by SUSAN MANN
An investigation into a Clifford-area farm in Huron County to determine if it’s illegally selling and distributing raw milk through cow share arrangements is continuing, says an official with the Huron County Health Unit.
Jean-Guy Albert, public health manager with the health unit, says they were informed a possible cow share operation was being conducted at the farm. “We were informed of a potential health concern.”
Albert says he couldn’t say who told them of the health concern. The investigation began on Sept. 18.
No charges have been laid. Albert says they’re investigating to determine if activities at the farm are in compliance with Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act. Under the Act, it’s illegal to sell or distribute raw, unpasteurized milk.
Albert says he doesn’t know when the investigation will be concluded.
Farmers and their families can drink unpasteurized milk from their own farms. Cow shares came to the attention of authorities after raw milk activist Michael Schmidt established one at his own farm near Durham. As part of the arrangement, customers pay a fee for a share of a dairy herd. As partial owners, they also own the milk and should be legally entitled to consume it.
But Schmidt is in the middle of a massive legal battle of his own involving his cow share operation. He was granted leave to appeal in July after he was convicted of 13 out of 19 original charges related to illegally selling and distributing raw milk. Initially, he was acquitted of 19 charges in 2010 but the Ontario government and the Grey Bruce Health Unit appealed and the acquittal was overturned in September 2011. Then, in November 2011, Schmidt was fined $9,150 and placed on probation for a year. BF
Comments
The entire north American continent must be tired and sick to allow this kind of ignorance of human rights to contradict a court decision that makes all kinds of sense. How can this kind of harassment be allowed when the reason is a "potential" health concern. The risk of becoming healthy should not be a concern!
In Minnesota, we easily found jurors that understood that if we own a cow, we can have the food from that cow and not yet again pay for this food. If this raw milk was not for sale and not purchased by anyone, how can it be subject to these regs of commerce. Food production is not commerce, only becomes commerce when it jumps on the commodity train to somewhere.
Haven't any of the citizens of Canada turned off their "mainstream programming" long enough to recognize the truth when it slaps them in the face? It's time to set your alarm and get off the couch! Support your sustainable farmers before they are extinct!
Be well, Alvin Schlangen - Freeport MN
I live in Ontario Alvin and I agree with you completely. Unfortunately our milk farmers don't have the ability to have a jury when they go to court. It is all up to a judge to decide. Michael will have three judges in the next go round. Constitutional rights need to outweigh "potential health concerns" when it comes to real food. It sickens me to see how GMO foods are promoted and all types of processed foods are allowed and considered safe and yet a food directly from nature is so condemned. Like all things that have been one way for so long, it becomes truth when in fact it is not truth. Many of us know that with proper farm management and handling, both by the farmer and the consumer upon leaving the farm, raw milk is no more a threat to health than cold cuts or spinach. The statement that raw milk could contain dangerous pathogens, so many times repeated by our health officials, could be attributed to many foods which have made people sick in the past and yet those foods are still allowed. This whole issue is ridiculous and is becoming a growing consumer concern. The officer told us at the farm that there was no complaint of anyone being sick, they were just there looking for information. Private property, private contract, personal choice is NOT a public health threat and never has been. My hope is that as the main stream sees the holes in the logic that says things like GMO's are safe, that they will start to question the other logics like processing milk to kill all it's good as well as any "potential" bad is NOT a good thing. When did we become a continent that forgets that nature is smarter than we are? It seems about the time that corporations started to create pseudo foods after the second war. Money talks and unfortunately we are seeing the health results of eating foods that are so far removed from the field that they retain little of what nature put in them. Congratulations on your win in Minnesota. We were all rooting for you! Lets hope our Ontario judges are interested in the right of Canadians to choose what they eat and follow suit.
Margo McIntosh, Canadian Consumer Raw Milk Advocacy Group
Hear! Hear!
