Raw Milk

Virginia's requirement that milk be pasteurized prior to sale has little to do with health concerns. Two million people drink raw milk on a daily basis and we don't seem to have an epidemic of raw milk salmonella on our hands.

Raw milk bans may have made sense at the turn of the last century when Progressives, living in an era before refrigeration, tried to deal with the unsanitary conditions of urban dairies - sometimes cows were kept in tenement basements to serve the surrounding block of proletarians. These basements, in an era before flush toilets, were often unsanitary indeed. Milk could and did transmit nasty things like tuberculosis.

A grass-fed non-confinement operation that is regularly tested does not pose a health risk if the milk is properly handled.

So why the mania for pasteurization? Because the milk processors make a huge profit on the backs of dairy farmers. By blocking dairymen from selling directly to the consumer, the large processing corporations (who can afford to hire lobbyists in state legislatures) eliminate competition.

Classic rent-seeking behavior. Perverting Adam Smith's munificent invisible hand, rent-seekers look for profits by manipulating the system rather than producing quality products and winning the loyalty of customers in the competitive marketplace. One good way to manipulate the system is to use laws to create a coercive monopoly - government power blocks the entrance of competitors so you can keep prices high. Consumers suffer. Producers too - when farmers can't sell the products they produce, they become price takers rather than price makers. As the processing companies have gotten larger and their numbers have declined, the small number of purchasers creates a monopsony - in which they are able to drive down the prices who have to take lowball offers or nothing at all.

George Will explains how interior designers exploited the legislative process in a similar way here.

But consumers are starting to challenge the safety claims of milk processor lobbyists. The new breed of wholesome food enthusiasts is educated enough to make an impact.

From the Huffington Post:

...Massachusetts has long allowed sales from dairy farms, and delivery to consumers by any of a half dozen or more buying clubs.

Everything was working fine in Massachusetts -- more dairy farmers producing ever more raw milk and in the process creating a revival for the state's moribund dairy industry. No illnesses in over a decade.

The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources seemed to be doing its job of supporting state agriculture by encouraging raw-milk-producing dairy farmers rather than harassing them, like the regulators do in New York state. Late last year, MDAR publicly supported a suburban Boston dairy farmer in his fight with state and local public health authorities and helped him gain approval to sell raw milk from his dairy.

But then something happened early this year to change MDAR's approach. The agency sent cease-and-desist letters to four buying clubs that had been quietly and efficiently delivering raw milk to consumers who didn't want to burn the gasoline or were unable because they don't have cars or even are disabled, to travel the hour or two hours to a dairy farm in central Massachusetts and pick up their milk. (Buying clubs are private businesses that deliver milk from raw dairies on a contractual basis for consumers.) The letters weren't well received by the owners of the buying clubs, and they began mobilizing support from their customers and legislators to challenge MDAR. They argued that Massachusetts laws and regulations don't specifically prohibit the buying clubs, making the cease-and-desist letters so much paper.

MDAR seems to have agreed, because two weeks ago, it proposed a new regulation to explicitly prohibit the buying clubs. The regulation would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to explicitly ban raw milk buying clubs.

In advance of a hearing May 10 on the proposed regulation, a Massachusetts legislator friendly with Soares set up a meeting on Monday for the regulator to discuss with a few consumers his reasons for going after the buying clubs.

Surprise -- 15 consumers and farmers showed up for the meeting, and started peppering the startled Soares with questions about why he was taking an action that will inevitably reduce consumers' access to raw milk, and quite possibly put at least a few of the more than twenty dairy farms selling raw milk out of business.

These 15 consumers weren't just a few people off the street. They included some prominent local citizens who know how the system works -- Boston employment lawyer Harvey Schwartz, Cambridge business owner Abby Rockefeller, and EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman. The latter has served as Chief Investigator with the Environmental Protection Agency's Ombudsman Office, among other high-level positions over a forty-year period.

Kaufman put Soares on the spot during the Monday meeting when Soares said at one point that there was as much passion from anti-raw-milk people as from pro-raw-milk people. Who were these anti-raw-milk people, Kaufman inquired.

"He said that large dairy producers had communicated to him," recalls Kaufman. "I asked him who they were. He said he couldn't tell me."

Read the whole article here.