I was going to write a year-end top food rights stories of 2013 and rank the events that seemed most important. The criminal trial of Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger, the second trial of Minnesota farmer Alvin Schlangen, the legislative clashes over food sovereignty in Maine, the legal journey of Michigan hog farmer Mark Baker, the Foxborough initiative against Lawton Family Farm–all important events.
Then it occurred to me that something seems to have changed about these events. This isnt the first year weve seen legal and regulatory assaults on small farms producing nutrient-dense food, but it is the first year that we have seen significant and growing public support for those being targeted, along with support for other related food issues. There is clearly an expanding awareness of the reality that, yes, the corporate-inspired regulators are trying to undermine access to nutrient-dense food.
Perhaps the most clearcut evidence of this growing awareness and involvement came in two areas I didnt give a lot of attention to on this blog.
First, an unexpected announcement a couple weeks ago from that symbol of food tyranny, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The top food safety official, Michael Taylor, announced that the FDA has decided to delay for at least six months implementation of tough new rules affecting manure, compost, and water quality for produce growers, under the Food Safety Modernization Act. In a statement that started, You spoke. We heard you, Taylor said there had been 150 hearings around the country during 2013.
In our travels, we saw first-hand how everyone is committed to food safety. We especially spent a lot of time talking to farmers, both those who are smaller and work the land their family has owned for generations, and those who oversee large, diverse operations. We have heard concerns that certain provisions, as proposed, would not fully achieve our goal of implementing the law in a way that improves public health protections while minimizing undue burden on farmers and other food producers.
There had to be quite an outpouring of opposition for the FDA to put a halt on its new rules. Likely a fear within the agency that opposition was so great theyd have to face the spectre of widespread noncompliance, which the agency would have been powerless to counter. Believe me, the FDA didnt put off its new rules because the agency has suddenly become a bunch of nice guys.
The second major piece of evidence came from the grassroots effort that has taken hold to force food producers to label ingredients from genetically-modified organisms (GMO) in their products. These companies are tangling with millions of their customers, politically maneuvering and spending millions to defeat proposals springing up around the U.S. that the companies provide labeling information. Nearly seven million people in California and Washington statepresumably all of them customers of at least a few of the big food corporationsvoted last year and this year in favor of propositions that would have required the labeling. Though the propositions were defeated, they lost only narrowly–51% to 49% in both states–and only after the corporations invested more than $65 million in the two states in television and other advertising to convince voters (customers) they were wrong to worry about GMO foods. Connecticut and Maine have passed legislation requiring labeling….once their neighbors do the same. Hawaii is on the cusp of becoming the first state to require such labeling.
We can expect the struggle over food rights to likely intensify on various fronts, The reason? A number of the biggest food corporations, like Coke and Pepsi, are showing signs of losing market with their marquee products. Kelloggs recently announced a seven per cent workforce reduction by 2017 because of weakening cereal sales, apparently due in part to a consumer boycott of Kashi, for supposedly including GMO ingredients.
Moreover, cracks have begun to appear in the food industrys seemingly united opposition to GMO labeling. Whole Foods, apparently seeing competitive advantage in the controversy, announced last March that it has adopted a policy that will require labeling of all foods sold in its stores containing GMO ingredients by 2018.
But most of the big food companies wont give in easily. They will push the politicians and regulators to be tougher on small farms. You see, these companies dont want to attract consumers the old-fashioned way, by putting out superior products….but rather, by force and intimidation.
They are so different than the USDA, but yet control some parts of US agriculture.
What a weird system we have.
Why not let the USDA run Ag? And the FDA run medicine?
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Raw milk opponents often call our evidence anecdotal. If you look up the definition of anecdote, you find it’s actually a compliment. And of course there’s the studies they choose not to recognize. But most importantly: What’s wrong with anecdotal evidence if the opposition doesn’t have any evidence to the contrary? We all believe in the theory of evolution don’t we?
