Mama Natural has done it again! And, she used quite a few of my suggestions for part 2 – watch it now 😀
Category Archives: Politics
Rocky Mountain “Moo Shine” and Raw Milk Temperance
Revered by some as “natures perfect food,” and yet demonized by others as “deadly poison,” milk, one of the most innocuous liquids known to man, is now the subject of possibly the biggest food fight of its kind. Mild mannered farmers coming to words with government agents, food safety attorneys, and irate consumers while “big dairy” farmers manipulate legislators and lobby for legislation that weighs heavily in their favor. So, what’s all the hullaballoo?
Like moonshine in the US Prohibition Era, raw milk is being targeted as unhealthy and dangerous, but unlike moonshine, raw milk that is produced following strict code of cleanliness and correct nutrition for the animals producing it, is safe. Even for babies. In the absence of mother’s milk, raw milk can be combined with other ingredients to make a baby formula that helps babies thrive, and meets the nutritional needs of babies much better than powdered or canned baby formula can. Also, unlike alcohol prohibition, today’s heavy regulation and bans on raw milk seem to be spurred more by big agriculture and the dairy industry to suppress unwanted competition, rather than a genuine desire to protect public health by a nanny state run amok.
Before the prohibition, clean water was scarce, and milk had become dangerous due to the cattle being fed the grain byproduct, or “swill,” left over from alcohol production. By the 1820?s the average American, including children, was drinking an average of 7 gallons of pure alcohol annually or the equivalent of about 2.5 ounces of pure alcohol daily, which translates out to 70 gallons of beer, or 39 gallons of wine, or 15.5 gallons of distilled liquor, per year.
To try to control the use of alcohol, reformers began an educational campaign teaching temperance or the “reduction or elimination of the use of alcoholic beverages.” Reformers experienced a significant amount of success with their educational campaigns, and In the 1830?s the average alcohol intake was down to only 3 gallons of pure alcohol per year, but because of alcohol’s addictive properties, reformers set their sights on ending alcohol consumption completely.
During this time, according to Jeffrey A. Miron at Boston University, “temperance movements waxed and waned in the U.S. from early in the nineteenth century, and these movements produced numerous state prohibitions. Many of these prohibitions were subsequently repealed, however, and those that persisted were widely regarded as ineffective. Amid the atmosphere created by World War I, support for national prohibition reached critical mass, and the country ratified the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in January, 1919. Under this amendment and the Volstead Act, which provided for the enforcement of Prohibition, the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol were prohibited by federal law.”
Aside from the differing reasons for temperance, the parallels are strong. The current “raw milk temperance” being pushed by the big dairy industry has the same goal – to use federal law to end “the manufacture, transportation, and sale of” raw milk intended for direct sale to the consumer – albeit for differing reasons. Raw milk temperance also enjoyed a huge success as the result of its ‘educational’ smear campaign against raw milk in the early to middle 1900’s, and almost completely wiped out small raw dairies who were selling directly to consumers. But that was not good enough. Now in the wake of consumers’ ever increasing interest in local farm fresh foods, the dairy industry has doubled its efforts to eradicate raw dairy altogether using federal regulation and whatever means possible.
Like alcohol consumption, raw milk does have its risks – just as any other food does. However, food borne illness from raw milk is relatively small compared to that of other raw foods, even when compared to pasteurized milk. Supporters of raw milk prohibition claim that the reason those instances are small is due to the fact that less than 10% of the US population consumes raw milk, and that in fact, instances of food borne illness are actually higher per capita. Even if this were true, their comparison does not take into account the diet of the cow producing the milk, or the difference between raw milk that has been properly handled and raw milk that has not. It also does not take into account that there have been no deaths from food borne illness associated with raw milk in many years, but there have been deaths from food borne illnesses linked with other foods, including pasteurized milk and cheese.
The standards of cleanliness and the way that cows producing raw milk for direct sale are fed have improved dramatically since the days of the swill milk dairies. Even if they had not, you would think that the temperance movement would take a lesson from history – prohibition was unsuccessful then, and it won’t work now.
