Our culture teaches us that everything can be worked out by well-meaning people. The emphasis is on “well-meaning.” So, the same tired cycle of verbal and regulatory recrimination repeats itself each time illnesses associated with raw milk occur, neither side really listening to the other, and instead engaged in a propaganda war to convince the public that it is right and the other side is wrong.
See original post http://www.thecompletepatient.com/article/2012/april/15/there-way-move-past-cycle-blame-and-retribution-over-raw-milk.
The problem you pose can be summed up this way. Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong when it comes to raw milk. The raw milk consumer and producer do see added benefits to the consumption of raw milk but in all too many cases idolize the animals, farms and practices that produce the milk so an honest assessment is impossible to consider.
The health authorities are correct in the fact that the national milk supply has significant presence of pathogens prior to pasteurization but refuses to ask the question why and has excepted the fact as standard and idolize the efficiency of a common denominator.
Of course lawyers enter the fray to promote each side’s prejudices in hopes that a judge will settle the dispute and rule on the facts.
The problem is the true base facts have yet to be considered and the ability to have a discussion through research is blocked due to who has the direction of the labs needed to do the research funded for many years to come.
To blame raw milk as the source of illness in the population is akin to blaming the woodpecker for killing a tree. Upon close inspection we have insects infesting the tree that the woodpecker is consuming, a series of events that led to the increase in the bugs that infested the tree, climate shifts that allowed the increase in bugs and possible variables in the sun’s pattern that allowed for a shift in climate. It more than likely does not stop there, but that is where we are currently in our limited understanding of how our universe works.
To blame health authorities for an outright bias and or “conspiracy” allows those who make the claim to ignore their own limitations in understanding and possible threats to the product and limits the effort for constant learning needed to produce a product of increasing safety and the developed practice to do so.
Both viewpoints are also a victim of a larger social current that has affected every aspect of our lives. We a no longer a community but a population made up of distinct subsets that no longer talk or interact with one another. We have been guided into camps that only talk within our camps and one view point tends to rule the conversation.
In a true community, opposing viewpoints are heard and considered and we get exposed to other important viewpoints and the competition to have one’s viewpoint ruled as static is reduced and true learning and cooperation is achieved.
I have long said that the raw milk/local food movement is more than just about food. It is our societies first step forward to rebuilding our communities and exposing ourselves to a diverse flora of ideas and ecologies. To claim we know it all is just a left over aspect of our imposed division. To ignore important information no matter is depth of challenge to our beliefs will only postpone the realities we face and the depth of challenges that need to be defined in order to effect change.
The raw milk community faces a rough road ahead, not only realizing our own blind spots as a community subset, but really embracing the work that needs to be done in being the first to understand how degraded our farming and livestock environment has become, and what it will take to right that imbalance. To ignore the signs of that imbalance will only delay our success. For the state to hold fast to its dependence on one viewpoint will only paint itself into irrelevance.