Something About This Rawsome Thing Stinks And I'll Tell You Why...

I have been captivated by the story of the Rawsome raid in Venice, CA for the last week. The Nourished Kitchen first published a great article detailing not only the details of the case but how one could get involved. Rallies have been staged, protests have been waged.



But something seemed off to me when reading the article.



Since reading Jenny’s account of the raid, I have read several different versions, from the article at Natural News which it seems has been publishing more than a few articles on the topic. Forbes magazine published an article. So did a site called yovenice.com. To recap for those who haven’t heard, on August 3rd Rawsome Foods a raw milk buying club in Venice, CA was raided by armed agents who seized raw milk, raw cheese, raw kefir, computers and $4,536 in cash. They also arrested three people, the owner of Rawsome Foods owner James Stewart, Weston A Price liason Victoria Bloch and Healthy Family Farms owner Sharon Palmer. The raw milk community has cried foul on the raid as the government’s intimidation of raw dairy consumers in the marketplace. The allegation has flown that the FDA wants to limit our food freedoms and the state government of California is trying to force a private buying club into paying state sales tax to which it should not be subject. Every account that I have read has accurately centered around the fact that the 13 count arrest warrant alleges that Rawsome Foods was operating an illegal grocery store because they did not have the proper permits to sell raw milk in the state of California, among other conspiracy charges.



Here is a copy of the search warrant provided by Natural News



It is worth it to note that the sale of raw milk is LEGAL in the state of California. One must obtain the proper permits in order to sell unpasteurized dairy. However the news coverage of this case alleges that Rawsome was NOT a grocery store at all, but a private buying club. The Natural News went even further as to say “they are not a public store. Rawesome Foods is a private member club where members actually own a percentage of the cows, goats and farms that produce the raw dairy.” Rawsome, they say is just the pick-up location. Anyone would agree that if you and your family across town all owned the rights to a little plot of land, any vegetables grown on the land that you formally agreed to split would not be a sale technically. You would simply be co-operative owners. You would all be subject to splitting the maintanence costs, property taxes on the land, investment in the farming operation and any yield that the land might bring. That makes sense right?



Is this a case of the government squeezing your rights as a consumer to freely choose the most healthful food you wish? Is the FDA stepping over your civil rights by intimidating sellers of raw milk? Some things for me…well they just didn’t add up. First and foremost, if Rawsome foods was just a pick up and drop off location, why did they have so much cash? The more I kept thinking about it, I belong to a CSA. I pay a lump sum in spring and enjoy fresh vegetables delivered to me all summer and fall. My CSA has organized a drop off location. It is a couple of folding tables at a restaurant in the park. No one has ever asked me for cash. I send that via mail directly to the farmer. And in my CSA which is private, while I pay for a share, I do not co-operatively own parts of the farm. What kind of business model is Rawsome? The reports aren’t clear. If people joined with a membership fee and then purchased however much or as little as they wanted from week to week, that sounds like a co-operative grocery store, not a co-operative ownership. Still semi private, but a business nonetheless, as far as I understand subject to the tax and licensing laws of the land. I visited the website of this Healthy Family Farms owned by Sharon Palmer. They are truly set up as a private buying club, with a membership fee of between $25-$35 in order to purchase products. Then you simply order what you want from their website. There is not an ‘about’ page where interested people can gain more information. There is no info, location or otherwise, about the farm, and several products listed for sale are noted as coming from out of state. A membership is easily attainable through a fee, making this in my opinion a completely public group. It is simply a more expensive handling fee, just like I pay when I shop at Target.com. My CSA runs a waiting list, and each year you wait 4-6 weeks to find out IF you have been accepted. I don’t just go to an open website and load the CSA fee in my cart.



Of course the most heated debate was about the permits themselves. It is clear that Rawsome did not obtain permits to sell unpasteurized dairy in California. The three were arraigned in court August 9th after being held on bail since August 3rd. So it is clear that the judge feels that a law has been broken sufficient to bring the case to court and not just throw it out. But that debate will continue as details of the case come out. Likely though the case will progress as it is not the first infraction against Rawsome. They were raided in 2010 for similar violations.



My problem with all of this is that it detracts from the larger issue at hand, your right to buy the foods you want to. This meddling over permits and taxes doesn’t do anything to change the fact that RAW MILK IS LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA. All you have to do is follow the rules. There are dozens of states, including Wisconsin, the largest milk producing state in the country, that do not even allow people to purchase raw milk from the farmer at his own farm. The case against Rawsome has a lot to do with how laws are IMPLEMENTED, but I prefer to fight against BAD LAWS. I think there are few mainstreamers who would want to deregulate the food industry. There are enough egg recalls and ground turkey fiascos to go around right now. Additional deregulation isn’t the answer in my opinion. Fair laws in every state that are in place for the consumer rather than agri-business are the answer. I mean, do we really think that there are zero unscrupulous people in the raw milk business? Are all small farmers so honest and true that NOT A SINGLE ONE would ever sell meat from a sick animal? And what happens when demand outpaces supply of raw milk? Will the community grow ever larger with still no scandal or charlatans looking to make a buck off of you?



In fact, The LA Times reported on August 9th that Healthy Family Farms Owner Sharon Palmer “may be considered a flight risk given that in 2000 she and her partner Edward Rostami were arrested near the U.S.-Mexico border as they fled to avoid prosecution for a real estate swindle.” The linked article details how Palmer (allegedly then Palmer-Ross) was sentenced to three years probation for a reverse mortgage scheme targeted at an eldery woman in Malibu. The article states that Palmer-Ross had previously served a prison sentence for the same crime against a Santa Clara homeowner. Palmer-Ross has also according to the LA Times been “arrested while trying to reenter the country with three Mexican nationals in the trunk of her car.”



It is true. There is nothing definite except death and taxes. I don’t try and fight taxes. I am not going to sit here and fight the tax laws that are on the books. If my state says I need to pay sales tax on my ground turkey, so be it. But please don’t let a small group of people who simply are denying the government’s right to govern them make all of the raw food advocates look like a bunch of people on the political fringe. Business of scale indeed do need to be regulated and thanks to all our writing, cooking, word of mouth and passion, the local and raw food movements are a business of scale. Maybe not the same scale as agri-business, but we are getting there. We can't expect to continually escape regulations.



I will fight for raw milk. But I can’t fight for these people if they simply didn’t follow the letter of the law. I will continue to watch as the story unfolds. But it smells a little spoiled to me.



Also see: You Tube Footage of Stewart at Healthy Family Farms.



This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays and Traditional Tuesdays

Real Milk is Raw Milk

2011 UPDATE - March  Only 2 deaths from raw milk, that was really cheese.  Sounds like Big Dairy is in control of your food choices at CDC.

There's another related number that has been around much longer, and it's this: Between 1998 and 2008, there have been two deaths from raw milk. This number comes up repeatedly in media reporting about raw milk, courtesy of the CDC, even though I have reported that those illnesses appear to have come from queso fresco cheese, a soft fresh cheese that isn't legal under FDA regulations requiring a minimum 60 day aging period.http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2011/2/18/the-power-of-numbers-in-the-war-over-raw-dairy-how-the-cdc-c.html

UPDATE: 21 July 2010  -  War Over Raw Milk
Raw Food Raid

2 June - Remember that when milk began to be homogenized in the 1950s the rate of atherosclerosis started to skyrocket.  What we need is a return to real food, not corporate-dictated processed products.

" Milk from dairy cows that graze on pasture land rather than in feedlots might be healthier for your heart, according to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Dairy products are the main source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), an unsaturated fat that some studies show could protect the heart. Pasture-grazing dairy cows have more CLA in their milk than grain-fed cows, according to the report.

In a study of 3,600 people, the researchers found that people with the highest concentration of CLAs had a 36 percent lower risk of heart attack than people with the lowest CLAs."Read more...

Real Milk Nutrition
 
UPDATE: 24 April, 2010 -  While I am pleased to see this judge ruled with common sense and in keeping with the law I am baffled that the "health blogger" sourced in these articles failed to refer to Dr. Frank McCoy in regard to natural healing with food, especially raw milk.  But them we are in the superficial zone these days as far as source material, too bad.

Judge sides with activist in raw milk dispute

Feds Serve Warrant on Dairy Farmer

UPDATE: 18 April, 2010 - The Raw Milk Debate: Don't Have a Cow, Man
UPDATE 29 March -  FOOD POLICE AT IT AGAIN

FDA Alerts Consumers of Raw Milk Danger, By Cole Petrochko, Staff Writer, MedPage Today, 23 March 09
WASHINGTON -- An outbreak of campylobacteriosis has prompted the FDA and several Midwestern state health agencies to warn consumers against drinking unpasteurized, raw milk.
The Michigan Department of Community Health had received at least 12 confirmed reports of raw milk-related illness as of March, 24, the FDA reported in its announcement of the alert.
Unpasteurized milk may contain a variety of infectious bacteria, such as Salmonella and E. Coli, which can cause illness or death, the agency noted.
Adverse events related to drinking the raw milk include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, headache, and body ache.
While most healthy patients recover quickly from milk-borne illnesses, the FDA cautioned that severe reactions may occur in some victims, particularly in pregnant women, older patients, infants, younger children, and patients with a weakened immune system.
Although the FDA has required pasteurization of almost all packaged milk products (excluding some aged cheeses) since 1987, dairy disease is still a threat, according to a Dec. 2008 report in Clinical Infectious Diseases that cited an annual average of 5.2 outbreaks per year between 1993 and 2006. (See Raw Milk Remains a Health Threat)
The FDA noted that from 1998 to 2008, 1,614 illnesses and two deaths related to raw milk were reported.
Proponents of unpasteurized milk claim it's more nutritious than treated milk and inherently antimicrobial.
Not so, the FDA asserted.
"There is no meaningful nutritional difference between pasteurized and raw milk, and raw milk does not contain compounds that will kill harmful bacteria," the agency said.
The FDA's investigation into the outbreak is aided by the Michigan Department of Community Health, the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Indiana State Board of Animal Health, and the Indiana State Health Department.© 2004-2010 MedPage Today, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

