So far as we know we’ve never consumed a drop of raw milk in our lives (well, aside from being breastfed). Having said that, we have no problem with people who drink raw milk. And even if we did – how in the hell is it our business (or the government’s business) to tell people not to drink it?
It isn’t …
Despite fuzzy science used by the federal government (specifically these guys) to wage war on raw milk, numerous scientific studies have found it to be safe – not to mention a viable source of enzymes and probiotic bacteria.
Yet the feds still raid raw milk producers (like the Amish) in the name of protecting the public health – even as they permit the mass consumption of known toxins in other beverages. Does that make sense? Of course not …
Why, then, would the State of South Carolina want to ban it? That’s a good question … one we should probably direct to the so-called “South Carolina Dairy Advisory Committee,” which is ratcheting up a classic special interest campaign to shut down the raw milk industry in the Palmetto State.
We rebuke such an effort and call on all state lawmakers – especially those who call themselves “conservatives” – to reject it. This is a textbook case of government attempting to shortchange our freedoms (and our free market) by buying off lawmakers on behalf of a narrow set of special interests – a.k.a. everything that’s wrong with the political process.
Even if raw milk were dangerous – which it isn’t – neither the federal nor state government has any business infringing upon people’s right to buy it, sell it and drink it. Similarly, the government has no right to tell a woman she can’t breast feed her child anywhere she damn well pleases.
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59 comments
Good comments!!! I had learned about this last week and wrote Senator Katrina Shealy about it. She responded and told me she was going to work on this. It’sall about food freedom!!
I don’t drink raw milk either only because of the high fat content. BUT, I do drink USDA Certified organic fat free milk. My concern is that this may just be the first of many attacks on our food freedom. What’s next? Banning the sale of fresh eggs from farms? Banning local organic foods?
You are SO RIGHT — it’s all about our food freedom.
I also believe that this is just the beginning of attacks by Big Ag to do away with the small family owned farms who raise their stock and produce in a healthy manner — usually free of most pesticides, herbicides, GMO’s, antibiotics, hormones.
YET, where does the contamination usually come from? Example: eggs a couple years ago at the large egg laying factories where chicken manure was piled HIGH causing the contamination. But, Big Ag wants us to ignore that.
What’s next? Banning the sale of fresh eggs from farms? Banning local organic foods?
Banning fresh eggs is pointless. Very few people consume raw egg anyways, and even store-bought eggs can make you sick. Banning organic foods? That doesn’t even make sense. Those aren’t good comparisons to the sale/consumption of raw milk, I’m sorry.
I understand Smirk — it doesn’t make sense. However, you need to tell that to the FDA who during the past year raided one farm in another part of the country who was having a dinner for their friends — made up of organic foods, raw milk, etc. FDA came in with guns and destroyed ALL the food that was being served — including even the cooked food.
Apparently you have forgotten about the nationwide problem with eggs from the Big Ag filthy chicken houses. Many people got very sick for even touching the eggs before cooking them.
There is nothing “fuzzy” about FDA, USDA, or SCDA standards, rules and regulations when it comes to foodstuffs…….unless one has never been on a farm, a raw materials unloading, storage, transport or processing facility (i.e. slaughter house, flour mill, food processing facility, grain elevator, feed mill, etc.).
The “fuzziness” becomes crystal clear immediately.
Oh, by the way, that last case of the “shits” you or your children had was caused by a micro-organism: bacteria, virus, or other pathogen. The “snot-nosed” nursery is not the only place those micro-organisms exist.
Signed,
“Been there, done that”
(and owned the facility)
Tell you what, when I want you to protect me from myself, I’ll call you… until then, just STFU.
Will, I had the exact same feelings until I heard about the bursilosis outbreak among hogs, deer and cattle. humans can contract it as well. Old timers call it “the bangs.” From what I am learning it is a lifelong disease that is mostly contracted if you have an open wound and come into contact with blood or fluids of infected animal. So when skinning a deer, hog, or even drinking infected milk.
I think the government nexus exists because taxpayers will no doubt pay when a group of people require emergency medical care.
All joking aside, this might be a good topic for subzeroIQ as she is a medical doctor and smart as hell to boot.
Aunt whoopass, where are you on this? (she won’t answer is she is off fighting some battle somewhere, killing trolls, goblins, or eve worse, fighting Jean Toal.)
brucellosis – I spelled it wrong.
Also known by the odd name “contagious abortion” in the cattle trades.
The grim joke was if you could get the cow still breathing, not even standing, to the slaughterhouse door it was good enough for Vienna sausage.
fitsnews has been duped! There is no such body as the South Carolina Dairy Advisory Committee as was erroneously reported in an on-line nature newsletter last week. Nor is there any move underway, as was reported in the same report to ban the sale of raw milk in South Carolina. It seems the report was premature of an April 1 (April fools) posting.
