Flutterby™! : raw milk entrapment 2006-07-07 14:45:29.419584+00

raw milk entrapment

2006-07-07 14:45:29.419584+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Amish farmer fights milk law after sting:

"You can't just give milk away to someone other than yourself. It's a violation of the law," said LeeAnne Mizer, spokeswoman for the department.

As someone who grew up on raw milk, if your dairy is run well then the bacterial infection is mostly a matter of what happens once the milk is out of your dairy. While the rules against selling raw milk may have been reasonable a century ago when open containers were being shipped unrefrigerated to cities, nowadays it's just bullshit protectionism.

And having had raw milk again recently, I can tell you right out that the reason I don't drink milk as an adult is that the pasteurized crap has no flavor.

But really, what's worse here is that we have an inspector coming and asking specifically for raw milk, it apparently being given to him (not sold), and then busting the poor farmer. If we can't get rid of the bullshit protectionism, then can we at least have an "educated consumer" law, where we as consumers can sign something simple that says that we've educated ourselves about the risks and agree to take them? I know I'd much rather be buying straight from a farmer than going through levels of processor and distributor that I can't monitor myself, but that a paternalistic government believes are necessary to protect me from myself.

Ahh.. when we stayed with my Grandparents as a kid on theier Wisconson Dairy Farm, I remember having to shake the milk in the fridge to mix the cream back into the rest of the milk... and sometimes, not, just pouring a little cream onto my breakfast cereal. Yummy Yummy.

I can see such things being enforced when there is a problem, but inspectors going to lengths to enforce such rules are just proof they have little real work to be done and their jobs should be changed or eliminated.

One of our neighbors makes various things for sale, among them being some of the most ass-kickingest chocolate truffles I've ever had. And I make my own ass-kicking chocolate truffles, so I'm biased in the matter.

At any rate, she's on vacation, we're feeding the cat, and she said "clean out the dairy products". So we've got a half-gallon of cream in the fridge. And I'm doin' okay weight and all wise.

So lemme tell ya, omelettes with cream where the whites and the cream have been whipped a bit first? Oh yeah. And when we were down in Fresno last we picked up a box of "seconds" nectarines from the packing house, which really just means that they're ripe ('cause they wouldn't ship well), and those puppies cut up with a little cream on 'em? Oh yeah.

Yes, the real issue is that we need to stop enforcing economies of scale and layers of distributorships into our economy. I'm not sure whether removing bureaucracy is the first step or the result, but clearly there are inspectors with too much time on their hands.

#Comment Re: made: 2006-07-07 16:21:20.237995+00 by: ziffle [edit history]

"If we can't get rid of the bullshit protectionism" and we were going to vote for whom?

"And at a breakfast meeting in the Uptown Café in Jefferson, Dean promoted a farmer subsidy program for corn and beef, one that would be modeled after the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact."

If there's anything the last presidential election drove home for me it's that politicians have no ethics. Hell, they don't even have any morals. They'll take any stance that they think will get them elected.

Howard Dean (I'm not sure if that's the Dean you're quoting above, but I suspect it is) is, to my mind, a particularly egregious example of this.

What we can do is educate the populace so that they'll start caring about these issues, and expressing ourselves to the politicians so that they think that adopting these stances will improve their chances of being elected.

Humans are suckers for charisma, and whatever comprises charisma isn't something that's associated with any sort of principle. Rather than trying to keep those two things combined, we should just divorce them and not try for principled candidates because we don't have any chance of getting them, while we may have a shot at smarter voters.