One Small Win for Raw Milk

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 28, 2013 | Kelsey Gee

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Raw-milk proponents celebrated a Wisconsin farmer's acquittal on three of four counts related to selling unpasteurized milk and cheese, bolstering their hopes of legalizing the products in America's Dairyland.

Jurors found Vernon Hershberger, a 41-year-old Loganville, Wis., farmer, innocent of producing milk without a license, selling milk and cheese products without a license, and operating a retail establishment without a license. He was found guilty of one count of breaking a holding order issued by the state in June 2010, which barred him from moving any of the food he produced without a license.

The verdict means Mr. Hershberger can continue to sell his farm's products to members of the buying club he started, said one of his attorneys, Elizabeth Rich. He faces as long as a year in jail and $10,000 in fines for the one guilty count; a sentencing date has yet to be announced.

"This is a huge win for food rights," said Liz Reitzig, a founder of Farm Food Freedom Coalition, a group advocating for greater consumer access to natural, unprocessed food. The case "should give small farmers renewed courage to continue to operate within their communities."

Milk is commonly pasteurized to remove harmful bacteria, but advocates of raw milk say the process also wipes out many beneficial nutrients. Raw milk can be consumed on the farm but can't be sold legally in many states, including Wisconsin.

The case followed a nearly four-year investigation of Mr. Hershberger and his farm, Grazin Acres LLC, by the state, the No. 2 dairy producer after California. During deliberations, which capped a five-day trial in Sauk County Circuit Court, dozens of farmers, food-rights activists and Hershberger family members filled the courthouse, sharing raw milk from Mr. Hershberger's farm.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Score a win for the good guys!

Nanny State PING!

[Gay State Conservative]

Having had some experience in the medical fields of bacteriology and infectious diseases I wouldn’t touch unpasteurized dairy products with a ten foot pole.

[Venturer]

The milk we get today is mostly chalk water.

It has been stripped of most of it’s flavor, and anything else they can strip out of it.

Pasteurization is a good thing I believe, but the rest is not so good.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Expensive trial, still facing a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. Glad he didn’t lose.

[MomwithHope]

I understand your concerns. I would not drink raw milk from a commercial dairy. However we drank raw goats milk for over 20 years from our own goats and we currently have a dairy share from a reliable farm with jersey cows. When you have a small herd and give your animals the best care, keep their environment clean, handle the milk properly and cool it down quickly, raw milk is one of the safest and best foods. Our 26 year old daughter was raised on raw milk from the age of 48 hours old. Healthy as a horse and had a childhood free of ear infections and illness.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

A MUCH better outcome than what I had anticipated, based on The Milk Mafia in this Dairy State and their all-encompassing lobbying power! :)

Now, fine him if you must, but no jail time. He’s got nine kids; they’re a local Amish family.

[Tax-chick]

I think raw milk is gross, but people should be allowed to buy and sell it, at their own risk, as long as it’s accurately labelled. (I don’t like pasteurized/homogenized milk very much, either.)

[arderkrag]

I don’t know that I’m a raw milk “proponent”, as I don’t personally ingest the stuff. I do know, however, that it isn’t my business what someone else takes into their body unless it’s a substance that somehow makes them a direct threat to my life, liberty, or property.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Having had some experience in the medical fields of bacteriology and infectious diseases I wouldn’t touch unpasteurized dairy products with a ten foot pole.

Keep suckling from Monsanto's teat then.

[CPOSharky]

License this, license that. Is there anything in Wisconsin that does not require a license? Does breathing state air require a license?

[SilverMine]

Federal law provides that it is a crime to violate the Constitutional Rights of a citizen under the Color of Law. You can be arrested for this crime and you can also be held personally liable for civil damages. Attempting to coerce or deceive a citizen to surrender his Constitutional Rights
is a Federal Crime . Federal Courts have found that your ignorance of the law is no excuse.

18 USC §242provides that whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both , and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this
title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

18 USC §245 provided that Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, intimidates or interferes with any person from participating in or enjoying any benefit, service, privilege, program, facility, or activity provided or administered by the United States; [or] applying for or enjoying employment, or any perquisite thereof, by any agency of the United States; shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both
, and if death results or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be subject to imprisonment for any term of years or for life or may be sentenced to death.

42 USC §1983 provides that every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any
State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. Warning , you may be in violation of Federal Law and persisting with your demand may lead to your arrest and/or civil damages
.

[BitWielder1]

I think you should be able to sell any farm product as long as you make no pretenses.
Let the well informed buyer make his own decision.

