Tim Rowland’s article in today’s Hagerstown, MD Herald is one of the finest. He, like many others, miss a very important point. We at the Journal, and many other producers, do not want raw milk from farm sales to be regulated as legal in any state. We want it exempt and unregulated– for farm sales. Because if it is regulated as legal, it becomes illegal– you have to understand regulation and law to understand this perhaps. If someone gets sick, the department of health should investigate and help the producer improve operations, as public servants should– with no legal or regulatory repurcussions. The farm purchase of raw milk should be unregulated. Guns and SWAT team raids must be stopped.
Tim Rowland
Swallow peanuts, but choke on raw milk?
February 22, 2009
It’s rich to hear state health departments and the federal Food and Drug Administration shake a warning finger at the Maryland General Assembly over the dangers of raw milk.
It is equally quaint to hear the farm bureaus raise the same complaints, considering that many of their dairy-farmer members grew up drinking the stuff.
The message is that any milk that hasn’t been cooked beyond recognition under the watchful eye of government regulators is unfit for human consumption – and as regulators guard the front door with shotguns to prevent a dairy breaking and entering, tons of bacterially poisoned peanut butter are slipping in through the back, which should be proof enough that it’s the producer, not the product, that makes the difference. More. . . Visit Tim at the Herald today:
Journal of Natural Food and Health 
Being able to purchase from the farmer directly would be a great, just as we do with fresh veggies in the summertime. The risks we face from these purchases is equal to the risks faced from buying dairy, meat, or eggs. Being more accessible to the public may also help the dairy industry earn a better profit themselves.
Here in WA where Raw Milk is legal, things work fairly well. Grade A licensed Raw Milk dairies are on the rise, despite the costly start-up burdens and often mis-informed inspectors. However, once going the yearly license does a good job of helping to monitor milk quality. As long as the inspectors do their job, don’t over-react, and stick to the laws things work out fine. It also helps create a higher profile for Raw Milk, can shine a good light on it and helps heal some of the damage caused by mis-informed, careless herd-share programs.
Raw milk needs to be legalized in all states, on-farm sales and farmer’s market sales need to be aided and health departments and state ag departments need to start working towards helping the farmers and the public get the best quality they can.
In an ideal world everything could be un-regulated and exempt. But that isn’t the case and the quality product I produce can be marred by someone less scrupulous cutting corners and giving all things like it a bad-name. Legalization, minor, scale-appropriate regulation and lots of education could go a long way to making Raw Milk healthy, safe and everywhere.
We drink locally-produced raw goat’s milk, which is said to be superior to cow’s milk in that it is non-allergenic. I often suspect, however, that the allergenic aspect of cow’s milk has to do with the pasteurization process and not the source milk. The FDA, under the Bush Administration, cut back sharply on inspectors, so simply banning a product such as raw milk is easier for them than to hire inspectors to determine it is up to quality.
Podchef:
Thank you much for your comments and the current status of raw milk in Washington state. And thank you for your polite correction of my original thoughts on exemption– there is a happy medium.
Super website you have– I will make it a recommended link.
Try http://westonaprice.org