Know your farmers

I’m so grateful for your focus on healthful milk [”From Cow to Cup,” Sept. 18 Xpress]. Let me say at the outset that, as many conscientious people know, the best way to secure safe food is to know your farmers and their farms.

Some years ago, I attended a workshop in Durham led by Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. It was a long and detailed PowerPoint about the history of commercial milk. As with many political issues we’re familiar with, Fallon described how, at the beginning of the industrialized food wave of the 1930s, U.S. corporations intent on developing pasteurization presented appalling details to the U.S. Congress about one large, poorly maintained dairy facility where the potential for bacterial infections from raw milk had become rampant.

This selected, purposeful misrepresentation of dairy farming and raw milk’s risks was not surprising to that Durham audience, though it nonetheless caused shock and outrage. But what’s new?

Perhaps what’s new is the work going on in more enlightened places on our borders, such as Canada, and in the states in this country where raw milk is sold and consumed daily without negative consequence. To read some excerpts from the Weston Price website, visit http://avl.mx/015. (Please note italicized text, which are my highlights.)

I am one of many raw-milk aficionados. I know people who thought they were allergic to milk, but found that raw milk and raw-milk products give them no problem at all. Cook (and kill) the essential enzymes in the milk by pasteurizing them and they can’t handle the results. Corporations, not people, get to decide what we can legally possess. For now.

Thanks again for your focus on this important topic.

— Arjuna da Silva
Black Mountain