I posted a while ago about the contempt of court trial that I attended, regarding our local community dairy. We have finally gotten the word from the judge, he found our x-Agister Alice Jongerdon in contempt of court, fortunately he didn’t charge her any penalties. This is rather disappointing news. But in all the dragging of feet and whatnot that this red-tape is taking up, Michael Schmidt is way ahead of the game, with a vision to create a new movement of small local dairies, providing real food to real people.

It seems clear that all of this attention on raw milk and local community dairies is causing a bit of a stir in Health Canada. As I mentioned, Michael Schmidt, instead of getting caught up in all that nonsense is forging ahead. I don’t know all the detail about his new project CowShare Canada, so I can’t tell you much. What he is doing is creating our own regulatory system–as it is very important to make sure that raw milk dairy’s are up to par. It is vital that the cows are healthy and pasture fed.

As we all know all raw milk is not equal, Michaels Schmidt himself recently closed down a small dairy in Alberta, and is now training the dairy owners in how to produce good quality raw milk and all the precautions that need to be taken around that. It is not necessary to be as afraid of micro-organisms as the food industry would have us believe. As long as plants and animals are not overstressed by overpopulated conditions, bad food and unnatural mono-plant/animal conditions–micro-organisms remain controllable, they can even be very helpful.

Michael Schmidt has also set up a CowShare College, which is important for training people who want to start a dairy in what needs to happen to do that in a way that will not harm anyone. The CowShare Canada organization will also ultimately assist in providing loans and other resources to help new farmers to get a farm and cows in order to set up their own dairies. I was actually quite excited to hear this proposal when it was laid out as earlier this year I was asking our agister if there was anyway they could set up a method of how to get a raw milk dairy franchise–and this organization that Michael Schmidt is putting together seems like it will do that, while keeping the dairies small and focused on building the community that ultimately supports the dairy.

This is all still in process as far as I understand, but this all-encompassing vision will also be of great assistance to Health Canada in figuring out what to do with those of us who need to drink raw milk for our health. It is true that bad raw milk is very dangerous and that any illness caused by a rogue raw milk dairy will cause problems for the rest of us. This plan also provides Health Canada with a responsible regulatory board governing raw milk which will not cost them anything and gives them a face-saving avenue to start working with those of us who know the vital importance of raw milk both for our personal health and for the health of our floundering economy and desperate environmental situations.

Being a chef, I have worked with the sanitation programs of HACCP for years. For years it has driven me crazy and I have hated it with a passion without really knowing what it was I hated about it. Now I understand. It cuts off knowledge and understanding of micro-organisms. As it turns out there is a probiotic supplement craze going on the in the health world and this is because our guts and bodies need a proper relationship with our micro-organisms within and without our bodies. Attempting to eliminate all micro-organisms and create a sterile environment is stupid, suicidal and quite ignorant. If we learn how to communicate and interact with these micro-organisms we will be able to work with the cycles of nature instead of wasting so much energy trying to subdue her.

This post is part of Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival.