In most areas of this country, selling raw milk is against the law, which puts folks like Alvin Schlangen into the black market. Schlangen, an organic egg producer when he isn’t being arrested for crimes against homogenization, recently stood trial in Hennepin County District Court, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on three misdemeanor counts: “distributing unpasteurized milk, operating without a food handler’s license and handling adulterated food.”
Why the prosecution? Why the milk police?
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, consumption of raw milk products caused a couple hundred hospitalizations and two deaths in the eleven years following 1998.
That shows a risk, but it’s a risk a lot of people are willing to take. Those who drink raw milk claim “pasteurization destroys important nutrients, enzymes and beneficial bacterial.” By drinking raw milk they are trying to improve the health and well-being of their families.
For millennia, people have thirstily consumed cow’s milk … like, right from the bovine udder. Pasteurization, wherein certain bacteria is killed, didn’t come along till the 19th century. Perhaps the fact that we’re alive today is evidence that raw milk can’t be all that bad for you.
Terry Flower traveled all the way from New Hampshire to see Schlangen’s trial. “I am very passionate about the fact that we need to be able to choose our own food,” Ms. Flower said. “In New Hampshire we can do that.”
Fortunately for Schlangen, a jury of three men and three women found him not guilty on all three counts. He now hopes to prevail against similar charges in another Minnesota county, where he’ll go to trial later this month.
Agree or disagree, but why not let free citizens educate themselves and make their own decisions?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Food Freedom”
Boy is this is a conversation that needs to be had in our country. People are very passionate about their own diets. And I am truly happy for people who like to shop at Rich Hippy stores and pay twice as much for half as much. But really, I don’t want to buy organic foods, and I like high yield grains (Borlaug’s GE crops). So do millions of people who live on a couple of dollars a day. And this man — and his jury of peers — is to be admired for defending… drinking milk.
Jury nullification is one of the last protections that we have inb this country against an out opf control government. The right of the jury to determine NOT just guilt or innocence, but whether the law ought to be an enforced law by using THAT factor to come to a verdict of “Not Guilty”. So important that it is written in to many state constitutions. And it p*sses off the judges for the juries to find out about it.
Tell 2 people.
Thanks to the jury nullifications rights and those jurors voting their CONSCIENCE!
Are you people all insane?
Raw milk kills hundreds of thousands of people every year!Never mind. I was thinking of governments.
The key is whether or not those who demand the right to make their own choices will accept the consequences of those choices.
How many of those who are injured by raw milk will sue the producers for failing to ‘warn’ them of the dangers of what they were consuming? As long as ‘buyer beware’ remains in force, then by all means let people make their choices.
Pat — I think the people going to the trouble to procure raw milk have done enough research on it to understand there is some risk, and to make their decision accordingly. I’ve not heard of any lawsuits against raw milk sellers.
My niece and her family belong to a “co-op” where they “own” a percentage of a cow, thus getting around some of the regs. (Alas, folks in other states have been busted for doing this very thing.) My sister and her husband buy whole milk directly from a local farmer. Yes, these people know what they are doing.
For my part, I grew up on whole milk. It took me a long time to get used to 2 percent when we got rid of the cow, when I was a teenager.
Now I drink no milk. I love eating dead cow, though. Preferably bought from a local farmer. Grass-fed and all. Gray market, no doubt.