It's terrible when the government gets ahold of someone like this and gets fanatical about it....but if he is operating within the law he has nothing to fear, correct? Hopefully he'll get himself a good attorney who will sue for punative damages, loss of income, attorney's fees, etc.

Velvet ~:>

Hi
It really makes my blood boil when I read things like this. Here in Central NJ we have lost all out small family farms, there are condos and McMansions and they just keep building them. When I was a kid there were many very small farms and places with truck gardens, eggs for sale, etc. It gave a richness to life that is fast disappearing. The small farmer is the backbone of this country and it makes me very sad to see the government "out to get them". I blame the people too who seem to want to get rid of every contact with nature. How do they think the food gets to the store?
I live in a state that is out of control in this department and my dream is to move to a more rural area. By the time I get there it will be as bad as it is here.
Fight the good fight.
Pat

It really does suck that we arent allowed to do what we want to on OUR OWN farms! I remember a friend of mine saying that theyd have to have their own cow's milk pasturized so they could legally drink it. And that takes away the nutrition of the milk! same thing happened with goat milk around here-I think the farmers won the right to drink it.

Well what is next? You know this is just the beginning. I am getting sick of ol' Uncle Sam telling me he knows better than me what is good for me and my family. Why do people continue to vote in people who just want to take our rights away from us? I am just about ready to chuck it all and go live in some wilderness somewhere with my cow and my chickens and ....but where would that be??? We are trapped, and our nation and law makers are getting more and more stupid as time goes by.

If you do a google search on this individual and the name of his farm, you'll find he's offering raw milk for sale to the general public, not just using it himself, and not limiting it to use as food for pets. The little "Warning" article doesn't mention that.

Milk is pasteurized for a reason - it's consumed uncooked, unlike meat and most eggs. Kids used to die by the thousands from drinking it, it can be loaded with pathogenic bacteria. When kids died because of E. coli in undercooked fast-food burgers, there was a major upheaval in the fast-food industry to be certain it wouldn't happen again. But now people are complaining they can't get their hands on a food product that's potentially much more dangerous? Give me a break.

The people that this fellow was selling to knew exactly what they were buying and paid over $12/gallon and please tell me where it says anyone got sick from what he was selling. But he is not allowed to sell anything, now not just milk.

I drink unpasteurized milk EVERYDAY, as does my whole family. We have never felt better. And infact some of us were suffering from intestinal problems until we started consuming unpasteurized milk. Yes often there are dangerous pathogens in milk, especially pasteurized milk, with no good bacteria to clean it up. There are also probiotics in raw milk that help one digest milk that are destroyed during pasturization. My husband has been lactose intolerant since he was a child, I have done A LOT of research on this subject and the whole reason that I wanted a milk cow is precisely because I wanted UNpasteurized milk.

I have found nothing in all my research that supports any notion that "kids died by the thousands from drinking unpasturized milk." I did find stories that were proven to be a hoax and I believe the town was completely fictional.

"Ladies' Home Journal, December 1944, began the campaign with the article 'Undulant Fever' claiming -without any acurate documantation- that tens of thousands of people in the US were suffering from fever an illness because of exposure to raw milk. And the next year Coronet magazine followed up with 'Raw Milk Can Kill You' by Robert Harris MD, who represtented as fact, a town and an epidemic that was entirely ficticious-Crossroads, USA" But there was no Crossroads and no epidemic.

There have been some instances of illness that were due to consumption of raw milk that were from dairies that were producing commericial milk meant for pasteurization who sold to customers coming to the farm to buy raw milk.These accounts have been few and far between. Many dairies don't keep the best hygene just for the reason that they know the milk will be pasteurized, so to them it is ok that their is crap in the milk. So only in the instance of your large (like the ones that supply milk to 1.5 million) dairies that don't keep the best sanitary or hygenic practices I do believe if they are going to produce milk, they should pasteurize, I don't feel that it is a benificial food product.

The Journal of the American Medical Association on December 11, 1987 reported that Over 16,000 culture confirmed cases of infections due to Salmonella typhimurium were traced to two brands of PASTEURIZED 2% milk produced by a single dairy plant. The number of people that were actually affected were estimated at close to 200,000. This was the largest outbreak of salmonella ever identified in the United states.

Mark McAfee owner of Organic Pastures Dairy in California, an organic pasture based raw milk dairy recently has provided evidence of safety of raw milk from cows that are primarily pasture-fed. He keeps his cows on fresh green pasture all year. He took samples of his milk to a lab in Fresno where technicians introduced pathogens into the milk- Salmonella and E.coli OH:157. The organisms could not be found in the milk the next day-They could not survive. The university of California at Davis then came and took serum samples from several cows. They discovered that the amimals had developed no antibiotic resistance and their immune systems were so strong the good bugs that the cows naturally harber were able to kill off potential pathogens. Drinking this raw milk populates the human intestines withthe same good bugs, which is one reason the studies desribed above have shown that people who drink raw milk consistently are much more resistant to potentially pathogenic organisms than those who do not. Most of these examples can be found in Small Farmers Journal in a couple of different articles, "The Rise and Fall of Raw Milk" by Ron Schmid,, reprinted from Organic Farms, Folks and Foods, Mid-Fall 2004 and also The Safety of Raw vs. Pasteurized Milk" by the same arthur. It is well documented with the resouses stated in footnotes like any good research paper. These articles were in the Summer 2005 issue if you can find it in a library.