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Obama could still get re-elected in 2012, in spite of his low ratings. You can either take hope in this, or like me, you could view it as a warning that the US could soon be re-electing for a second term a president that views the constitution as a roadblock. That is why he wears that smug look – because he knows this and he is counting on it – in fact, I would say that it is a big part of his re-election strategy.
How could this happen when we have so many good presidential candidates springing up lately? Well, look at the European Election results from 2009 – the socialist party walked away with a large chunk of the parliament seats, just like Obama may be able to do with the presidency if conservatives don’t get their act together. A multi-party system sounds like a good idea in theory, but look how the system breaks
down:
In fact, Obama is encouraging this division. The more conservative parties we have with candidates running for office, the better chances Obama has at a second term. We saw this happen in 1992 with the Bush/Clinton/Perot split. Clinton won the election with only 43% of the popular vote. Perot drew away almost 20% of the conservative vote, allowing a win by a liberal president when almost 60% of voters chose conservative candidates. I personally believe that Ross Perot was a good candidate for the office of president, but without the GOP nomination, his run split the vote and allowed Clinton to take the presidency. A similar thing happened in 1996 with the ticket divided 3 ways between Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and Bob Dole. Of course it didn’t help that the GOP did a lousy job picking a Republican nominee that year – Dole was not a candidate who could win an election that year, and I am not sure I would have wanted him to. However, had they chosen better, there is a good chance that Clinton might not ever have served a second term. On the same token, if Nadar hadn’t drawn away 2,000,000 votes in 2000 Gore would never have had to demand a recount. The point is that in 2012, conservatives have more to lose than ever before in the history of the US. We have
conservative and moderate parties blossoming up like tulips on the tail end of a wet winter. Not only do we have the Libertarian candidate Ron Paul vying for the Republican nomination, there are several other parties gaining momentum in the wake of conservative disenfranchisement. Republican politicians have churned out a slew of liberal
double speaking frauds who have used the republican ticket to get elected before showing their true colors, or
moderates and conservatives who are too limp spined to even hold up to white house
socialists like Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders, let alone sit up straight on their own. Since 1992,
there have been 25 new political parties founded in the United States, and with conservatives’ inability to come together on a few key issues, we continue to become more and more fragmented. If Ron Paul doesn’t win the republican nomination and he decides to continue running on a Libertarian ticket, the 2012 election results could very easily look something like this:
Well, I am not sure if the green party still has quite that much support, but the point is that the fragmentation between several good candidates can actually work more in favor of the minority party than for the good of the country. In a time when so many liberties that we have long taken for granted are at stake, we can’t afford to continue like this, or we may well be at the end of an era – and looking into an uncertain future, where freedom is sacrificed for social programs and security. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
The 2nd Annual Raw Milk Symposium
I got up before dawn on Friday, grabbed my bags and my husband drove me to the airport where I boarded the first of three planes, stopping first in Denver, then Chicago, and finally after hurtling through the air at 450+ mph over what looked like a beautiful patchwork quilt in a plane that felt as rickety and made as much noise as I imagine a tin can would at that speed, I landed in Madison WI at 3:55 PM. As I walked out the door the air smelled like grassy farmland and I could see the horizon stretching out for miles – not the usual for a girl who has spent the last 20 years of her life at the foot of the mountains in Utah.
Rosanne Lindsay from the Wisconsin Alliance for Raw Milk (ARM) picked me up and took me to the Hilton where the symposium would be held the next day, and I got to spend some time with some of the folks there for the symposium, caught some really good Italian with Augie Augenstein, the founder of the ARMi, and then Rosanne picked me up from there and I stayed at her home that night.
The next morning, Rosanne made sure I got plenty of raw milk to drink with breakfast and filled our thermoses for the day and then we headed out to the symposium, where we were able to meet Cathy Raymond from the fund, Gene’ Walls and her absolutely DARLING little boy, Michael Schmidt, David Gumpart, Mark McAfee, Scott Trautman, Sally and John Fallon, Max Kane, fund attorney Elizabeth Gamsky, Kathryne Pirtle, Kimberly Hartke, Jackie Stowers from Manna Storehouse, Andrew & Rebekah Sell, Annette Kohn-lau, Micah Taair, and many other great people (I am terrible with names!)