NB: High Doses of vitamin C have been shown effective in treating food borne illness.  
 

UPDATE: 28 March, 2010 

The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) that was first proposed in 1924 by the United States Public Health Service has been adopted, in its 2003 revision, by 46 out of 50 states. (The four non-adopting states have passed similar ordinances of their own.) The PMO calls for the pasteurization of milk as a way of killing any potentially disease-causing bacteria in the milk, including Campylobacter, Escherichia, Listeria, Salmonella, Yersinia, and Brucella. I would also like to note that in 32 states, it is legal to sell and distribute raw, non-pasteurized milk and that both forms of milk exist in the majority of states.
Today there are more pasteurization options in the marketplace than there were in 1924; these options include high-temperature, short-time methods as well as low-temperature, longer time methods. The goal of all methods is the same: to kill potentially pathogenic bacteria that may be present in the milk or milk product (like cheese or yogurt).

Temperature	Time	Pasteurization Type
63ºC (145ºF)*	30 minutes	Vat Pasteurization
72ºC (161ºF)*	15 seconds	High temperature short time Pasteurization (HTST)
89ºC (191ºF)	1.0 second	Ultra Pasteurization (UP)
90ºC (194ºF)	0.5 seconds	Ultra Pasteurization (UP)
94ºC (201ºF)	0.1 seconds	Ultra Pasteurization (UP)
96ºC (204ºF)	0.05 seconds	Ultra Pasteurization (UP)
100ºC (212ºF)	0.01 seconds	Ultra Pasteurization (UP)
138ºC (280ºF)	2.0 seconds	Ultra-high temperature (UHT) sterilization

Note: * = These temperatures and times are appropriate if the milk does not contain added sweeteners, and if it has not been condensed. If either of those changes applies, then the temperature must be increased by 3ºC (5ºF). In addition, eggnog is an exception to these rules and must be pasteurized according to a different set of times and temperatures.
There's no debate about the effectiveness of pasteurization for killing unwanted bacteria. There's also no doubt that pasteurization gives dairy products a longer shelf life by lowering the presence of bacteria that cause spoilage. But pasteurization also kills desirable bacteria found in fresh milk, and it denatures milk enzymes that may be active in the human digestive tract when fresh milk is consumed.
There is little research, however, to determine what nutritional benefits are lost when milk is pasteurized. I've seen speculation about changes in protein structure, calcium, amino acid, and vitamin C bioavailability all being triggered by pasteurization, but I have not seen research that confirms or rejects these occurrences.
As I mentioned earlier, in the majority of states, dairy farms are free to produce raw (unpasteurized) milk as long as they adhere to the conditions and restrictions set out in state law. The safety of unpasteurized milk depends on the quality of the cow's life,
including the immediate environment and feeding. It also depends on the quality of handling facilities once the cow has been milked. For these reasons, I recommend a very careful look at any dairy farm's procedures, track record, and publicly available information before becoming a regular consumer of its unpasteurized milk. Producers of raw milk should be carefully monitoring the milk for the presence of microorganisms and will be able to certify that the milk meets all federal and state regulations in this regard.
Because freshness is at a premium, and the product shelf life is greatly shortened (which is not necessarily bad) the dairy should be within driving distance of your residence so you can visit it in person. In some states, like Indiana, where it is illegal for a local dairy to sell unpasteurized milk, cows from the dairy may be leased in order for consumers to obtain a regular supply of raw milk.
In the absence of a very high-quality dairy farm in driving distance from your residence, I recommend purchase of pasteurized milk. Even though it's one step further from natural milk (which I would prefer), the health risks-however small-don't seem like a worthwhile trade-off in exchange for the potential benefits. If a high quality dairy farm, producing certified organic milk in unpasteurized form is available in your area, I would recommend considering this option. Courtesy: WHFOODS.ORG

Original Post 23 March 2009 :
A few years ago I was able to get some delicious raw milk from a cow down the road. I loved it each time I received my big glass gallon jar of this liquid. It brought back memories when I saw the rich, uncooked, deep yellow cream floating on top.

Some years ago I drove down the big long hill from my home back then and stopped at the Wagon Wheel to buy raw milk.