A sound argument. It is improbable to believe that for the centuries prior to large corporate farming people were dying and becoming ill from consuming raw milk produced on small-scale, local farms, considering many people shared cows with family on their own family farms. Raw milk has been around for centuries. Pasteurization is a practice of modernity resulting from a change in our practices to food production. It symbolizes the denatured, disconnected approach to our relationship with food: once purchased or produced from local markets, free from additional chemicals and processing techniques, now corporate and controlled, tampered with. May justice prevail in recognizing the rights of Canadian citizens to have the freedom to choose. If we have the freedom to choose in so many other domains of life, and especially in regards to purchasing new refined foods that are at the root of modern disease, why is the right to choose raw milk been usurped? By all means, keep pasteurization in place for those who would choose it, but for those who desire raw milk why are their rights and freedoms of choice not respected or represented?
Maybe the problem is that we as humans should not be drinking milk not from our own mothers .
I can't believe that the save the animals groups have not pushed for no milk consumption because that milk is meant for the animals off spring . Is the milk from a cow the same milk you would get from your mother ? Then yet you people want to talk about GM food while you drink milk from another animal .
Your all a bunch of dingbats and make about as much sense as our current ag minister representing Ag when you can't breed two bulls or two sows and expect offspring . We live in a world of smoke and mirrors with Gov because we allow it .
If someone owns the cow, they can drink the milk. But now they won't allow more than one person to 'share' a cow? Why not? Yet, Genetic Modification that causes health problems is promoted? And the killing of all the good bacteria in the raw milk is promoted, just in case there might be a little bit of bad bacteria? When we take antibiotics, it does the same thing. It kills all the good bacteria in our stomach, along with any bad. But there IS an infection in your bloodstream that the antibiotics will kill, and your stomach will recover. It is a last resort. We certainly cannot be taking antibiotics all the time, or we would have no resistance or immunity to anything, and our stomachs would no longer function either without the healthy (good) bacteria in there.
I rember when milk was collected from farms daily went toa local bottleing plant and delivered the next day , now its syored in tanks untill there is a tanker full then taken to process plant,it is at least a week old befor it gets to shops
I would like to see the D.F.O.'s approach and to handling a pasturized cow share set up. Is this a battle over safe milk, or supply management? Why aren't the raw goats milk farms being raided???
there is a very active raw milk drinking circuit underground in Ontario now. the DFO doesn't want to deal with those guys again and allows them to break the law.
stan holmes
Why are the health officials only concerned about raw cow milk farms, could one get sick from raw goats milk?
the CFO is not enforcing the 300 limit on small producers just letting them break the law as well.
it is easier not to deal with "lawbreakers" and "whiners"
Stan Holmes
Every amish community in the country is guilty of this crime why not go after them
going after the Amish is "not a good news story" in the eyes of the general public
The Amish have given themselves a black eye with these so-called puppy mills.
I am no judge and jury but l do know what my urban relatives think about them,its not good.
In the local food movement ..the Amish are the darlings in the young publics minds.
they can run underground raw milk system
Market more than 300 meat chicken schemes and imply the non gmo feed is same as organic
There are vendors who dress their staff in amish garb to create the image
It is all about protecting the milk supply management system in Canada. If the public and most of the health officials new the value of milk quotas on family sized dairy farms they would see through these cow share farm raids, as cow shares are simply a loop hole for a non quota holding dairy farm to sell milk without a quota, they are the only new dairy farmers starting out. The only other legal issue now is the milk is not pasteurized. One could get sick from raw buffalo or goats milk, ground beef, ground pork, or vegetables, but non of these items have a supply management group. If one took their raw cow milk home and pasteurized it would be safe to consume. Raw milk is going to continue to be sold, the health officials should concentrate on protecting the health of the public (as this is their job, not protecting a marketing board) and test these cow share cows for bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis, and have a lab (for a fee) to be sure the Standard Plate count and Somatic Cell Counts testing can be done, and leave the supply management issues up to the marketing boards. The milk marketing boards are tying up the health officials with this battle, our taxes and health resources are being wasted over supply management.
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