[Mrs. Don-o]

a nearly four-year investigation of Mr. Hershberger and his farm, Grazin Acres LLC...

Your tax dollars at work.

Why not a 4-year investigation of the local proud-illegal-American dope dealers, the doctors who don't wash their hands, or the local...er... Women's Health Clinic.

[MD Expat in PA]

Having had some experience in the medical fields of bacteriology and infectious diseases I wouldn’t touch unpasteurized dairy products with a ten foot pole.

Keep suckling from Monsanto's teat then.

Oh please. Monsanto has nothing to do with this.

And it is not Monsanto’s teat but the cow’s crap and piss covered teat that you should be worried about.

Here in PA, farmers, mostly they are Amish or Mennonites, can sell raw milk if they have a “State Certification” but that doesn’t stop people from getting very ill from drinking “State Certified” raw milk.

Recent illness outbreak from raw milk is Pennsylvania's most severe

Raw milk—another spectacularly bad idea

Don’t get me wrong, while I would not buy raw milk or cheese made from raw milk, I do sometimes buy veggies from the Amish farmer’s markets and from Mennonite farm stands, but then again as I see and smell how they fertilize their crops with cow manure, anything I buy gets the sh!t washed out of it, quite literally, with hot water and a mild bleach solution and even still I won’t eat those veggie’s raw.

FWIW, every day on my way to work, I drive by a Mennonite dairy farm that has its barn very close to the road. The cows are kept in a barn with a very small barn yard, no open pasture and the cows are walking and laying around in their own filth. It looks something like this:

And this:

This:

I don’t care how much this dairy farmer washes and sanitizes his cow’s udders before milking them, I would not buy raw milk from him unless I had a certain death wish, in fact I’m not so sure I’d want to buy even pasteurized milk from this farmer.

[Grams A]

That’s funny. For the first 15 years of my thus far rather long life I drank raw milk at least three times a day, had ice cream - totally uncooked - made from it every Sunday for dinner and ate it on my oatmeal or Cream of Wheat every morning for breakfast. Everyone in our small town also consumed raw milk and if I still lived there would be doing the same thing. They all did fine and still are.

[BrewingFrog]

Shhh! Don’t be giving them any ideas...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You're using the same demagogic tactics as the gun-grabbers. Don't you have some dead children you can trot out too?

Bovine Growth Hormone

[-YYZ-]

I’d have to agree. I don’t drink a lot of milk, but when I do it’s non-homogenized whole (yes, really whole, probably over 4 percent M.F.) from a local organic dairy. All I know is that it tastes really good, and I love the lashings of pure, fresh cream off the top.

[MD Expat in PA]

That’s funny. For the first 15 years of my thus far rather long life I drank raw milk at least three times a day, had ice cream - totally uncooked - made from it every Sunday for dinner and ate it on my oatmeal or Cream of Wheat every morning for breakfast. Everyone in our small town also consumed raw milk and if I still lived there would be doing the same thing. They all did fine and still are.

I have no problem with that. But I presume that you lived on a farm and drank the raw milk that came from your own cows – yes? So you had control over how clean you kept your cows, how much you washed and sanitized the udders before milking them, you could observe first hand if a cow looked or was acting sick and could isolate that cow and choose not to milk it? And that’s what any responsible dairy farmer should do whether they are pasteurizing their milk or selling it raw.

The problem as I see it is that “raw milk” just like the “organic” and “sustainable” or the “whole foods” trend: is just that, a food trend, a fad. And with its increasing popularity, there comes a good many inexperienced and in some cases not so ethical farmers who are looking to cash in by selling raw milk to the greenies and foodies who think that it must be more “natural” and “healthier” and can charge the gullible a hefty premium for it. Let the buyer be ware.

The truth is that pasteurized milk is just as “healthy” as raw milk but without the risks of getting Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

But heck, if anyone wants to drink raw milk, by all means be my guest. I’m not all for criminalizing its sale or consumption, but with the facts on my side, I’ll pass on the raw milk, thank you. The “alleged” and rather dubious claims of the health benefits of raw milk do not outweigh the very real risks.

I would also add that the “good ole days” were not all that good in many cases. Just walk through an old cemetery, one that goes back 100+ years, a time before “modern” medicine, immunology, vaccinations, antibiotics and advancements in food safety and food handling, and look at the grave stones – all the infants and young children who died, all the people who didn’t live to a ripe old age because they succumbed to now treatable and preventable illnesses and better overall nutrition.