Fresh Milk advocate Alice Jongerden filed an application today in the New Westminster courthouse in British Columbia to challenge the constitutionality of the prohibition against the production and distribution of Raw Milk.
Vancouver's local raw milk community cowshare is under attack by Fraser Health and the Milk Industry, please join us for a screening of Milk War to help cover expenses and support our freedom to choose what we eat.
Screening "Milk War" in Vancouver BC, February 6th 2011. A film about Organic dairy farmer Michael Schmidt's battle to legalize the sale of unpasteurized milk.
A vision for a world where raw milk isn't demonized and food freedom is the norm.
“The centralisation of our food system is currently the greatest danger to the food security of our nation.”
Since I am on the topic of raw milk this week I have to post this very important statement from Michael Schmidt. It was presented at a news conference on the steps of the Alberta Legislature, November 8th, 2010, this declaration is a powerful call to arms to support the small farmer and bring back small farms, and a rejection to recognize officials who refuse to even enter into a discussion:
Agriculture has been the backbone of Canada. History has taught us that a healthy agriculture is able to feed all the people and therefore creates a healthy and socially stable environment.
At the turn of the last century 70% of our Canadian population was actively involved in farming.
The community of real milk.
I’ve been talking a lot about raw milk lately, but haven’t really explained much of my own history and why I am so passionate about such a strange thing. While making my weekly journey to pick up my share of raw milk, the bright orange colors of the fall leaves stimulated memories from my own quest for raw milk….
Come to think of it, one of the cowshare members from our community meeting last night asked me how I got interested in raw milk, so I have had it on my mind. It is really exciting and interesting to meet the people involved in the Our Cows cowshare. In many ways I am glad that Fraser Health has forced us to come together as a community.
I am not really sure when I decided to find a way to drink raw milk. A moment I can put my finger on is a day in the back alleys of Kao San Road in Bangkok. I was killing time, waiting for my visa to Burma to be processed, when I found a book in a remote corner of an overloaded trinket/bookstore: The Traditional Healer’s Handbook: A Classic Guide to the Medicine of Avicenna
by Hakim G.M. Chishti N.D.
I am very sorry that I haven’t gotten around to posting this previously. I have been hoping to hear the judge, Justice N. Smith’s decision in favor of our x-agister Alice Jongerdon, but who knows when that is going to happen. In the meantime, I attended the trail of Fraser Health vs Alice Jongerdon on the 14th October, 2010. This was definitely a new experience for me, as I prefer to avoid institutions of every kind, but I will admit this was an important experience for me. The whole atmosphere is geared towards intimidating the guts right out of you! It was also great to see a range of ages represented in the attending members of the cow-share. There were even a few kids! One of the other cowshare members remarked to me that it is probably good experience for the kids, so they will learn not to fear the institutions. My worry would be that they would take them for granted as a necessary part of life–but I digress :)
The past few days have been very disturbing, with a judge who is obviously in the pocket of the Milk Industry, refusing to even enter into a discourse about the situation of our local Community Supported Dairy. At the end of the trial he ordered our local Agister, Alice to stop milking our cows (poor cows) and she has been forced to resign as our Agister.
From Chilliwack Times:
Ontario dairy farmer Michel Schmidt has taken over Chilliwack’s Home on the Range raw milk dairy so the flow of milk can continue to hundreds of members of the co-operative.
Fraser Health has been trying to shut down Home on the Range for more than two years and on Tuesday succeeded in forcing the cowshare operator Alice Jongerden to officially resign as part of a court-ordered condition.
In a press release issued by Jongerden Friday morning, Schmidt says “We have reached the level of a new and powerful dictatorship called bureaucracy in the name of food safety, and in the favour of multinational corporations.”
The point that Michael Schmidt makes here is key. This isn’t really about health or food safety (Maple Leaf foods would have been shut down for causing 20 deaths if that was the case). It is about the monopoly that the milk industry wishes to maintain – as usual it is about greed.
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