Here’s another example of the juggernaut looking unsure of itself: According to GMFreeze, there are no GM field trials scheduled in Britain in 2014.
http://www.gmfreeze.org/news-releases/242/
On a note closer to home, some friends of mine fought hard for much of the year and got a backyard chicken reform ordinance passed in our town. They too had to face down some bullies.
http://www.dairyquality.com/howitworks.php
They are working on a similar APP technology for SPC and I will bet the FDA and anyone…that a “APP for CRAP”( coliforms ) will follow shortly.
You got to love American ingenuity back-packing onto Steve Jobs brilliance. As needs emerge….people and technology fill those needs. Hint..to the FDA, as raw milk markets emerge, how about filling some needs!!!
An APP for pathogen detection ??? Hint???
An APP for your IPhone that detects SCC, also types of bacteria, differentiates, and counts them!! Dr. German at UC Davis predicted this invention a year ago !!
We Americans can do anything we set our minds and resources to do! Happy new year thought!
A device + software capable of detecting biological agents via fluoroluminescence was patented by Response Biomedical corp. back in 2007. When I first heard about the RAMP technology, I called them to get one for our little raw milk cowshare. At that time, they were asking ~$15,000 which didnt deter me, if it performed as advertised.
The big problem was = getting permission from the US Dept. of Defence which had taken control of any and all sales. Reason being : it was designed for use on battlefields, detecting substances assumed might be used in biological warfare ; anthrax etc. Its efficacy was proven in a wargame carried on over Burnaby British Columbia in 2000, disguised as the Gypsy Moth Spray Program. That involved dousing ¼ of a million people in an urban setting with live bacteria-laden goop, then deploying the RAMP sensor to determine how accurate / quick it was at differentiating between Bacillus cereus and/or Bacillus thuringensis kuristaki : Btk.
For us in the Campaign for REAL MILK, the black comedy is the manufacturers own material data sheet admitted that live e. coli would be in the goop sprayed by a crop duster. Of course, the Chief Medical Health officer of the Province happily approved the program, so it didnt matter how the labrats on the ground = us mere mortals = felt about being doused from on high with disease germs. The give-awy was ; them advertising that physicians ought to report adverse incidents to the University of British Columbia. Where such reports were then compiled by Cdn Armed Forces personnel.
It didnt quite make sense the armed forces cared about exterminating a little caterpillar, But oh well the lemmings never connected the dots, trundling-off to dr.s who were all in on it.
Contrasted with the harm done by the medical establishment, the notion that raw milk poses an unacceptable risk to the public health, is beyond ridiculous.
Buckminster Fuller used to say that the profits from livingry would out-perform the profitability of killingry, ie. the war industries. Were about to prove him right, on this one. Every raw milk dairy will soon have one of these little marvels in the milking parlor.
Yes, I do know that this technology isnt necessary for producing high-quality milk. But if the Cult of the White Robe needs numbers + graphs to cool-out their concerns, then thats what well give em.
You need to update your numbers. The final vote count in CA was also 51% to 49%. Both initiatives lost 51% to 49%. Here is the CA link:
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2012-general/06-sov-summary.pdf
James West, good catch. I wonder if I was working from some early reported numbers for CA. I know in WA, the early numbers, which the food industry latched on to, showed the vote being more lopsided against the proposition than the final numbers turned out to be. (This USA Today story had it at 55-45%. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/06/washington-state-voters-reject-gmo-labeing/3450705/)
Funny how that happens….and then doesn’t get corrected.
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The court must have a definition for public health hazard that doesn’t include everything and everyone. Or it must admit that health hazards are not illegal.
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There is no such thing as an illegal public health hazard.
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Gordon, This is not a toxic chemical that you have dumped into a waterway. Raw milk is a product that your customers have come to you specifically to buy.
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Has the FDA determined a regulatory limit, or action level for all so called pathogens in raw milk sold to consumers? Haven’t they already said that these so called foodborne pathogens don’t normally cause illness?
