Posted on 10/12/2013 7:18:54 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Proposed South Dakota raw milk regulations will make it difficult for smaller operations to continue selling the substance in the state. Department of Agriculture officials finished a third public hearing on the issue on Wednesday, saying the rules are necessary to ensure safety. A legislative committee last August had rejected the rules until it had more information on their financial impact for farmers.
The State of South Dakota currently allows the sale of raw milk, though not from retail stores. Farms are allowed to sell the popular substance directly to consumers. Raw milk must also be clearly labeled as raw, but no other regulations currently exist. The new regulations would regulate the production, testing and labeling of raw milk in the state.
One of the new regulations would require the labels to have written, "This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria. Pregnant women, infants, children, the elderly and persons with lower resistance to disease have the highest risk of harm from this product." This would require farms, both large and small, to redesign their labels and in some cases print more expensive ones.
The other regulations are more severe. They would require a bottling date, as well as requiring regular testing and setting standards for bacteria and other contaminants. Some have argued that the regulations – such as those designating maximum numbers of beneficial bacteria – are unreasonably low, and will be next to impossible to achieve.
Many who drink raw milk drink it specifically for these beneficial bacteria. Individuals have cited raw milk as beneficial for health problems, from arthritis to irritable bowel syndrome. The idea that the state would regulate the production of raw milk to minimize the very aspects of the product that people find beneficial and appealing simply reiterates the idea that the state feels it knows best.
Another effect of the new regulations would be the favor of larger operations over small farms. Since 2010, raw milk producers have been required to have a license or permit, and only five dairies in the state are currently licensed to sell raw milk. The new regulations would push more dairies out of business by imposing testing and labeling requirements which put extra financial burden on the operations.
Citizens believe this law would violate personal freedoms and give unfair advantages to larger farms over smaller competitors. Bigger corporations frequently use lawmakers to create regulations to push smaller operations out of businesses in order to strengthen their market share by reducing competition. Clearly this is a concern in S.D.
Those who oppose this law want the freedom to enter into private, contractual agreements without government interference.
Raw milk connoisseurs want to consume a living product that is fresher, full of nutrients and tastier, not a sterile, pasteurized product. Raw milk proponents say pasteurization – the process of heating milk to kill disease-causing bacteria – kills the good stuff, and they claim the bacteria is beneficial to human health.
There continues to be a high demand for raw milk despite the debate on its health benefits. North Carolina has banned raw milk sales, but residents are buying the products through the black market. According to reports, there is such a high demand that distributors have created "drop sites" in N.C. and will only sell to people they know. For many states "raw milk" has become the "new pot" and purchasing this popular substance will continue to be funneled through the black market despite government regulations.
Nanny State PING!
Raw milk is awesome. Chock full of enzymes and beneficial bacteria destroyed when milk is boiled (same with honey and many other foods). Let people CHOOSE.
Honestly, this whole labeling thing has gone too far. People KNOW who they’re buying from here.
I haven’t had raw milk since I was a kid. At my sister’s farm we milked, separated, bottled and stored it for our own use. As well as delivering some to the creamery in town. The rest went into a giant storage and and the dairy truck came and picked it up.
The raw milk was like skim milk and the cream was to die for. We also churned butter. We collected eggs and ate them fresh every day. I always looked forward to my summer visits of a week or 2 and my occasional extended stays in the winter.
The mythology surrounding raw milk is incredible. Its supposed benefits have no scientifically verifiable basis; they seem to have been invented whole-cloth by those who want to sell their milk without having to invest in pasteurizers or adhere to basic sanitation standards.
Less than 1% of milk consumers consume it raw. A recent study found that someone drinking raw milk is 150 times more likely to get a food-born illness than someone drinking pasteurized milk. Furthermore, the illnesses caused by raw milk tend to be more serious than those caused by contaminated pasteurized milk.
I will be blunt. Those who want to sell their raw milk but resist putting warning labels on it or testing it for microbial content have a lot in common with abortion mills that dig in their hills to resist adhering to standards that even hair salons must meet, while claiming they care about women’s health.