Before that I drove out to Willapa Valley for fresh liquid delight from Verna Kuttle's cows.

Before Washington, when my children were quite young, I walked next door to the farm each afternoon at milking time and drew a gallon of freshly collected raw milk from the big stainless steel cooler.

And even before that, as a small child I recall in delight on a day out at the farm, getting fresh creamy milk, still warm from the cow.

I am happy to say that my children probably had more raw, uncooked and non-homogenized milk than I did. None of us are the worse for it.

Sadly over the years Washington has been under the Olympia gestapo for any effort to have access to raw milk.

For year's you had to find a farmer to sell it too you and even then it was only sold as "pet" milk. I'm glad I had pets.

It's just the insanity of lack of knowledge that government workers seem to fall into, lock step.

No one dare ask if it might be good for you.

Funny too because one of the very first books I had when I was studying naturopathy in the 1960s had pages of treatments based on consuming raw milk.

Maybe times are changing.

Got Raw Milk?By Jennifer Adler M.S., C.N.

Welcome to the largest underground food revolution—the raw milk movement. As a nutritionist I have been a part of this underground movement since 1999 and have been amazed at how this creamy-colored substance has brought together Republicans and Democrats, as well as liberals and fundamental Christians—all for a common cause. Who knew that milk, that stuff that you put on your cereal, could have such power?

Since ancient times, an exclusive raw-milk diet has been used to cure many diseases. In the early 1900s, the “Milk Cure” was used at the Mayo clinic to successfully treat cancer, weight loss, kidney disease, allergies, skin problems, urinary tract problems, prostate problems, chronic fatigue and many other chronic conditions. However, after 1947, raw milk became very difficult to obtain due to pasteurization laws.

Pasteurization, heating foods to a minimum of 161.5∝F and holding that temperature for at least fifteen seconds, is done to kill bacteria. Currently, many raw foods are viewed as dangerous and laws enacted in the name of public health and safety require more foods to be sterilized by pasteurization. Pasteurization was implemented in the 1920s to combat tuberculosis, infant diarrhea and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. However, refrigerated trucks, stainless steel tanks, milking machines and inspection methods make pasteurization unnecessary for today’s world. As Sally Fallon states in Nourishing Traditions, pasteurization destroys the enzymes needed to digest dairy and diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, and kills beneficial bacteria. Pasteurized milk can promote pathogens because the beneficial bacteria naturally found in milk provide protection against invading pathogens. When milk is pasteurized, the protective bacteria is destroyed.

What is happening locally?

In Washington, due in a large part to the efforts of local activist, Emmy McAllister, raw milk sales are legal on the farm, through home delivery and retail stores, if local health ordinances permit. So take advantage of being one of only eleven states that allow raw milk to be sold retail, taste the magic and feel the difference for yourself.

Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the largest raw dairy in the United States, boasts about his company’s safety record. McAfee has inoculated pathogenic contaminants such as E. coli 0157:H7, Listeria and Salmonella into his raw milk and pasteurized milk. In the raw milk, none of the pathogens survive because the natural bacteria protect the milk. In the pasteurized milk, in which the bacteria and enzymes have been destroyed, the pathogens take over. Even Louis Pasteur, the man credited with inventing pasteurization, in his later years stated that pasteurization was not the panacea once touted. In addition, raw milk never goes rancid, it just changes from milk to curds and whey and so on. Pasteurized milk goes dangerously rancid without refrigeration.

Is raw milk dangerous? It can be. Food can be the perfect vehicle for pathogens and disease. However, the reason pathogens in food are so prevalent may have more to do with factory farming and industrial food. Raw milk is not inherently dangerous. As Sandor Ellix Katz puts it in his book The Revolution will not be Microwaved, food is most often contaminated in the course of its processing, handling and storage, or as a result of diseased animals. Healthy plants and animals produce safe, healthy food worthy of a revolution.

Why has raw milk become such a huge health movement? The reasons range from culinary to health to political. On the health side, I have seen numerous incidences of people with dairy sensitivities finding themselves able to consume raw dairy without problems. Raw dairy contains the enzymes necessary for digestion; amazing how brilliant nature is. On the culinary side, raw milk tastes like real milk: delicious, creamy and satisfying on a core level. I have gone to great lengths over the years to procure raw dairy because once exposed the real stuff, I can’t go back. Politically, I along with many other activists, use my dollar to vote for the world I want to see. My vision is a land that promotes sustainable, small-scale farms with healthy, happy animals grazing freely on the grass they were meant to eat. Where I can go to a farmer I know by name to pick up my milk, along with other culinary delights. Where I can compare the milk from Iris to the milk that Lupita provides to see which suits my palate. Pasteurization laws conveniently put milk in the hands of large, industrialized, faceless, dairy operations that provide less than excellent living accommodations for their four-legged inhabitants.