It is part of the SC Farm Bureau — look at their list.
I’m with the SC Farm Bureau and I can tell you the report is wrong. Check out our website scfb.org. There is no effort by the SC Farm Bureau to ban the sale of raw milk in South Carolina.
I’m really having a hard time tracking down this “Committee” on their site, or any other site besides natural news…
There is no such committee. The natural news article is wrong.
This committee IS part of the SC Farm Bureau. The Edgefield Adviser wrote an article on this. Here is the link:
http://www.edgefieldadvertiser.com/2013/01/internet-news-article-incites-people-over-raw-milk-issue-with-erroneous-information/
I hope this committee does its homework on what is being done in South Carolina to ensure that there are no health problems with raw milk and its products that is being sold to the public.
Of course, it is very true that the Farm Bureau does not have the authority to issue regulations, bans, etc. But, I did find it rather intriguing that the National Farm Bureau wants ALL raw milk banned nationally. I wonder why that is? Because Big Ag wants ALL the money — do away with the small family owned farms? I sure hope that doesn’t happen here.
It’s called the SC Farm Bureau Federation. “Federation” must make it different!! LOL
Thanks for sharing the Edgefield article, it helps make our case. Semantics plays a big role in understanding this issue and the claims that have been made. The article above (as with the article on naturalnews.com) left out the words “Farm Bureau” when it mentioned the “SC Dairy Advisory Committee.” The title with the omission of the organization’s name led people to believe this fictitious body is some type of government regulatory entity. In fact, it’s a group of family dairy farmers formed to advise the board and voting delegates of a private nonprofit organization (SCFB) formed to look out for the interests of family farmers and rural lifestyles.
The article above also states that the fictitious committee “is ratcheting up a classic special interest campaign to shut down the raw milk industry in the Palmetto State.” That’s just not true – wasn’t then – isn’t now. The only thing ratcheted up is attention to an issue that was well under everyone’s radar. Now it very well could be debated in the halls of government since so much attention has been drawn to it. SCFB does not have a state policy on the sale or consumption of raw milk. In fact, the SCFB board of directors has said because there is not a state policy on the issue the organization will not take part in promoting the case for or against raw milk sales, if the issue should come before the legislature.
Don’t forget that the SCFB IS a lobbying group. They made the decision to agree with the National Farm Bureau which is against the sell of raw milk. I think that because there was such a strong reaction from the public, the SCFB decided not to lobby against raw milk sales in South Carolina. Why? I think it’s because of the strong public reaction to the Natural News article. If there had not been such a strong reaction from the public, I am pretty well convinced that SCFB would have started lobbying to ban the sale of raw milk in South Carolina (something that is adequately regulated by DHEC) — basically, a food freedom issue.
It amazes me how many people believe they know all about the SC Farm Bureau and Farm Bureau structure. We are a membership organization formed to protect the rights of family farmers and to help keep them in business as well as keep rural lifestyles thriving. Anyone can join so long as they support our core values – protect and preserve the work of family farmers, keep food and fiber domestically produced, and make sure rural communities survive and thrive.
To that end, yes, we lobby on behalf of our members – family farmers working hard to make a living in a very competitive world. We are a grassroots organization. Family farmers meet to decide what issues we should address, they bring those to their county Farm Bureau organization, which are debated at the state level by voting delegates who are family farmers.
The past week’s activity over the raw milk issue had nothing to do with the fact that SCFB does not now and has not had a policy directing organizational involvement in the sale of raw milk. That is why the board voted for SCFB to stay out of what very well could become a hotly debated issue now that consumers have engaged lawmakers. While the board voted to adopt American Farm Bureau’s national policies, those do not trump state policies. Organizational policies are pushed from the local level up to the national level – not the other way around. The fact that we adopted the AFBF policies indicates if there is ever a national law proposed on this issue (which there likely will not be since it’s a state issue), SCFB would support the AFBF position. And yes, DHEC does a great job with all sorts of food safety regulations.
Harvey Peeler is a dairyman. Enough said?
Mmmmm. It makes you wonder if there are any well heeled legislators in the milk industry.
Isn’t Hugh Weathers, our Ag Commish, in the industrial dairy business?
Thanks for doing a story about this.
“Even if raw milk were dangerous – which it isn’t.”
Here you go again talking about things for which you have no education.
I bet you’ll change your mind when your children get brucellosis. You’ve never heard of it because we drink pasteurized milk. Wait until it’s not.
It WASN’T for 1000’s of years before!!!
Next law needed:
One that makes it illegal to drink Drano.
As someone once said, when your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
That’s why a majority of legislator lawyers in a governing body is a plague on humanity.
Drano isn’t specifically sold as a consumable beverage, though.
Doesn’t matter, if someone ones to drink it it’s stupid to pass a law saying not to.