Fully warned, if people want to drink raw milk that's their affair, and they can win their Darwin awards as far as I'm concerned.
“Less than 1% of milk consumers consume it raw.”
Banning something, aggressively enforcing the ban, normalizing the ban - and then claiming “nobody wants it” does not make for valid statistics.
Equating production of unpasteurized milk to practices at an abortion mill? Wow. Just. WOW. I question why I should even respond. You don’t need any validation from the likes of me. Or do you?
Stole my thunder. All of us kids were raised on raw milk, fresh eggs and pen raised chickens and hogs, fresh bread and home made butter. Throw in elk, muledeer, pheasant, a couple of species of grouse. We picked wild mushrooms, blue berries, thimble berries and straw berries.The vegetables came from the garden and what we didn’t have we traded for. Our water came from a stream running down a mountain and mom cooked on a woodburning stove. Our refrigerator was the Blue Mountains of Oregon! There was 5 of us kids and all lived nice health lives, I’m the youngest at 63.
“Equating production of unpasteurized milk to practices at an abortion mill? Wow. Just. WOW. I question why I should even respond. You don’t need any validation from the likes of me. Or do you?”
Yea I seen it and yea your right, it’s not worth responding to. I sit back and laugh when I see comments such as that. I’ve watched over time how we as people have truley starved ourselves of the wondeful narural riches this earth and GOD provides.
Big Ag and Free Trade Communists are the biggest opponents to any type of small farming and ranching. Sad to see SD bought off by Big Ag and Free Trade Communists
The statistics are what they are; I got those from the CDC. This article about consumption of raw milk explains the issue a little more clearly. Ironically, the majority of comments after the article are people who feel that anecdotal experience=scientific evidence.
I have no issue with people who are fully informed and understand both that there are risks and that there are no magical properties of raw milk, and choose to drink it anyway. My big issue is with the people who base their decision to drink raw milk on the mysticism surrounding it, none of which is supported by scientific evidence. Real people get sick and even die because they believe that raw milk is magical.
Yea I seen it and yea your right, it’s not worth responding to. I sit back and laugh when I see comments such as that. I’ve watched over time how we as people have truley starved ourselves of the wondeful narural riches this earth and GOD provides.
In both cases, the product is aggressively sold on the basis of lies, and the lies are constructed so as to appeal to a certain type of person. Those selling the product have convinced their targeted customers that their product is wonderful and has all kinds of magical benefits; the reality is that they are sociopaths--they are incapable of caring about anyone but themselves--and they are after profit. True, not as many people die from raw milk as die from abortion, but there, the differences end.
If people are going to start about food safety, they ought to start with the pesticides they put on our food. They ought to take a hard look at farming practices in places like South America and China. They ought to take a look at a box of any processed food in the grocery story and note how soy is in EVERYTHING, and acknowledge that soy is a phytoestrogen and has no business being feed to humans.
FACT: Raw milk contains Lactic Acid producing bacteria, and it doesn't "go bad", it develops culture. The acidification of the milk prevents "bad bacteria" from establishing a culture of it's own. The cream, turns into, literally, sour cream. The skim milk, turns into something much like buttermilk. The product is basically naturally-made kefir, which people are now recognizing many health benefits from. I have had work assignments send me away for 2-1/2 months and coming home, the unopened glass bottles of acidified milk, refrigerated at 41 degrees F were perfect.
It is "an acquired taste" certainly (I could describe the taste perfectly, but not in polite company... let's just say that lactobacteria cultures are natural), but the product is still good, when "store milk" would have been gag and puke city one week after it was bought.
Fully warned, if people want to drink raw milk that's their affair, and they can win their Darwin awards as far as I'm concerned.
My issue is not that people might choose to drink raw milk; it is that they do so on the basis of mysticism. If they are fully informed and choose to drink raw milk knowing the risks, I have no issue with that. I choose to eat rare steak, but I am under no illusions that the practice is perfectly safe.
great book that I read almost fifty years ago.
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