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Is it possible that:
Any requirement placed on all producers is a de facto ban placed on all consumers. It goes without saying No requirement placed on a producer can be applied to all producers if not all consumers want it applied to the product they wish to purchase. Any raw milk requirement can be exempted upon a consumer request.
I think not.
As a micro-producer, 18 hours after the milk leaves the udder from our cows it is generally already in the refrigerator (or in the gut) of one of our co-owners. We milk in the morning and often distribute that milk by 1pm the same day.
After much work, many phones calls, emails, begging, pleading, educating, and negotiating with every nearby lab and university I could find, I still can’t find a lab closer than 450 miles away to test my milk, or that of other producers in my area.
On-farm, super-precise, real-time, affordable diagnostics is what we need. It would be a game changer. I’ll volunteer to go farm-to-farm peddling it! Keep that in mind, all you brilliant, entrepreneurial science-guys and gals who are reading this!
Mark, this is exciting news, and certainly evidence that we are moving in a good direction.
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I asked
< is the mPengo app. able to test for the presence of 1 - e. coli 0157.H7 2 - campylobacter 3 - listeria monocytes 4 - salmonella ? thank you Gordon S Watson 604 526 5064 my website < www.freewebs.com/bovinity >
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reply
Hi Gordon:
Thanks for your interest in our Dairy Quality device
As far as those pathogens you mentioned, yes we have the imaging technology possible to detect microorganisms of this nature. The device does ‘see’ and display those microorganisms (and a competent technician or user can determine the strain), but the app has not yet had some of these added to the analysis routine.
The mpengo team is continually researching and updating the mpengo Dairy app with improvements and analysis techniques (an update is due within the new year/ 3 weeks), so it is best to continue to monitor our website for updates, product information and new releases
Best regards,
Dairy Quality Inc.
Gary Jonas, President
http://www.naturalnews.com/043378_chicken_meat_food_contamination_raw_milk.html
[quote]
As it stands, the FDA reconditions food that we purchase in grocery stores. There is no way to know what foods are genuine and which have been reconditioned. Correll plainly says, You cant cook the poop out of [food].
[end quote]
Taken from this link: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/why-we-should-not-trust-new-fda-rules-on-food-safety/
But they want to try to do it to milk.
They are pure sleaze.
RE: Small farms and farmers. Small is beautiful!
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/03-7
Thanks D
Ken
They are using social media to the max for this – a twitter hashtag (#solvetheoutbreak) so users can tweet results, a FB app page (http://www.facebook.com/appcenter/cdc-solve-outbreak), and their own website page at http://www.cdc.gov/mobile/applications/sto and http://www.cdc.gov/features/solvetheoutbreak, and HHS is publicizing it too at http://www.hhs.gov/digitalstrategy/mobile/solve-the-outbreak-update.html. There are 223,000 results for “Solve the Outbreak” on Google, so they’re promoting it via SEO as well.
I don’t have electronic gizmos to install this thing and check the content – has anyone else tried it? I know that they targeted raw eggs in one “scenario” – anyone know if raw milk is also a target?
So starts http://www.cdc.gov/mobile/Applications/sto/, one of Shelly-D.s links.
[The material in these links is thought provoking to say the least. I wouldnt discount its range of influence. Take these efforts very seriously is my opinion.
If there is dialog on fundamental issues in this rollicking, exciting Disease Detective world as opposed to monologue from authority, I would be surprised. Do you think that obedience fueled by excitement and approval is the conditioning being achieved?
Counter apps could, I dont know, . . .Solve the outbreak of irrational sleuthing. Spot the deceptions. Find the crooked politicians and their equally evil pals, the crooked businessmen and women. Follow the clues on how to ruin health by the millions of souls while diverting attention, all the while trying to avoid detection and capture. Included might be Judges asleep or even drunk at the levers of justice. Thoughtless lawyers playing to the jury but not to science, not to liberty, not to reason could be cast. Matthias Rath, M.D., cancer destroyer par excellence could provide material based on recent experience. Raw milk mikes already got material from the 1909 article re. the danger of pasteurized milk being fed to infants.]
