Archives for the 'raw milk' tag
Canada’s Dollar and Sense Stronger Than Ours
I was excited to see The Grinder taking on food regulations in a short post this morning titled Canadian Food: Now with Less Regulation!. But then I read the post, and found it’s nothing more than just your standard no such thing as a bad regulation hogwash so blindly followed by many in the media and public alike.
It somehow conflates labeling* with inspection. It fails to acknowledge that large industries tend to like firm regulations because they create often insurmountable barriers to entry. It’s anti-food. It sucks. End of story on that.
But in terms of the post’s topical issue, I’m getting a very strong sense that something revolutionary is afoot with food deregulation in Canada. It’s not just the elimination of these useless labeling requirements so beloved by The Grinder. (And it’s not like Canada doesn’t have–from the same article The Grinder cites–”hundreds of frontline inspectors to review labels on store shelves.”)
But there have been small-but-important baby steps like Quebec’s recent legalization of margarine. (For those of you who think that margarine is truly legal in this country, try buying a tub less than one pound in size.)
And there have been big steps, like the province’s lifting of the ban on raw-milk products–a ban that had forced the mostly disappointing Montreal writer Taras Grescoe to document his quest for perfectly legal raw-milk cheese in France. (Note that, in spite of the subhead on the Quebec-ban article, raw-milk cheeses like queso fresco are perfectly legal in Mexico, which last time I checked was part of North America.)
So Canada’s doing some pretty cool stuff up there, eh? If only I wasn’t a student, and the exchange rate wasn’t so terrible, me and my appetite would pack up the car and head north of the border for good eats this minute.
*Speaking of labeling, Jacob Grier, guest blogging at The Agitator, had a nice post last week on NYC’s menu labeling fiasco.
Raw Milk a Tasty Treat?
Friend and food blogger Jacob Grier has a great piece in Reason on the waning legality of raw milk.
[Pasteurized] milk resulted in the loss of seasonality and taste. Cooking milk introduces new flavors, some of them unpleasant. And since pasteurization kills bacteria indiscriminately, many raw milk devotees argue that the process robs them of probiotics, bacteria that they say build their immune systems and aid digestion. As McAfee put it to me, “kids are germ magnets.” Exposing them to raw milk, he argues, is good for them. Similarly, the testimonials section on the website of the Campaign for Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation that aims to overturn legal barriers to unpasteurized milk, is full of quotes from people writing that the product has cured them of everything from indigestion to autism. While some of these claims are obviously far-fetched, it’s clear that many raw milk drinkers believe they benefit from introducing a thriving population of bacteria into their bodies.
[...]
When I recently visited dairywoman Kitty Hockman-Nicholas at Hedgebrook Farms in Winchester, Virginia, I saw nothing dangerous or diabolical. Kitty showed me around the farm, introduced her cows by name, and demonstrated her milking process. It would have been illegal for Kitty to sell me raw milk—she provides it for people who buy into “cow shares” and thus technically own the cows from which they get their dairy—but she kindly sent me home with some as a gift.
My trip to the farm provided delightful insight into the origins of one of our most essential foods. I didn’t enjoy any miraculous health effects after drinking it, but the taste was smooth and creamy, with none of the processed aftertaste I now can’t help noticing in store-bought milk. As I sipped my unpasteurized beverage, I reflected on the absurdity of the situation: If Kitty were to offer the same experience to others for a profit, the government could forcibly put her out of business.
Campaign for Raw Milk here. Time on raw milk outlaws here. Raw milk opponent Stephen Barrett on why raw milk doesn’t do a body good here.
