Superior Court judge said Friday that the state had a rational basis for creating legislation that imposes a higher safety standard for California’s two raw milk producers.

The two dairy operators — Organic Pastures of Fresno County and Claravale Farms of San Benito County — are battling to try to stop the state from enforcing the law that took effect last year, saying it will put them out of business.

The new law has been on hold since March, when Superior Court Judge Harry Tobias suspended it to hear arguments over whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Friday, the judge sided with the state.

Last month, two scientists testifying on behalf of the dairies argued that the new standard is unnecessary and that raw milk naturally contains helpful bacteria that neutralize bad bacteria.

But on Friday, the state presented its own experts who countered the dairy supporters, saying the new standard is designed to protect the public from food-related illness.

A rational basis standard is easy to meet, so this isn’t a very surprising ruling. The dairies could still win on appeal and will continue working with Dean Florez to introduce replacement legislation that allows a higher coliform count in exchange for additional safety standards.

California’s fight over raw milk standards was a major topic in my article for Reason.

Lancaster Farming has run an article examining the prosecution of Mark Nolt and another Pennsylvania farmer who sold raw milk without a permit. The tactics used to bust these guys are more reminiscent of the War on Drugs than routine dairy regulation:

Chris Ryder, [Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture] spokesman, said additional citations are pending in relation to the two most recent incidents in which Nolt sold raw milk and cheese to undercover PDA agents this year.

Meanwhile, a Lancaster County farmer was found guilty on May 6 on one count of selling raw milk without the state required permit after he was initially charged with three counts.

Glenn Wise, a Mennonite minister who farms 23 acres just outside of Elizabethtown, Pa., was ordered to pay a fine of $50 in his case.

Wise, who spoke by phone on Tuesday, said he sold raw milk to an undercover PDA agent on three separate occasions after the agent signed a contract to become a member of Communities Alliance for Responsible Eco-Farming (CARE), an organization of which Wise is a member.

Two things are worth emphasizing here. The first is that Nolt could have slipped under the radar by maintaining his raw milk permit and selling his other raw milk products on the down low. His refusal to do so is an honest, principled protest of the state’s restrictive laws. The second is that these farmers’ customers were clearly informed, going so far as to sign contracts agreeing to the sale outside of the regulated system. This is not a case of consumers being manipulated; it’s a case of state officials interfering with the business of consenting adults.

The raw milk movement raises eyebrows with its eccentricity, but the people on the front lines are among the country’s most ardent defenders of economic freedom. I’d gladly raise a glass of unpasteurized milk to them — if I could.

Andrew Martin has an interesting article in The New York Times today about consolidation in the dairy industry:

In the last decade, the number of dairy farmers has declined sharply — from about 99,000 in 1997 to about 59,000 last year, according to the Agriculture Department. At the same time, there has been a major shift in where milk is produced.

Small dairy farmers east of the Mississippi River and in the Upper Midwest are increasingly being replaced by huge dairy farms in the West, in places like New Mexico and western Texas. Few dairy farms are even left in the Southeast.

These days, more milk is trucked halfway across the country because the local dairy farmer and milk bottler are out of business.

One of the points I didn’t have space to address in my raw milk article is that raw milk, because of its premium price, shorter shelf life, and the need to trust one’s supplier, can be a valuable product for local dairies. I’m not opposed to consolidation per se, but if you value small-scale farming, legalizing raw milk should be among your priorities.

Last week, Pennsylvania Mennonite farmer Mark Nolt was found guilty of selling raw milk without a permit. In California, dairy farmers are fighting strict new regulations that would require raw milk to be as biologically sterile as its pasteurized counterpart, and at least one dairy has faced a federal investigation into allegedly selling raw milk for human consumption across state lines. Why are consumers so eager to buy raw milk, and why are authorities cracking down on the people who sell it to them? That’s the topic of my new article at Reason Online.

As part of my research, I visited farmer Kitty Hockman-Nicholas at Hedgebrook Farm in Winchester, VA. It’s illegal to sell raw milk in Virginia, but dedicated dairy drinkers buy into cow shares to get their supply. By becoming part-owners of cows and paying Hedgebrook to care for them, they ensure a steady supply of the raw milk they crave.

Kitty couldn’t sell me any of her milk, of course, but she was nice enough to provide me a sample jar. After several enjoyable hours spent wandering around her farm on a spring day, watching the animals, learning about her milking process, and being introduced to her cows by name, my friends and I couldn’t were eager to get home and try the stuff for ourselves. One of us was a bit nervous, though. “I don’t know if I can drink this. It came out of a cow.”

“All milk comes from cows,” I said.

“No, it comes from plastic jugs!” she replied. And that’s the way most consumers think about milk these days, living their lives completely disconnected from its origin. Having watched the care Kitty took in milking, however, we tried her product feeling confident that the cows were as sanitary as they get for being, well, cows — a far cry from the many bulk milk operations that feed into pasteurized dairies.

Once we tasted the milk, we were all converts to its superior flavor. Having it side-by-side with ordinary store bought milk made the difference even clearer: the mass-market milk has a processed aftertaste that I’d never picked up on before, but that stands out terribly next to fresh, pasture-fed, unpasteurized milk.

A blind tasting with different friends a few days later brought similar results. One person preferred the standard milk, but the rest of us liked the fresh stuff better. (It helps that Kitty’s milk is unskimmed and therefore has a higher fat content, but that’s not the only factor going into its appeal.)

Visiting the farm was one of the most enjoyable weekend outings I’ve had in a long time. Hedgebrook is occasionally open to the public, and I recommend checking it out if you get the opportunity. Unfortunately, the experience of trying Hedgebrook’s milk is harder to come by. Part of the madness of our current dairy laws is that if Kitty were to sell her product, she would be shut down by the state of the Virginia. Unless the law changes, you’ll have to commit to owning a cow for all its days on Earth or take your chances on the underground black market for raw milk products.

Below the break, more photos from our trip to Hedgebrook…
(more…)

Ron Paul supports raw milk!

Paul never outshines his message, which is unchanging: Let adults make their own choices; liberty works. For a unified theory of everything, it’s pretty simple. And Paul sincerely believes it.

Most Republicans, of course, profess to believe it too. But only Paul has introduced a bill to legalize unpasteurized milk. Give yourself five minutes and see if you can think of a more countercultural idea than that. Most people assume that the whole reason we have a government is to make sure the milk gets pasteurized. It takes some stones to argue otherwise, especially if nobody’s paying you to do it. (The raw-milk lobby basically consists of about eight goat-cheese enthusiasts in Manhattan, and possibly the Amish.) Paul is pro-choice on pasteurization entirely for reasons of principle. “I support the right of people to drink whatever they want,” he says. He mocks the idea that “only government can make sure we’re safe, so we need the government to protect us. I don’t think we’d all die of unsafe food if we didn’t have the FDA. Someone else would do it.”

I don’t see Mike Huckabee, government fat warrior, being quite so supportive of adventurous eating. From a New York Times profile:

Six weeks ago, I met Huckabee for lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice, T.G.I. Friday’s.)

The foodie and the libertarian in me are in agreement. Ron Paul’s my guy.

[Via Hit and Run and Kids Prefer Cheese.]