Moving on: D. Smiths link: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/why-we-should-not-trust-new-fda-rules-on-food-safety/ contains this gem:
In 2013, certain corporations were allowed by the FDA to repackage older food into new packaging and resell it. One public school lunch supplier tried this with moldy apple sauce re-canned and was reprimanded to never try that stunt again.
Shockingly, Jay Cole, former federal inspector who works with the FDA Group, says, Any food can be reconditioned.
[It looks like we should pay attention to this term: Reconditioned food. No. Reconditioned food. Lets have a lexicon why dont we. SOI, thanks to TCP I know that this is Standard Of Identity, the legal/government/regulatory touchstone governing a foodstuff, bearing only tenuous connection to whatever might be in the mind of the customer as they get flummoxed out of their cash for food that doesnt feed (my working definition). I suspect heirloom is highly elastic term, supremely effective at increasing the price of foodstuffs.]
And this gem: The FDA allowed food producers like Basic Food Flavors, Inc (BFF) to recondition their recalled items in 2010 by heat-treating their products to remove salmonella.
BFF then reprocessed the food and distributed them for sale to the public.
HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody.
(Ora, I laughed hardest at the post where you only started one of your concert gags.)
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
A sample is drawn and loaded into a Dairy Quality cassette which automatically mixes the sample with reagents to identify somatic cells. Not that amazing but sounds promising. Does it work better then our own taste buds?
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This hypothetical app you’re all talking about would only be useful for farms preparing for a state inspection and then only if you trust the accuracy of both tests, yours and the states.
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Using an app to test for pathogens assumes that if the test is positive that the milk could in fact make someone sick and we don’t know that to be true since no one’s ever determined the minimum infectious limit for any of these so called pathogens when consumed in raw milk. The last anti raw milk website I was on used examples that involved the same so called pathogen but not from a raw milk or so called raw milk cheese source. This was only made obvious by the fact that the example involved infants which obviously don’t consume cheese or cow’s milk.
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Spending hours playing with a new toy won’t prevent an outbreak association if the illnesses have nothing to do with your milk in the first place. And the Dairy Quality cassettes are probably not cheap.
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If the pathogen test is negative, no one believes it anyway. The state doesnt care if your test is negative. How could you prove to them that the test was reliable? They don’t even trust their own tests. They just say the bacteria is elusive and that the test must have missed it.
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Your operation will still be called illegal in most states including California.
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Never let anyone get by with saying the state is concerned with food safety when that is clearly not the case. And besides that’s not their job anyway. Fare trade and proper labeling are their only legal responsibilities and they have been working against both from the very beginning. That is why logic doesn’t work on these people. They play stupid when the only one stupid is us for arguing with them.
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If the FDA and CDC say raw milk is inherently dangerous then they can’t say it is contaminated or adulterated. If the bacteria is inherent it is not a contaminant or adulterant. If they wish they can require labeling or determine a safe limit but they can’t ban it. Why don’t we do a study to determine a safe limit ourselves? Using all volunteers, how much could it cost?
The FDA should be called the food OR drug administration. Replacing good food with bad medicine.
And why the ATF? Fire arms are a necessary evil while alcohol and tobacco are not.
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Was a man more likely to attend a union meeting when it was held in a salon like before prohibition?
Excellent article. Articulates the reason why productivity from small farms or small plots seems so much higher than possible: “Indias former Prime Minister Charan Singh, who was an agricultural economist, had said that small farms are more productive than large farms. ‘Agriculture being a life process, in actual practice, under given conditions, yields per acre decline as the size of farm increases (in other words, as the application of human labour and supervision per acre decreases). The above results are well nigh universal: output per acre of investments is higher on small farms than on large farms. Thus, if a crowded, capital-scarce country like India has a choice between a single 100- acre farm and forty 2.5- acre farms, the capital cost to the national economy will be less if the country chooses the small farms.’