It’s akin to “suicide” being illegal.
edit: “WANTS to drink it,”
I understand the hypocrisy of government “shielding” us from raw milk when it is perfectly fine letting other harmful shit get consumed, but honestly, drinking raw milk? I’d imagine there’s a lot of potential for bacteria or parasites to be present in it.
One has to consider that the time under which Pasteurization was introduced to the food supply that the cleanliness standards and technology was not what it is today.
It is very feasible that the chances of catching bad bacteria have gone so far down that the “risk” in consuming raw milk might be negligible compared to the upside of probiotic style beneficial bacteria in raw milk.
Either way, gov’t telling people what they can put in their bodies is absurd.(as you noted) Let them weigh the risks.
Raw milk is popular with folks that want natural foods. Go into Whole Foods or the place in Lexington with the big carrot on top of their sign. People have been drinking it for a good many years and when there is an outbreak of salmonella or some such thing it’s generally tied to the mass produced food stuffs. That said I wouldn’t drink it on a bet but I also liked “pink slime” and wish people had minded their own business. As long as this stuff is labeled so people can make their own informed decisions government has no business in our business.
You liked pink slime? To each his own, I guess. Then again, people eat Chicken McNuggets, and that stuff looks like strawberry soft serve coming out of the factory.
Drink Peelers Milk! (believe that phrase in trademarked)
How do they milk a peeler? by hand or a machine?
Never let facts get in the way of tin foil-hat “science”
that conclude that “Even if raw milk were dangerous – which it isn’t”
The CDC estimates that about 80% of the Hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses are due to raw milk. “Between 1973 and 2009 in which the investigators reported whether the product was pasteurized or raw, 82% were due to raw milk or cheese. From 1998 through 2009, 93 outbreaks due to consumption of raw milk or raw milk products were reported to CDC. These resulted in 1,837 illnesses, 195 hospitalizations, and 2 deaths.”
If you consider the number of US population drinking raw milk has to be low (CDC says less than 1%)…that’s a pretty high mortality rate for something that “isn’t dangerous”. And in addition to Brucellosis, there’s Listeria, Yersinia, Tuberculosis, Salmonella, E.Coli, Diptheria outbreaks linked to raw milk.
The CDC?!!! You’re serious?!!! They have an EXCELLENT rep of accurate reporting……NOT!!!!
Being relatively “old” (78), I had the privilege of growing up on raw milk in Spartanburg – first dairy I remember was Alameda Farms near White Stone, SC, which was purchased and closed by the federal government to become part of Camp Croft (the rifle ranges). Their clientele went to Canaday Dairy farms out of Inman, SC, which stayed in business for a number of years, until purchased by Springdale Dairy (later became Coble) which discontinued the raw milk product. Both Alameda and Canaday were sizeable, family-run operations, and both had the family pride involved to keep a safe and sanitary product. I was probably 12 or 13 when the raw milk disappeared, and I distinctly remember the difference in taste and sweetness between raw and Pastuerized milk, the raw being much better. At the time, one could still purchase homogenized or non-homogenized (milk with the cream floating to the top of the bottle) milk, and I remember my grandmother had a special dipper with which she could remove the cream, without having to buy separate cream for whipping, etc.
It was explained to me that one of the main reasons for removing raw milk from the market was the fairly large amount of tuberculosis cases in SC at the time, and that Pastuerization would kill not only the tubercles, but also kill off the brucellosis bacteria. None of the larger dairies in the early ’40s seemed to have the problems with their raw milk, but back then there were quite a number of very small dairies (less than 10 cows) that were perhaps less than casual about cleanliness (my father purchased a cow during WW2 and “farmed it out” to two spinsters that lived outside of town – they gave him a gallon of buttermilk and 2 pounds of butter every Saturday as his “share” and kept the rest).
While I would like to have raw milk again as a “treat” (it will sour rather than rot like ‘modern’ milk does, and “clabber” is a delicacy made from the soured raw milk), I have greater trust in Pastuerization than I have in modern promises of cleanliness and adequacy of inspection (think park train wreck in Spartanburg).
Just another good thing like Merthiolate that we’ll never see in general use ever again.
I loved your write up, great job. It was really informative.
I’m just curious, even though you fall on the pasteurization side of things do you have an opinion on whether people should be allowed to choose either way to have their milk?
Of course, there is a public health argument involved, and TB is still a contagious disease, but I have no objection to others drinking raw milk, and would myself if there was a dairy that I REALLY trusted to be clean. At my age, however, I have gotten away from drinking much milk at all, and have learned that Half and Half on my Cheerios and Shredded Wheat is pretty flavorful in itself.
P. S. Same argument is recurring with raw vs. Pastuerized Goat milk. My brother was a preemie weighing just 4 pounds when he was 6 weeks old. His diet was raw goat’s milk until he was about 6. Now 73 and fat. It’s ALL in how clean the dairy is.
