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A letter from Green Uprising at Blackberry Bend
Cease and desist says California Department of Food and Agriculture. Sara Grusky says, gladly, when things like CAFOs and fracking and real public health threats are held accountable.
On Thursday June 30th during the weekly farmer's market in Willits, California, my husband Michael Foley was served a notice of violation from Jim Dentoni of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). The notice said: “You are hereby ordered to cease and desist the sale of, and giving away, of any and all raw or pasteurized dairy products from any unlicensed dairy and/or processing milk plant.” My husband and I run a small family farm called Green Uprising at Blackberry Bend where we reside with our children and grandchildren. In addition to providing the community with fresh fruit and vegetables grown without artificial pesticides and fertilizers, we board, feed, and milk ten adult goats for shareholders who have purchased an ownership interest in the herd. According to CDFA, this is a threat to the public health. Our children, our grandchildren, friends, family, neighbors and shareholders all drink raw milk directly from the teats of goats boarded at our farm (my goodness!) and we are all alive and well, happy and healthy. In fact, if you go back three or four generations most everyone who consumed milk drank it raw from a family farm in their community. But, according to CDFA, our shareholders don't have the right to drink raw milk from a goat herd they have purchased an ownership interest in. According to CDFA, they know better than you what's good for you. And, they think that pasteurized milk from a feedlot dairy where large amounts of antibiotics are used (due to the unhealthy conditions) and Bovine Growth Hormone (a genetically engineered artificial growth hormone) may be given to stimulate milk production, is healthier than the milk I hand milk into glass jars from my ten precious goats. You have got to be kidding... We have agreed to temporarily cease and desist providing milk to those who have an ownership interest in the herd. But, we are committed to fighting the intrusions of a “nanny state” that imposes its misinformed notions of food safety. We will be gathering our shareholders for a meeting and, with legal counsel from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, we will be discussing all possibilities available to ensure that everyone has the right to drink the milk of their choice. By the way, when I went out to the barn and told Floppy, Rosemary, Persimmon and the rest of the flock to cease and desist producing milk they told me I was crazy, they were hungry and I better get to work milking them, now. So, what am I supposed to do with the gallons and gallons of milk filling the fridge, Jim Dentoni? My mother, who was a child during the Depression, taught me never to waste good food. Why is it so easy to shut down a small family farm? Why does the California Department of Food and Agriculture believe that Hostess Twinkies, Lucky Charms or Coca Cola are safe foods, but that raw milk produced at our farm is dangerous? Here's a deal I would be more than willing to make. I don't believe that raw milk is a public health threat, but we would gladly cease and desist the production of raw milk if the following real public health threats and real threats to the future of our planet would also cease and desist. For example, how about shutting down nuclear power plants, offshore oil drilling, fracking operations, or asking coal companies to cease and desist mountaintop removal and shutting down coal-fired electricity plants? Or how about asking Cal Trans to cease and desist on the bypass plan and give the land back to its original owners? Sincerely, Sara Grusky |
CA is a bigger - and wrongfully so - dairy state than WI!
it makes NO sense whatsoever that the Golden State of California, who does not have enough water to stay green (literally; the meadows) without pumping the Ogalalla, is now the biggest dairy state. Cows, lovely creatures though they are, don't graze that kind of land healthfully and they would have to be supplemented. Then you're shipping the water content of the milk out of state! Meanwhile, goats CAN and DO graze that kind of land healthfully and for a longer season - meaning they require fewer "inputs." If more Californians drank goat milk, by whatever market source they prefer, they'd be doing the state of California a favour.
Green Uprising
Thank-you! Sara Grusky,
I have Crohn's disease and WISH I could go to a farmer's market for raw goat's milk. It's necessary for me to get my own goats (and first the five year plan to save money for the land!) How can we gather together and get a system where people can get the kind of milk they want? I'll sign a waiver. I'll buy milk whilst standing under a big sign (the way restaurateurs can recommend on the menus that meat cooked less than medium is maybe not safe but you are still allowed to order it rare). Actually, maybe you could call yourself a restaurant. The rules are mysteriously different.
Good Luck. Sonia.
CSDA RESTRICTIONS
If they can't sell the milk, what about
1) having the shareowners come to the farm & milk the goats & take home their share??? No middlement & all the potential risk is on the goat owners' backs; or
2) If they can't sell the milk, then why not make cheese, yogurt or other milk products??
GREED
Follow the money! Someone is loosing money and see's this as a loss of market share which is catching on all over the country. Attack the small operation and kill the revolution against the corporate greed is their defense. I live in Idaho and am planning a small greenhouse operation to sell to local consumers right on the farm, but am required to apply for a commercial permit and jump through major hurdles to "get approved" if someone doesn't contest the application, all because I own less than 5 acres. Good luck and don't give up the fight!!!
Pasteurized milk from a feedlot dairy
Of equal importance, mention has to be made that pasteurized milk is a poison to the human body! The heat of pasteurization denatures the protein so that the body doesn't reccognise it and thinks it is a foreign agent. The current thinking is that a large percentage of lactose intolerance is simply this denaturing of milk's protein from the pasteurizing process. I believe The Price Pottinger Foundation address this aspect.
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