In Canada, it is illegal to sell unpastuerized milk. In Ontario, this has been the law since 1938, when there was an increase in children getting sick from drinking "raw" milk. Pastuerization, the process whereby milk is heated for a short period of time at a high temperature, is said to kill much of the bacteria that might cause things like E coli, and other bacteria that could potentially be very harmful, and even life-threatening. While this sounds like a smart move, not everyone believes that pastuerization is always a good thing.
Michael Schmidt has been in the news a fair bit the past few years. Schmidt, if you haven't been keeping up on his story, runs Glencolton Farms in Durham, ON, where he has been distributing raw milk and milk products for a number of years. In 1994 he faced a conviction and fine, and in 2006 he was stoppped by officials on his way to Toronto to deliver milk to some of his customers. Schmidt is now facing charges, which he is adamantly fighting, and, admirably, is representing himself in court. (For much more information on the history and details of this very long and complicated issue, see the links below.)
Schmidt broke the law, he did. But what if this law is unjust? And if not unjust, perhaps irrelevant? The reason that the law against raw milk exists is so that people don't get sick from potentially harmful bacteria that could be in the milk. But Schmidt has been providing customers with raw milk for years, and no one has fallen ill because of it. His practices, he has stated, are such that risks are significantly minimized - his animals are living the way that animals are supposed to be living, so why treat the product (the milk) for a "disease" it doesn't actually have? Conventional dairy cows generally live a life in which the risks for diseased milk are a real concern, so yes, pastuerized milk is probably a good idea in those cases.
The supporters of raw milk claim a number of health, nutritional, and taste benefits, while those against raw milk claim otherwise. I won't get into these here because the arguments are easy to find with a quick Google search, but the point is that there seems to be, with this law, a limit to the choices that informed consumers can make. I've said it already, but people do not like being told what they can and cannot eat, and here we have a law (not just your nagging friend hovering over your shoulder while you're ordering off a menu) that is doing just that. True, the "state" has a great deal of control over the food we eat, what is available to us, what food is treated with what pesticide, and how much food costs. But we are still able to make decisions about what to buy, who to buy it from, whether to buy organic food or take the risk that our tomatoes are genetically modified, or whether to grow our own food. But here, with milk, there seems to be no choice.
Schmidt sold shares in cows so that his customers did not have to buy milk directly; they were simply drinking the milk (the unpasteurized milk, I do remind you), of a cow that they already owned. Selling raw milk as it is to just any Tom, Dick, or Harry might not fly, nor does it have to, in my opinion. But to allow people the option of having someone else raise their cow for them, as Schmidt does, would be a wise choice. The people who are going to own that cow, have likely done their research, and are well informed on the issues. They are not being duped. And they are not getting sick.
Glencolton Farms:
http://www.glencoltonfarms.com/index.php
Other information:
http://www.realmilk.com/real-milk-canada.html
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992
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