Raw Milk
We get the scoop from a Mom in Minnesota
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We talk about:
-Natasha’s Bio
-History of raw milk and the rich dairy heritage in Minnesota
-Milk comes into the Industrial Revolution
-Relevant portions of the Minnesota constitution that covers agriculture and farm sales
-Correlation of stripped nutrition from dairy cows to stripped flour
-The direct market farmer has to be very careful about how they care about their animals and the food they produce because they have to shake the hand of the people that buy it
-Raw milk benefits
-Systems that are so large when an outbreak can come from meat from a thousand cows
-Reasons from a former dairy farmer why he got out of dairy production
-Trend of small family dairy farms in Minnesota is down to just a handful now (in just one county 100 down to two)
-Price of feed up, (thanks Ethanol!) price of milk up
-USDA numbers for dairy production
-Treating industrial animals as though they are mechanical and not biological it affects how every other relationship flows from that premise
-People die from cantaloupe, spinach and peanut butter—the death count from raw milk still has yet to register . . .
-If the life itself is not sacred, and there is not a reverence for the life then you are totally comfortable with just irradiating the products before it goes out the door no matter how you treated the animal.
-Louie Pasteur never pasteurized milk—he pasteurized wine after studying the bacteria
-When you are no longer close to the food, you have to presuppose cheap energy and a system with consequences we have yet to understand
-Food safety vs. market access
-Greed is not going to yield a circumspective system concerned about long term consequences
-In Minnesota it is legal to buy raw milk, sell raw milk and consume raw milk—the legal fight is over transportation of raw milk to sale points
-Buying clubs create community
-Where can I get raw milk?
-How the raw milk raid went down at the Sandvig house
-After raw milk, where do you go next if you are trying to keep people safe?
-Food regulations and the enforcement of them—is that done by elected officials? So you still think this is about one dairy farmer in Minnesota?
-Current state of the case in the Minnesota courts and the petition to Governor Dayton
-“There has to be a critical mass of people who care.”
-Has the FDA or USDA weighed in on this? What are events on the national scene?
-The order of magnitude for a Cargill meat is across multiple states, but a small scale farmer’s (unlikely) impact of contaminated food is relatively miniscule
-The practice demanding the same level of regulation from small farmers as big ag—but the level of legal attention leveraged against farmers has brought them to a place where they cannot compete in a system when they are expected to have the resources to buy a very expensive thermometer.
-Milk is the leader item for grocery store shopping lists
-What can people do to lend a hand to the raw milk fight? Follow the news stories, be aware, and get to know your local farmer!
-What keeps Natasha going, how does she not be overwhelmed and lose hope?
-National Animal Identification System—if that is part of everyone’s business, what is next?
-If the industrial ag food was so good for us, would you not expect the experts to read the score to us once in a while?
-Who owns this person?
-How Natasha set out in this—and it was not to be an activist for fresh raw milk
-Raw milk to successfully treat a child’s arthritis, and that Mom is not going to give that up without a fight
-Giving up freedom in the name of security
-Food safety is a subjective thing—how many editions of the food pyramid have we seen?
-What is Natasha’s favorite use for raw milk?
-Wrap up: taking personal responsibility
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