I am a criminal dairyman here in Wisconsin who has dared to share raw milk with people.
We here are so envious of you in Vermont, but I can see from your article [“Notes from the raw milk tour,” October] who the heroes and villians are, same as here.
Your health department - of all the people you interviewed, happy, working hard, helping people - is in one sour mood and angry for sure, and all they have to say is “don't drink raw milk.” And you can bet - there, like here - they are not being cooperative one bit, in trying to make sure raw milk is safe, with a reasonable system without so much overhead as to be silly, to be the same as saying, “No raw milk.”
I have found that these health departments have some kind of psychosis about raw milk. They have not bothered to really educate themselves on the subject; they just get some kind of jollies out of spreading fear -- and, as we've seen, not being helpful under any circumstances, even when raw milk is legal.
That really calls into question just how valuable those people are in any capacity; they are not doing the people's business. In fact, as scary as it sounds, you can be sure they are actually wishing people would get sick, so they can say “See, see! Somebody got sick with raw milk!"
The unfortunate truth is that raw milk has a really bad rap because these people keep repeating lies, and scary ones at that ("kids got sick..."); they shout down anyone sensible on this issue, and they manipulate people's thinking. They hate all farmers, but they hate us uppity ones who would dare have our own customers the most. Raw milk is only their vehicle of trying to exterminate us.
We just cannot believe that nature got it wrong - that milk from a healthy cow, treated responsibly by a quality farmer - could be wrong. Isn't our arrogance as humans, constantly trying to “fix” nature, that is the reason we have many of our global problems? Fix the problems -- not the symptoms.