Letters to the Editor
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Ruby
You're probably correct. However, it would be easier to take you seriously had you chosen to not use so many caps and exclamation points. One could wonder, from your tone, if good skin is a fair trade for shreiking maniac.
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The middleman is what allows members of urban populations to buy food.
Cut out the thousands of middlemen and women who get between us and safe, healthy, low-impact, sustainable food production. The end product will be better in many ways, including - in many instances - cheaper.
This sounds like a lovely idea. How do you propose to make it scale for, say, Los Angeles? For that matter, make it scale for a small/medium city of 60,000.
I like buying local and direct where I can, but it's a treat. Farmer's markets--even large ones like Ferryman's Plaza in SF and Pike Place Market in Seattle (I have been a frequent customer at both)--can't handle more than a small subset of the population in the area. They don't have the room, and I doubt they have the food. To make the food volume required, the vendors would need to start doing factory farming and the markets would be come supermarkets. I think we already have those.
Urban living, even on a fairly small scale, requires a middleman for most food purchases.
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Well worth the inconvenience...
My husband drives a half hour each week to pick up our raw milk from a "secret location" known only to the herd share participants. We used to pick it up at the farmer's market, but the farmer worries that he may be penalized for distributing raw milk, even though herd share programs are perfectly legal.
We don't believe raw milk is a cure all; we drink it because it tastes better than pasturized alternatives. And, after researching the subject, we came to the conclustion that it is the healthier choice. Even more importantly, we prefer to support our community rather than the multi-billion dollar milk industry.
We knew the Amish farmer who was busted by the undercover inspector in Ohio. It was an entrapment situation that shouldn't have been legal...and it left us wondering why the state is so focused on cracking down on small families who have little impact on the industry or public health. Shouldn't they should be looking at the sorry state of today's mass-producing dairy farms? It reminded me of the time I received a speeding ticket while driving through a bad neighborhood known for having drug dealers on every corner.
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Really, I only care about the taste.
I've worked as a chef for a good many years. I love working with food, tasting new things, comparing quality...
Raw Milk tastes better. Grass fed beef and properly raised chicken and wild fish and home grown vegetables all taste better than their over-bred, chemical soaked, artificially nourished counterparts.
Once you've had the real stuff, you can always taste the garbage. I'm not at all shocked that the good stuff is nutritionally superior and, although it's not as cheap as microwave dinners or McDonalds, not nearly as expensive as supermarket chains would have you believe. Go to your local farmer's market, find a good butcher and fishmonger, spend more time cooking meals with your family. My butcher charges me a third what the meat section at the local Shaw's wants, my fish guy has better stuff than that stinky crap the market tries to pass off as fish, and the farmer's market provides local seasonal produce that actually tastes like something. You'll be happier and healthier.
Oh, and before you haters start railing on about not having enough time/resources to make dinner, why don't you get together with another family, pool your resources and make dinner together like your ancestors? I work 60 hours a week in a high intensity kitchen and I still have the time to feed my family (and frequently our friends) properly.
Finally, the FDA does some good and they're definitely one of the hardest working federal agencies (especially since their funding is likely crap). That said, they seem to approve of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and the innumerable additives agricorps and industrial food producers put in everything. They may be out to do good, but they're definitely in someone's pocket.
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To "I'm just saying..."
It's called enthusiasm! It's one of the side effects of being healthy. Wow, it's amazing how Salon's LWs can seem to find the negative in just about anything...even explanation points.
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Let's ban skiing
Every year, something out there is injuring, maiming and killing thousands of Americans, some of whom are children and immuno-suppressed adults. It's called skiing. Just think about it--why do we shrug when people engage in such an inherently dangerous activity like skiing, but the thought of drinking milk straight from the grass-fed cows at the farm next door sends food scientists and federal regulators into apoplectic fits??
Everything in life carries inherent risks, even the act of avoiding risks. (Isn't it interesting that allergic disorders like hay fever and asthma tend to afflict people who do everything possible to make their environments microbe-free?) For those of you who are squeamish and risk-averse, however, let me suggest a simple solution that will satisfy everyone: slap big red warning labels on containers of raw milk. Then adults can make the decision for themselves.
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Collaborate?
This is an impressively researched story. I doubt there's a better one out there on the subject. To me, the key sentence is this one: "This distinction -- between raw milk that's destined for pasteurization and raw milk from a small, spotlessly clean dairy that's kept to higher standards precisely because the milk won't be pasteurized -- is a crucial one, and it's lost on public health officials like Sheehan, who seem to lump all raw milk into the same pathogen-contaminated vat." Why couldn't the FDA try a pilot program that observed several of these small, clean raw milk dairies as they produced their product and sold it to willing customers? Perhaps the two sides could learn from each other and, God forbid, collaborate on making raw milk as safe as it could be.
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You People Have NO Idea
What next? Marie Antoinette in a dairymaid's outfit? I grew up in the South, next door to my grandfather's farm, and I drank raw milk straight from the grandpa's cow until I was about three...when my mother, my sister and I all came down with Brucellosis. Never heard of it? That's because pasteurization kills the bacteria that causes it, and it is now extremely rare in this country. Nevertheless, it's no picnic: fever, malaria-like chills, possible long-term damage to joints (I'm now 51 and have major arthritis in neck, back and knees....hmmm....). After that episode, it was Atlanta Dairies milk for us. Yes, I know that raw milk supposedly tastes ever so much better than the store-bought stuff. But a lot of nutritionists question why we need milk at all--we're the only mammals who drink milk after infancy. Dark green vegetables have plenty of calcium.
Anyway, given the choice between clearing up my eczema and repeating the brucellosis episode, I'll take the eczema. The rest of you food fad romantics can take your chances, but I've been there and done that.