Got (Raw) Milk?

I’m sure that many of you have seen or even posted about the story of Michael Schmidt going on a hunger strike to protest Canada’s position on Raw Milk Sales, so I won’t go into it here.  Feel free to click on the link though if you’d like more information (and if you’d like your blood pressure to rise about twenty points). 

Donna O’Shaughnessy over at Midlife Farmwife is also doing a little Civil Disobedience of her own.  In Illinois, there are convoluted (and pretty much insane) laws regulating the sale of raw milk.  Basically, you can sell raw milk from your farm, but you cannot advertise that it is for sale.  How convenient for the big commercial dairies, hugh??

Well, Donna is giving the State of Illinois a big cyber middle finger and actually, get this, advertising that she has raw milk for sale!  Oh, the horror of it all!  Can you imagine the implications of such a huge undertaking?

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to poke fun and undermine Donna’s actions, even though it actually should be nothing big at all, but the State of Illinois makes the simple act of advertising a lawful product a crime.  It’s obvious that the only reason a small farmer cannot advertise their healthy alternative to the processed stuff sold in grocery stores is not for health reasons, but to keep the big commercial dairies happy.   Now aren’t you glad that the State has severely limited your choices in food just to play kissy-kissy with the Dairy Lobby?  I feel so much safer.  (BIG eye roll here)

Anyways.  Even though it is legal for me to sell my raw goat milk here in Arkansas, albeit only up to 100 gallons a month (once again showing that the law is not in place for a health reason, but for the competition it places on the corporate dairies) I still firmly believe that everyone has a right to consume raw milk, or anything else they want to as a matter of fact.  And if we don’t stand up for those being oppressed, then we are letting the noose tighten around ALL of our necks.  Remember that old saying about the frog in the pot???

Although I wish I could be as big of a criminal mastermind that Donna is and sell One hundred and ONE gallons of milk from our farm – well - we just don’t get that much milk.  But I can do a few things.  Like call the morons at the state and tell them to stuff it, I mean, tell them in a polite way that they are NOT representing the will of the people.  Or show my support by blogging about it today.  Or tell a few of my friends about the plight of regular, ordinary folk who are being harassed at the point of a gun (with your tax money BTW) into shutting down their family farms.

So starting at 12:00 am this Tuesday, I will be participating in a 24-hour Raw Milk Fast in protest as well as on November 1^st to show my support for the Moms that will be protesting at the FDA headquarters in Maryland (boy, do I wish we lived closer…..Rhiannon & I would be there with Nettie, downing fresh, healthy raw milk in front of all to see!)

Not that I really expect that it will do much except make some of my friends / family wonder what the heak I’m doing, but at least it will make them think….and that’s what we need today.  People thinking.  People wondering if the government has gone too far.  And hopefully doing something, anything, about it.