The pathogens detected by the Dairy Quality IPhone App system is a cow pathogen, not a human pathogen. This is a very practical tool for a raw milk dairy that wants to differentiate between strep and staph A mastitis. Strep is easily treated, the staph not so much. Both of these cow mastitis pathogens result in high SCC counts which can really drive up the coliform counts.
Any commercial producer or RAWMI LISTED or any producer that does not like surprises….wants to know these numbers early and frequently. I do these tests for me and our dear consumers, not the state. They test once per month, we do about 250 tests per month if you count coliforms, SPC, human pathogens, cow pathogens, milk cultures and “milk filter cultures” for pathogens. We are so far ahead of them. I want to keep it that way.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/02/257393870/how-mass-produced-meat-turned-phosphorus-into-pollution
That is an important distinction. All of the RAWMI LISTED farms are testing their milk and employing processes well in excess of what the state requires of us. And when I talk to small-herd producers in my state and find them testing their milk or improving their processes, it is because they want to produce the safest and highest quality raw milk for their communities, not because it is a required regulation.
So when we get excited about new potential technology or innovations, it is because we are attempting to, as Mark says, “keep ahead” of potential pathogen risks, using the best information and resources that we have, not to simply satisfy a code or reg.
The campaign to safely produce raw milk has largely been farmer and consumer led, not state led. Although I believe the state of California has been a better partner in that campaign than most.
http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2014/01/03/watch-the-beautiful-truth/
Don’t let your sons grow up to be dentists.
And then there’s this:
Can’t Find The Link Now, I saw them open for Gates and Windows back in the 80’s, I’ll just post it later. Worth Waiting For which was another blockbuster in it’s day.
Mark how often do you find human pathogens in your milk?
Has anyone seen the:
Revised Presentation July 8 Raw milk myths and evidence by Nadine Ijaz pdf
Doesnt Nadine’s study prove raw milk is a low risk food? Why do we need acampaign to safely produce raw milk if it is all ready a low risk food?
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/00E8757C-99E4-4414-8C54-2C92BB776567/0/RevisedPresentationJuly8RawmilkmythsandevidenceNadineIjaz_PROTECTED.pdf
The ideology came from the 19th century, after Julius Liebig discovered that nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (N, P, K) were the three quantitatively most important plant nutrients. He and his followers made the leap to claiming that these were the only important inputs, with the soil and environment being merely passive, inert mediums, and that agriculture could be industrialized if industrial distribution of these big three could be achieved. Corporatism, of course, loved this notion and took it up, in propaganda and practice. That’s where the NPK ideology came from.
Rawmilkmik,
If you have ever been visited by six investigators with concealed guns, wearing badges, flashing badges, four inspectors with white lab costs, that come announced when you least expected it…with a strangly uncomfortable look on their faces and white and yellow papers in their hands with your name on it….you know why I want to stay way out from of them.
The aftermath of a recall is horrendous. The media, the consumer questions, the deep introspection, the search for causes, insurance company inquiries, insurance rates in question, a call from your banker to find out what is really going on, internal team meetings three times per day to develop and execute strategic and tactical communications, what to say, what not to say, the swabbing of everything including all of your cows back sides….
Not to mention the double loss of 85% of revenues for a week plus the double hit of paying for trucks to go visit 625 stores and pick up every single one of your products and truck them all home for inventory inspection with the same moon suit clad inspectors waiting to count each one.
Then….the tirades on FB about how the consumers could care less about what the state found in one isolated test!!! They just want their raw milk for their crying hungry babies!!! They ask if they can come and steal some after hours!
The media then recounts all of the past challenges you have had with the state. It is like having three recalls and reliving 12years, not one recall.
The only bright side to a recall may be that it only inflames the market and after the $200,000 dollar loss your sales go up even faster.
