Tag: milk

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets regulation

Natural vs. Regulated

“I don’t need metabolically unhealthy politicians and obese bureaucrats watching out for my health,” The Telegraph quotes an anonymous source. 

The subject? “How milk became the new culture war dividing America,” published on June 22. It’s a “natural” vs. “technological” debate.

“For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous,” Tony Diver’s article begins, but how it ends is telling: “‘With respect to the question of food being natural — arsenic is natural,’ Prof Schaffner said.” And so, too, he says, is cyanide. 

“Sharks are natural. Those things can all kill you. So just because something is natural does not mean that it’s safe.’”

That sounds like something I’d say. 

But is it something to say about raw milk?

Consider the historical context. Raw milk and its products have been produced for human consumption for millennia. Of course there are dangers, and pasteurization has done wonders to curb bacteriological infections and death. Still, a lot of people wonder what we’ve lost in the pasteurization process. Nutrition and immune system health, for example. So for decades — perhaps as long as there have been regulations to make pasteurization mandatory — there’s been a “pro-​natural” backlash.

On the Nature side, we note that our populations aren’t as healthy as you’d expect from the benevolent tyranny of politicians, regulators, and, uh, “obese bureaucrats.”

So, last week, “the latest bill to repeal an outright ban on raw milk hit the governor’s desk in Louisiana, after similar efforts in West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia and North Dakota.”

If signed into law, Louisianans will be able to purchase raw milk in stores — “albeit with a warning, in capital letters, that it is ‘not for human consumption.’

“Everyone, including the legislators, knows that instruction will be ignored.”

There’s something sickness-​inducing about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
First Amendment rights folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Legal Not to Lie About Your Milk

milk, Institute for Justice, regulations, Ocheesee Creamery, Department of Agriculture, too much government

Mary Lou Wesselhoeft doesn’t have to lie about the milk she’s selling. The Florida Department of Agriculture has lost in court. Mary Lou has won.

Ocheesee Creamery sells pasteurized milk without any additives. One of her products is skim milk. Ocheesee sells skim milk without vitamin additives, which is perfectly legal to do. But the Florida government claims that only skim milk with the additives counts as real “skim milk,” the kind you can call skim milk in speech to customers. (Kafka, did you write this horror story? Fess up!)

Give credit to the judge who asked: “Can the state, consistent with the First Amendment, take two words out of the English language and compel its citizens to use those words only as the government says?” The reply of the government’s lawyer? “Yes.”

Creepy.

Mary Lou’s victory is also a victory for all Americans who want to exercise their right to tell the truth about what they’re selling. And it’s a victory for the Institute for Justice, which took up the case on her behalf. At its website, IJ points out how easy it would be to annihilate freedom of speech by letting the government redefine words at will. We’re not free if our freedoms can be arbitrarily defined away by the people in power.

The Institute specializes in defending our rights against senseless government intrusions. Until such laws and regulations are repealed, it seems that the Institute will always have much to do — unfortunately. But, fortunately, it keeps on doing it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
links too much government

Townhall: Want Milk?

This weekend’s contribution to Townhall​.com by Yours Truly concerns another one of those automated congressional time bombs. You know, like the “fiscal cliff” but less cliffy and more bomby. Head on over, and then back here, for a few links:

  • Thomas Jefferson’s pithy contribution to the socialist calculation debate, here.
  • The Washington Post’s “dairy cliff” article, here.
  • What Jia Lynn Yang said, here.

 

Categories
free trade & free markets nannyism

Food Freedom

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.