By John Moody
January 23, 2012
Full Article
Just after New Year’s Day, the Obama administration gave its official response of “No!” to the 6,078 signors of a petition on WhiteHouse.gov who requested federal-level legalization of all raw milk sales.
Written by Doug McKalip, Senior Policy Adviser for Rural Affairs in the White House Domestic Policy Council, the response is full of typical government double speak and sleight of hand with facts and figures.
For instance, the response starts off by saying, “We appreciate consumer concerns on food issues and understand the importance of letting consumers make their own food choices.”
But is there any evidence to support either of these statements? Zero. The Obama administration has continued the Bush administration policy of fast tracking GMOs and other dangerous foods while mercilessly targeting small producers of healthful things like Elderberry Juice.
They continue to oppose consumer choice by blocking GMO labeling, something Obama campaigned for in 2007.
The Obama FDA–with folks like former Monsanto executive Michael Taylor (who also served in both the FDA and USDA under Bush and who has publicly stated he supports the continued multimillion dollar crackdown on Amish farmers and raw milk buying clubs) at the helm of the “food safety division”–had the audacity to state that people have no inherent right to choose the food they eat or what they feed their children [read FDA's response to lawsuit].
Does this sound like understanding the importance of letting consumers make their own food choices? Of course, you are free to consume tainted cantaloupe, turkey, and ground beef from large, industrial farms in the FDA’s twisted universe. But don’t touch that milk!
The claim that “This administration believes that food safety policy should be based on science… In this case, we support pasteurization to protect the safety of the milk supply because the health risks associated with raw milk are well documented” is also spurious at best.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was recently forced to retract its long standing claim that two people have died from raw milk consumption for the ten-year period between 1998 and 2008 (they, in fact, died from consuming “bath-tub” cheese, queso fresco cheese commonly made at home and sometimes in bath tubs). Read “The Power of Numbers in the War Over Raw Dairy–How the CDC Came to Admit a Death Wasn’t Categorized Correctly“.
Many of the “raw-milk” outbreaks used by the CDC and FDA involve PMO milk (i.e., milk produced in accordance with the federal Pasteurized Milk Ordinance adopted by most states), that either was improperly pasteurized or taken, as in a recent event in Wisconsin, without permission or the knowledge of the farmer or consumer and given raw.
Such milk isn’t real raw milk, milk produced by farms intending to provide it to the public as safe raw milk, often from small family farms that are grass- or pasture-based and committed to good husbandry and sanitation practices.
PMO milk that merely missed the bulk tank truck or improperly handled raw milk turned into cheese in someone’s bath tub should not be counted among the raw milk outbreak statistics if the government was truly interested in either safety or science.
Dr. Ted Beals and numerous other scientists and individuals have shown that raw milk is far less dangerous than many other foods people consume on a weekly or daily basis, even when adjusted for estimated rates of consumption that are half of what is most likely happening each and every day across the US.
Even more main stream groups and scientists are starting to no longer deny the relative safety of raw milk. In a recent Food Seminars International Webinar, “Raw Milk: Political Football or Food Safety Issue“, distinguished professor and researcher on food safety David Warriner conceded that raw milk is certainly no more dangerous than many other foods people are allowed to consume or activities they are allowed to engage in.