Good to know that you are for personal choice…lol…I’m lactose intolerant myself(but my kids drink a ton of both raw & organic). Thanks again for the great write up!
The one thing that hasn’t been discussed here is the fact that raw milk and its products that are sold here in South Carolina is regulated by DHEC. In order to sell raw milk here, a facility must meet DHEC’s strict standards and must have a license. DHEC also closely monitors the facilities and products to ensure that it is free of the bad bacteria, etc.
Whether DHEC was checking in on them or not, a raw milk supplier wouldn’t last very long if the milk was making its customers sick.
How about banning stuff that is dangerous:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge
They grow your food in it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsIjMPP2M8
http://vimeo.com/24854061
South carolina cant get enuf toxic waste – its almost like we have a hunger for it:
http://www.dhec.sc.gov/environment/water/ND_stateLandTemp.htm
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=101XRA_q4R_6PBCQ8jTX-TbWsdiAE_0C_sX6WdSk#map:id=3
Raw milk is dangerous. Will it affect all people? no. But it is too dangerous to be sold straight from the farm.
I think we should err on the side of regulating food items. We are in the age of super bugs and super bacteria and I don’t want any doubts about what I am eating. Look at how the flu devastated our country this winter. Food and water must be sacrosanct. Terrorists are lurking out there.
Read about Piers Morgan getting a flu shot from Dr. Oz and getting REALLY sick!!! Here’s to prevention, better study a little deeper on your line of thought. Too many synthetics and not nearly enough natural intake. There’s your super bugs come from!!!
I have drunk raw milk from up north but would be hesitant to drink it from the South due to TB being endemic in the soil. That being said, if someone wants to drink raw milk, go for it.
There are also people in the South who are geophagists and though I would not eat dirt (another good way to catch TB and other germs), they are more than welcome to do so as far as I’m concerned (unless it’s on my property–then they are expected to pay me for it).
The key, as pointed out in the article is that it’s not up to the government to tell people what to eat. It’s especially not the role of the government to go in with guns and arrest people for engaging in what should be a perfectly legal transaction. You would think the idiotic war on drugs would be enough excuse for them to terrorize people without having to go after people enjoying the right to consume a natural product like raw milk. Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920’s and it doesn’t work now.
I have read of anthrax in the soil in parts of the south (Texas I think), but never TB. Interesting.
Raw milk bad. Oxycontin good. Got it? Mmmmkay.
This may be a nit-pick, but notice that the government is NOT telling you not to drink raw milk.
The government IS telling milk producers that they cannot offer it to consumers.
BTW, I have a clear late 1940s memory, similar to Observant’s, of being sent to the farm across the road from my grandmother’s house to get fresh milk for breakfast. They removed the lid from the can in the cooler house and dipped out a pint. It had to be 2/3 cream, and sure was good on that cereal.
I’m just 61. We had our own cow for milking purposes when I was a boy (early 50’s). I always liked the idea of our home-made butter and enjoyed watching my mother and aunt make it. Never cared for the full raw milk though, and we bought “store” milk for drinking.
I’ve always agreed with my late father who always said that the “good old days” weren’t so damn good as he remembered them when comparing with modern living.
… My grandparents had a small farm with some cows (about 6) and hogs (about 10) and plenty of chickens (mmmmm -good eatin’).
They reared ten kids and a boodle of grandkids, and none of us died or became sick from raw milk (straight from the udder), or pork or chicken. The old-timers lived their lives to between 75 and 85, and these were depression-years youngsters
Why I don’t like buttermilk now when I loved it as a kid with cold cornbread in a glass and eaten with a spoon is a mystery.
.
… I don’t remember that any non-family members consumed anything from their farm.
… Where is SubZeroIQ when we need her?
Probably “manning” the barricades in Cairo.
I just read the SC Farm Bureau new policies that were adopted January 29, 2013. They basically talked out of both sides of their mouths. They adopted the National Farm Bureau’s policies concerning raw milk — that people should only be allowed to purchase homogenized or pasturized milk. But, at the same time, they agreed that they will not LOBBY the State Legislature concerning raw milk.
The key is this: they are a lobbyists!! I think they felt the heat BIG time from the article that was written.
A friend of mine, 74 years old, says he grew up drinking raw milk. His parents were sharecroppers and in 1941 at the end of the Great Depression his parents moved to town and got jobs that were vacated by men going off to war. His parents rented part of an old house in town and they kept the cow in a detached dirt floor garage. Old Betsy never saw a pasture in her later years she just kinda’ hung out under an old pecan tree in the backyard. She kept giving milk and I don’t suppose that being locked up in a garage was the cleanest of surroundings. Anyway, my friend and his brother are still around, but both are nuttier than a Claxton fruitcake. I ain’t touching the stuff!