Some of my favorite bits from the symposium:
(Paraphrasing) This isn’t about milk, we are at war! Food can turn you into a perfect slave . . . We have a new form of dictatorship – a dictatorship of our own consent . . . To be silent is to consent . . . and creates a mockery of those who died to establish freedom. . . we are for the government an unlimited natural resource if we are sick, because when we are sick, they can milk us to death. ~ Michael Schmidt
Real milk and Cod Liver Oil would solve 80% of our health problems. . . . (paraphrasing) This isn’t about milk, it is about freedom and it is about our children. It shows God’s sense of humor in that it’s all coalescing around a glass of milk ~ Sally Fallon
After the panel discussion, there was a wine and cheese tasting bar. I really loved the cheeses – there was a really wonderful gouda, some cheddar and colby, blue cheese, a fantastic chevre, (which I am going to try making myself) and some really yummy herbed cheese with parsley – none of it was labeled so I had to try to figure out what each one was, and since I’m not a cheese maker (maybe when I grow up 🙂 ) so I could possibly be wrong on some of them. One thing is for sure they were all really good!
At the end we wrapped up with a sneak preview to Kristin Canty’s upcoming film documentary Farmageddon. It is a very touching and personal glimpse into farm raids and the trials that many of our small family farms have been experiencing as the FDA is amping up their enforcement of gray areas in the current food safety laws – I strongly encourage everyone to go see it once it comes out!
Sunday morning I was up at 4:30 am, and off to the Madison airport to catch a 6:30 am flight back in to Salt Lake City. Thank you to everyone who made the trip possible for me, so that I could go and represent our group and make connections that will allow me to continue to be an advocate for raw milk!
Snow
Snow:
I hate it. I loath it. I can’t wait for it to just go AWAY!
Yet, supposedly this is the warmest winter known to earth in the last 100 years according to global warming advocates as reported by planetark.com, and according to the results of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen this year.
What is that all about??? I think we have more snow, and earlier, than I have seen here in the last 10 years. 2 years ago, I wondered if we would even have snow for Christmas, but this year we had snow in November. So, according to global warming experts, 2009 is a record high temperature in spite of the fact that Australia had a continent wide record low in April this year with a record breaking -13 degrees at Charlotte Pass and “Hobart had its coldest April night in 46 years, recording a low of 1.7 degrees, seven below average,” according to Brett Dutschke from Weatherzone. Last year, record lows were recorded in cities all across America, reported by Prison Planet with IceAgeNow showing that record lows were being matched and broken on an almost daily basis in states throughout the U.S. in 2008. This week in the Salt Lake Tribune, Jason Bergreen reported in his article Baby, it’s Cold Outside in Weather » Temperature hits a bone-chilling minus 31 at the Bryce Canyon Airport, that “Wednesday’s low temperature was a Dec. 9 record for Bryce Canyon and broke the old record of minus 22 set in 1951, according to the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City,” and that “northern Utah isn’t exactly going through a warm spell this week either. The low Wednesday at the Salt Lake City International Airport was 2 degrees. The high was only 22. Normally during this week of December the high is usually 39 and the low is 23.”
So, we can’t have both global warming and global cooling. I remember in grade school in the 70’s we were being terrified into recycling efforts to help stop an impending ice age. Now our kids are being frightened into “green” living by teachers who say the earth will eventually become a hot dead planet like mercury if we don’t stop killing it with our carbon and methane emissions.
Don’t breathe or pass gas! It’s killing the planet.
An ice age is coming!
The planet is going to burst into flames and explode!
Stop using fossil fuels, we are going to run out and they are toxic to the planet.
We should be developing nuclear power, which is known to have highly toxic and radioactive waste because it is more efficient and emits less carbon.
We can’t use wind power, it’s killing bats.
Wind power is all the rage! It’s super clean and the costs are prohibitive.
Man creates climate change.
Sun spots create climate change.
The science is solid, so don’t question it.
So, people, we can’t have our global warming and our cooling too. Where’s the real science?
I am growing increasingly skeptical about all of this, especially after the recent Climategate fiasco. I am not proposing that we trash the planet, but at the same time, it would be nice to see some real science without cooked data and hidden agendas. Are we all supposed to just rush to the altar and worship at the recycling bin without any real transparency?