This is no marketing program…not one that I like anyway. That is why 250 tests a month is cheap and something I enjoy very much. When you have information you have knowledge and surprises should be a thing of the past. That is my goal.
My heart can only take so much “warm welcoming of armed investigators” wearing badges and lab coats. I know, they are just doing their jobs, but it hurts me down deep when I see them.
Reality is what reality is.We face it straight up. It is the only constructive market builind way we know how. Most importantly we have learned from each of these moon suit surprises and have grown. One of my CDFA inspectors said last summer….”with your kind of numbers, you just won’t have problems”. I assume nothing and hope he is right.
After all when pioneering in a war zone, you can not be more concerned or careful.
Perhaps you get me now. Shawna feels much the same, and so do other committed raw milk producers. When you truly care for your customers….the sky is the limit!
Mark, great explanation, from “the school of hard knocks.”
Oh and that link I mentioned in a previous post I still can’t find it but, it was a rebuttal to Charlotte Gerson claiming raw milk is high danger despite her father’s work and that you should avoid it, If any of you can find it please post it.
You have given a very good and well thought out explanation with respect to your chosen methods for producing and providing raw milk.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Soren Kierkegaard
The reality you are experiencing is based on a system that uses pseudo-scientific lies in order to justify its desire to control the people at large, hence the need for you and other raw milk producers to jump through all of these proverbial or stereotypical hoops. As CS Lewis states, What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
A pioneer is someone who is, among the first to research and develop a new area of knowledge or activity.
Raw milk has been consumed for thousands of years so its not really or, in reality a pioneering venture.
Raw milk crusaders or freedom fighters would be a more relevant description of those engaged in this growing concerted movement to produce and consume raw milk, free of systematic abuse.
Ken
Yes. Cows running low SCCs have excellent udder health. Good udder health, and good overall cattle health is acheived through good management: clean conditions, low density, good diet, good milking habits…all part of producing high quality milk. SCC monitoring is one indicator of herd health.
Mastitis in the udder can result in off-flavors, early spoilage, and in the case of Staph Aureus, if allowed to multiply at warm temperatures, can release toxins that cause food poisoning. Staph Aureus is a common source of food poisoning in restaurants, salad bars, etc, and is certainly not limited to raw milk.
Staph A is widely found in our enviroment, but is particularly virulent when it takes residence in the udder of a cow. It is not responsive to treatment and is contagious to other cows. Clinical cases manifest in pus-filled absesses in the udder. Highly un-appetizing.
Monitoring SCC counts allows farmers to detect mastitic cows and either cull or treat, prior to seeing clinical symptoms. So yes, you want your raw milk farmer to monitor SCC in her herd.
Ken
A high somatic cell count is indicative of a strong immune system and as far as I am concerned this is a desirable trait. The animal should be given a chance at least to clear up the infection.
Ken
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After approximately 6-10 weeks on the Therapy, your doctor will order you to start on some NON-FAT, UNSALTED, UNFLAVORED, MODIFIED milk proteins. This does NOT mean LOW FAT (yogurt or cottage cheese). In Dr. Gerson’s book, you will find that he ordered the patient to take buttermilk and/or “pot-cheese”. We have to be very careful with these items nowadays. Buttermilk comes in two forms: “churned” and “cultured”. The churned type is good and acceptable – but it is almost never available anymore. If you have a dairy farmer in your neighborhood who will churn some sour cream to make his own butter, and let you have the buttermilk – that would be great. But, otherwise, don’t bother looking for it. The “Cultured” type is completely forbidden. It is usually made of left-over, unsalable milk, treated with thickening agents; flavored AND SALTED!
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The next problem is “Pot Cheese”. In Dr. Gerson’s day, this meant non-fat, unsalted cottage cheese which he approved of. Today, this is no longer available.
http://encognitive.com/node/2530
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It has been said that more people live off cancer than die from it.
http://curezone.org/art/read.asp?ID=24&db=3&C0=774
Slowly but steadily, Southern cooks are rediscovering the ingredients that once formed the foundation of our regions cuisine. Old-fashioned standards like stone-ground grits, slow-smoked bacon, and heirloom peas make traditional recipes come alive with a depth and richness of flavor that a cook cannot achieve using new-fangled industrial versions.