I say, let this guy prove to everyone the safety and cleanliness of his milk, let him have it tested and as long as it test safe, on a regular basis, he should be allowed to sell it.

http://www.realmilk.org/

http://www.realmilk.com/milkcure.html

My point is, would you like for Uncle Sam to stand in the Drive thru at your favortite hamburger joint and tell you that you are not allowed to buy anything here because you are overweight and you have high colesteral. Or maybe they just shut him down because it is bad for some people to eat hamburgers, because it is red meat and fries etc. How many times does the government and some science have to be proved wrong before they stop trying to dictate what is good for you or not. Here it is not a safety issue its a power/ control issue of the local government agent. If there is full exclosure what is the problelm? Give the people a choice.

Here is a link that might be useful: Real-Food.com

Well my cow has been tested for all these things that my vet recomended and I would think that all dairy cows should have to be tested whether or not one pasteurizes. I would bet that this fellow has had his tested. I feel perfectly safe with my cow, drinking her raw milk actually- I feel much better and safer. I am not trying to change everyone from drinking pasteurized milk, just don't make it against the law for me to make my own choice-That is all I am saying. I think more important than his right to sell is his customers rights to buy healthier food. He doesn't force people to buy from him and I would even be willing to be that they have other choices, just feel his food is superior.

My point is, would you like for Uncle Sam to stand in the Drive thru at your favortite hamburger joint and tell you that you are not allowed to buy anything here because you are overweight and you have high colesteral.

Yes, but it will never happen. Americans are overweight (+64% of them) and getting worse. Too little exercise combined with high fat diets - which include too many dairy products, BTW - combined with the high carb garbage that passes for food these days, are responsible for higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. The most pathetic thing is that these adult problems are affecting children too, including obesity-related asthma, liver disease, and degradation of weight-bearing joints. Since I was a kid (1960s) obesity in children rose over 50% by 1989, and doubled in the past two decades, with the fastest increase in the past ten years.

In other words, Americans aren't just getting fatter, they're doing it at increasingly alarming rates. That's probably because overweight children most often turn into overweight adults and, in turn, tend to produce more overweight children. Genetics only plays a tiny role; generational obesity is more related to behavior than genes.

Milk isn't the health food the dairy industry touts it to be. Adults don't need it at all and kids don't need as much as recommended by dairy lobbiests. And that's all the 'got milk' and 'milk helps you lose weight' ads are - the work of lobbiests pushing a product - they're not public service announcements.

If people are lactose intolerant it isn't because there's anything wrong with the milk. It's because people are being encouraged to eat something that was designed for new-born infants, and bovine infants at that.

Milk isn't as good a source of calcium and vitamins as people believe. Vegetables can provide more, and needed fiber too, without all that fat!

Now, back to your question about Uncle Sam standing in the drive-thru. Obesity isn't just a problem about "personal responsibility" because the cost of obesity is paid by everyone who pays for health care. I don't want my health insurance premiums to reflect the cost of someone else feeding themselves or their kid at McDonalds regularly, but they do. And if I don't have insurance (which I don't) I don't want my private-pay rates to reflect the cost of others only paying negotiated insurance rates, but they do.

Therefore, if adults choose to eat a diet high in saturated fat that includes lots of dairy products and red meat, I want them to pay the kind of insurance premiums that cover the cost of their health care 100%. That could be accomplished with annual weigh-ins and cholesterol checks, including for kids. People who eat bad diets and don't exercise pay more, healthier people pay less. It's only fair, and that's "personal responsibility" at its finest.

What makes this farm related is that the dairy, corn, sugar, beef, and other agricultural and food industries would never let it happen; it would cost them too much money. They've already intervened by pushing an act of Congress to prevent people from suing food industries and at the same time, they do battle daily with consumer advocacy groups urging people to eat healthier diets by eschewing certain products.

That all applies to organic and all-natural dairy businesses too, including the ones wanting to sell raw products. Their websites claim these raw products are healthier and even claim medicinal benefits. That's just bull, milk isn't a cure for anything and only the most infinitesimal portion of the population can derive any nutritional value from it that they can't get from lower fat alternatives.

If you want the government to "Give the people a choice" on what to eat, then let them give people a choice on paying for other people's health care too. Make each individual pay for their own choices, and I won't care what you eat.

I drank raw milk as a child ... until one of my friends got scarlet fever from the milk and developed permanent heart problems. It's called "rheumatic fever"......

......Go back to the medical records from the late 1890s and early 1900s ... look at the incidence of TB, brucellosis, rheumatic fever, and scarlet fever. Check what happens - with NO OTHER CHANGE - when pasteurization becomes the norm.

This is true, my father had rheumatic fever and permanent problems because of it, but there's one other thing that's been responsible for fewer childhood deaths and illnesses from these pathogens: antibiotics. Since the 1940s these diseases have become more treatable and less deadly or damaging.

However, because of pasteurization (and a better understanding of basic sanitation and refigeration requirements in general), the diseases are seen less often in the first place and don't present themselves as emergencies requiring treatment as much as they used to.

As a side note, one other comment on how the handling of dairy products has improved. When I was a kid the milkman used to leave milk and other dairy products in a little metal box outside the door. The milk would often be so warm you'd probably throw it out today, I hope. It spoiled very quickly, in just a few days, even though it was fresh from the cow not far away. I suppose it was probably pasteurized since that was circa 1960, but, horrors, what if it hadn't been?