Come the Revolution

Archive for April, 2010

A co-worker let me know that he was waiting out front for me. I met him and he gave specific instructions, “grab a paper bag, come out to the car, put the jar in the paper bag before you go back inside.”

Only a week before I had become aware of this scraggly looking man who brought contraband here at the same day and time every week. The street goes from being empty to peopled to empty again following the station wagon that brings this contraband. This dangerous, illegal substance that is sold out of the back of an old car?

It’s raw milk.

That’s it. That’s why all the discretion and concerns of who sees me make the exchange and that he parks on the opposite side of the street from the small grocery. The fact that everyone slips him cash as he hands over a nondescript paper bag.

What’s funny is that in Vermont, raw milk is legal to buy directly from the farmer. It’s never allowed to be just purchased at a farmer’s market (or out of a car trunk), though- pre-purchased deliveries and on-farm direct sales are legal if the farmer registers with the state and follows the regulations set by the state. The thing that he does that’s illegal is direct sales out of his trunk, likely because he can’t afford to build a new barn to the specifications required for certification. They likely require, among other things, that the hand-washing sink is not in the same room as the milk processing, so that you can clean your hands before and after sanitizing the processing room… outside of the room.

If we were in New Hampshire, raw milk sales would be legal on the farm, through home delivery, from a milk pasteurization plant (I really don’t understand this one), or at a boarding house if the milk is produced on premises and there is a sign announcing that the milk served is raw. That sounds like outdated legislation to me.

In New York it’s legal to sell raw milk if the sales are done on-farm and the farm is registered as a raw milk dairy with the state. In Massachusetts individual towns get to decide whether or not raw milk sales are legal. In Washington DC and some 17 or so states, raw milk sales are illegal under all circumstances. Five more states allow raw milk to be sold as pet food, but not for human consumption. Some other states require “cow shares,” which mean that the people are not purchasing milk, but accepting the portion of the milk that is fair based on their partial ownership of the cow.

More organizations are being vocal about how raw milk sales can be an integral part of small farms- allowing the farms to become more viable and more sustainable. It’s also considered a health food- many lactose intolerant adults (myself included) can tolerate raw milk, likely because it contains the killed-by-pasteurization microbes that help the body break down lactose.

The main argument against raw milk sales is that raw milk is risky due to it’s microbial activity. With healthy cows and clean equipment, the risk of infection due to raw milk consumption is very low. For anyone unhappy with the risk- the corner store will continue to offer industrial farms’ homogenized, pasteurized milk, even if it becomes legal in New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, and Iowa (among other states) to put raw milk for sale alongside.

Recent news on raw milk: USA Today