One former staple, though, remains maddeningly hard to find: genuine buttermilk. The buttermilk found on supermarket shelves should not bear the name, for it lacks even a passing acquaintance with butter. Manufacturers make the stuff from low-fat milk, adding cultures to create lactic acid and thickening agents for texture. The resulting product might bring a touch of acidity to biscuits and cornbread, but it is a pale shadow of the ancestor that it imitates.
In the hills of East Tennessee, though, the Cruze family still does things the old-fashioned way. Patriarch Earl milks pasture-raised Jersey cows and churns the buttermilk himself. Donning an old-timey gingham dress and tempting would-be customers at Knoxvilles Market Square Farmers Market into sampling straight shots, daughter Colleen handles the marketing.
Those shots turn heads, for Earl Cruze makes his buttermilk the same way that his grandfather did. Cruze begins with the liquid left over from butter-makingan acidic, largely defatted milk with traces of butter still in it. In the days before refrigeration, farmers left that liquid in uncovered pitchers, where natural cultures fermented, thickened, and soured it.
Cruze adds cultures to his buttermilk more deliberately, but the end result is the same. In place of industrial whiteness, Cruze Farm buttermilk is a pale yellow. Behind sour notes lie body and warmth, a dessert-like richness reminiscent of panna cotta or lemon cream.
Proper buttermilk makes pancakes fluffy and light and biscuits softer. It tenderizes meat and thickens salad dressings. You can bake it into cornbread or use it to batter chicken for frying. Or, you can take a cue from the old-timers and enjoy a tall glass of it straight.
Right now, Cruze Farm buttermilk is only available at a handful of East Tennessee farmers markets and stores, and at some Earth Fare supermarkets in Knoxville and Chattanooga. But as Colleen Cruze sends samples to more and more curious consumers, the word could well begin to spread. One day, real buttermilk may retake its rightful place on the Southern table By Robert Moss February 28, 2013
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More, along with recipes can be viewed at
http://gardenandgun.com/blog/return-real-buttermilk
my old man used to crave the stuff in the summertime, hed drink a quart in one go
publication of this article being more proof of my main theme = white people are suffering for having rejected our heritage : the Law of God. No accident that our foodstuffs are empty of nutrition so obesity is a national disgrace … no mere accident that our water supplies are poisoned. Fortunately, we are re-discovering our heritage starting with the agricultural laws of the Bible
The somatic cell count (SCC) process was not merely put in place in order to provide us with a tool to monitor infection and cull cows.
Unfortunately the assumption is all too often made that high somatic cell count cows have to be treated with antibiotics in order to be cured or have a new lease on life so to speak. This is not the case.
Antibiotics are merely an invasive so-called quick fix to a complex systemic problem that serves to undermine overall bacterial ecology and the animals immune system.
A high milk SCC is natures way of dealing with stress and is an indication that her immune system is healthy and is being challenged. Various infection throughout the body (not merely the udder), heat stroke, injury, excessive grain or high sugar and protein diets, the use of unnatural hormones such as rBST and exposure to toxins either fed or injected, such as micotoxins, GMOs, toxic antibiotic metabolites or the various biological and chemical toxins in vaccines etc. all have a potential role to play in elevating SCC.
Managing and or eliminating any or all of the above factors will go a long way at reducing SCC in a cow or ones herd. Culling an animal although sometimes necessary if the condition becomes chronic aught to be a last resort after the animal has been given at least one lactating cycle to recuperate.
It is very unusual for a young animal such as yours and if raised under natural conditions to have a high SCC. How old was she when you purchased her. Did you purchase her as a bred heifer or did she previously lactate or was lactating at the time of purchase?
