Free Republic

Proposed South Dakota raw milk regulations will make it difficult for smaller operations to continue selling the substance in the state.  Department of Agriculture officials finished a third public hearing on the issue on Wednesday, saying the rules are necessary to ensure safety.  A legislative committee last August had rejected the rules until it had more information on their financial impact for farmers. The State of South Dakota currently allows the sale of raw milk, though not from retail stores.  Farms are allowed to sell the popular substance directly to consumers. Raw milk must also be clearly labeled as raw, but no...

A trial that has become a symbol, in Wisconsin and across the U.S., of government criminalization of farmers for providing food directly to consumers has been rescheduled for January. But the delay from the previously scheduled September court date is expected to focus even more attention on the dispute that has dragged Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger to the court’s defendant’s table in the Sauk County Circuit Court, presided over by Judge Guy Reynolds. The state’s case against the Loganville farmer has him accused of four misdemeanor counts of violating Wisconsin’s food and dairy code. Officials with the Farm to...

Raw milk and raw milk products are 150 times more likely than their pasteurized counterparts to sicken those who consume them, according to a 13-year review published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday. States that permit raw milk sales also have more than twice as many illness outbreaks as states where raw milk is not sold. The CDC study, published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases, reviewed dairy-related outbreaks between 1993 and 2006 in all 50 states, during which time the authors counted 121 dairy-related illness outbreaks resulting in 4,413 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations and three deaths. Despite...

I’ve mentioned the FDA presentation before, but I think of it now because of a major case of illness from milk contamination in Massachusetts—contamination from pasteurized milk. It’s received extensive coverage in today’s Boston Globe, and apparently triggered dozens of calls to state health authorities by concerned consumers. According to the reports, three elderly individuals were sickened by listeriosis, and two of them died. A fourth individual—a pregnant woman in her thirties—had a miscarriage. If you are a raw milk drinker and you have been following some of the cases of alleged listeria contamination of raw milk in New York...

One of the real positive things legislatures can do is gather together representatives of opposing sides of an issue to openly discuss it via hearings. This kind of discussion can help clarify the points of disagreement, and agreement, and help in education... It was in the testimony from the two public health officials that I got an education...in how to distort and misrepresent the facts.

Dawn Sharts has been a dairy farmer in upstate New York for 31 years, and has never had problems with agriculture inspectors. But things changed when Sharts decided to take advantage of a state law that allows farmers with special permits to sell unpasteurized milk directly to consumers from the farm... Sharts says last fall agriculture inspectors suddenly began "treating me like I was selling toxic waste." The situation has become so nasty that the inspectors shut part of Sharts' production down for several weeks and publicly accused her of selling a tainted product. She has fought back with vehement...

Popeye the Sailor Man would have approved of the green, leafy spinach gobbled up by Sadex Corp. officials early Wednesday morning. Popeye definitely would not have approved of the spinach if he could have seen it under a microscope before it underwent irradiation -- the spinach contained 5 million colonies of E.coli bacteria per gram. "You would have been better off to have a cow come and dump on it," said David Corbin, chairman and chief executive officer of the Sadex Corp. Officials at the Sadex Corp. irradiated the highly contaminated spinach at the Sioux City plant, 2650 Murray St....