Now it appears the Wisconsin legislature will take up this issue. In Wisconsin, raw milk cannot be sold, but you can consume raw milk if you own your own cow. Some farmers have gotten around this is to sell shares of cows so that the thirsty can drink and the state can feel good about themselves. Again, as I posted last time, we can smoke as many cigarettes as we want but we cannot drink milk from a cow? Does this seem a bit odd?
The Assembly Public Hearing for the Raw Dairy Bill has been set.
Capital Building, Madison
Room 417 North
10:00 am
UPDATE:
The previously discussed hearing on the raw milk bill in Madison on the 16th has been cancelled.
There is now just one hearing for both the Senate and the Assembly, which will take place in Eau Claire on March 10th at 10am. This will be the only hearing, and the only opportunity for you to make your voice heard and defend your right to choose your own diet.
Please make every possible effort to attend - take a day off work, cancel your dentist appointment.
If you want to take a bus please RSVP to Vince Hundt by Sunday March 7th at: vince@rotochopper.com.
If you are in the area or can make it I encourage you to attend. More details here.
Wisconsin is the dairy state. I could drive to Walmart and buy milk which is made in China for all I know or I could keep my money local and buy from a farmer just down the road from me. Although newspapers publish supposed accusations that some illness was caused by raw milk, after further review(which newspapers seldom like) the accusation were incorrect and contaminates came from some other species.
3 comments:
Our family owns a cow and drinks raw milk regularly. Are there certain potential risks associated with raw milk and its products? Sure. Are there potential risks associated with pasteurized milk and its products? You bet. A while back I was researching what it would take to get into making and selling artisanal cheese made from raw milk. I found that the USDA had built a multi-million dollar research facility just to study the safety of raw milk cheeses. Here they injected young cheeses with large innoculations of E coli. bacteria, to see if the cheeses would still be safe at the end of the ripening process. Some of them weren't--knock me over with a feather. So lesson learned: if you drop a cowpie into your bulk tank, your cheese may be contaminated. Thank you Uncle Sam.
That said, I also learned that there has not been a single verified case of serious illness that can be directly traced to raw milk cheese. The really big outbreaks of food-borne illnesses from dairy products come from.......pasteurized dairy products that are contaminated post-pasteurization.
Ultimately, as you point out, it's just about basic freedom. But Nanny State knows that we're too dumb to make those kinds of decisions for ourselves.
I guess I should add that it's not just Nanny State that's against this, though. Direct, off-the-farm sales of raw milk is a fantastic way for a family farm to make an actual go of farming with a small, manageable herd. Big agri-business isn't too wild about that aspect of it either.
ThePalmHQ, I couldn't agree more. When the state tries to protect individuals from themselves, we usually end up with a headache. LOL, I wonder how these people come up with such genius ideas to test safety. Yes, we have to fight both ends, big gov'ment and big business. My hope is that we are under the radar of big business and enough people show up to ward off big govt.
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