Ken
I produce more buttermilk then we can consume or use to bake with, so needless to say the pigs and chickens do well on the excess.
When I moved to the farm in 1959 with my parents, milking machines had just recently been acquired by my grandfather before he passed away. This was before the milk marketing board was legislated into existence so the largest dairy farm in the area would have had at most 40 cows and would have probably recently upgraded to machine milking as well. The smaller farms however were much smaller (5 cows or less) and continued to milk their cows by hand.
I often went to visit a classmate and friend of mine whose parents housed their three cows with calves in a log barn with log floors. They had no electricity in the barn so they had to use a coal oil lantern and milk their cows by hand. This fascinated me since I was only accustomed to milking cows in a whitewashed barn with electricity, milking machines, ventilation, concrete and steel.
I drank their milk when I was there and so did their neighbors who came to the door to purchase milk and cream on a daily basis. When the cream went sour it was churned into butter and sold as butter and buttermilk.
His father who owned a school bus and drove us to school would drink at least a quart of buttermilk every day. In the evenings before he went to bed he would drink an 8 oz. glass of buttermilk followed by, Im guessing 3-4 oz. of whisky. He lived until he was just shy of 100 and smoked like a chimney to boot.
Ken
Raw milk is a low risk food.
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/00E8757C-99E4-4414-8C54-2C92BB776567/0/RevisedPresentationJuly8RawmilkmythsandevidenceNadineIjaz_PROTECTED.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbEF42ogYek
National Geographic Live! : Dinka: Legendary Cattle-Keepers of Sudan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erNAdYoqaFo
I love buttermilk but was missing the second step, its simple- leave it out at room temperature. I get that. Its the same way I make kefir (less the grains). I wonder if the kefir grains + the fresh buttermilk will equal something good?
As an adult, I took to Kefir immediately (thick, sour, tangy, delicious!) but many will hardly taste it and those that do often recoil. On the other hand a relative that grew up in Norway drank two glassfuls on a visit and wanted to know everything about it. Hed enjoyed it as a youth on the high summertime pastures.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
…
Hay, We know what the national average is. What if members set up an email address or something like that where they could all post their illnesses. That way they could all monitor the infection rate of their cow share. Neither the state nor the farmer need ever be involved. Is there any way to monitor the infection rate of non raw milk consumers in your area? Is school attendance or anything like that in the public record? Maybe you could have your own small list of non raw milk drinkers? Just enough to chart a rise in background illness.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=malcolm+x+who+taught+you+to+hate+yourself&sm=1
my calling these days, is = putting the same question to the White Race ; giving them the facts so they can come to their senses individually, after our heritage was destroyed by race traitors in high places
watch the faces of those people responding to him preaching lawkeeping – especially, separation from the world – as the right answer to strife between the races. What a concept ! Articulated by the Great Emancipator his-self = Abe Lincoln.
It doesn’t take a PhD in political science, to figure out that Elijah Mohamed had him assassinated [ with the connivance of the FBI, of course ] because Malcolm X was teaching people to love their own race which would then inspire them to go back to Africa. Marcus Garvey was lucky to get away with his life, for saying the same thing. Yet you have a problem with me, as I preach the corollary, to whites. I’m starting where I find resonance … which is : the fact that the agricultural laws in the Bible work better than the diabolical communist model, evidences a grand design, which requires, a Designer
Speaking of which, remember this one?
I’ve never seen a word so manipulated, twisted, concealed, or outright fractured, as the word “organic”. The gubment has been having a class-act ball for years over this one. New dances have been invented, new steps to those dances and then all new music.
http://cookingupastory.com/u-s-adopts-national-organic-standards-victory-for-all-but
Think you understand what “organic” means? Not as much as the doods on The Hill understand what “sidetracked” means. Every time some new standard is passed in congress it’s because we’ve all been sidetracked by something less important but more media-ized.
Nope, in the end there’s no substitute for knowing your farmer and producing your own food. Certifications are second-best at best.