Because Gov't Doesn't Have Enough to Do, It Must Raid Raw Milk Farms!
As readers of this site know, radical religious separatist Dan Allgyer—he's Amish, people!—is the latest casualty in the feds' war on raw milk.
Reason contributing editor and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carolyn Lochhead reports on the legal underpinning of the armed confiscation of Allgyer's Pennsylvania contraband dairy operation (including how federal law enforcement personnel took time out of their busy schedules to place orders and lure Allgyer's product across state lines to Maryland. Get ready for this: "Starting July 3, the [Food and Drug Administration] can confiscate any food at any farm that it deems unsafe or mislabeled."
Here's the conclusion of Lochhead's piece, which kind of puts the dread threat of raw milk in perspective:
Peggy Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the International Dairy Foods Association, cited a letter to Congress from her organization and the National Milk Producers Association saying that "while consumer choice is an important value, it should not pre-empt public health and well-being."
Throughout Europe, uncooked milk is the norm, dispensed in vending machines in Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Slovenia and the Netherlands. It is healthy, adherents say, because it contains fat that is not broken down by homogenization and is free of antibiotics and hormones, because cows are raised in small herds on pastures.
Nutritionist Sylvia Onusic, a raw milk devotee, said heating milk diminishes its taste.
"Raw milk is a potential hazardous food, but only in the United States, and I guess Canada, too," she said. (Raw milk is also banned in Australia and Scotland.) "It's a totally different food world here. Everything is sterilized and beaten into submission."
Per usual, we do Europe one better by beating not just the food but the farmers into submission! USA #1!
Check out the whole story here.
One needn't be a raw-milk zealot to get a cholesterol spike from such palpable wastes of time from law enforcement. Here's Reason contibutor and Keep Food Legal director Baylen Linnekin talking to Judge Napolitano about raw foods frenzy on Freedom Watch: