Milk, It Does a Government Good

Milk, It Does A Government Good

(post grouping regarding milk)

Posted 9/9/07 (By Travis)

The Raw Milk Inspectors Come Calling, Again, at California's Largest Raw-Milk Dairy

9/9/07 The Complete Patient

From this article is appears that a shutdown and recall was issued after 5 children became ill from a type of bacteria that this particular farm routinely tests all its milk for. Additionally, it was never proven the five children were ill due to the milk and even so, the milk in question came from a different farm. Still, the state came in, tested for different bacteria and found 'subclinical' levels and shut the place down. The article ends with this quote:

“We are in a place that is politically incorrect…I am in the business of producing good bacteria…But every opportunity they (government regulators) have they will stick a knife in our back.”

The Raw Milk Wars Heat Up in Ohio
Businessweek.com ^ | November 9, 2006 | David E. Gumpert

Posted 12/21/06 (By Travis)

'Milk, It Does A Government Good' is a newly created post grouping.

Posted 12/21/06 (By Travis)

Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System

12/10/06 Washington Post

An update from a previously posted(1/2/06) Wall Street Journal story with an unhappy ending. This article is interesting because, IMO, it is a great illustration of how Washington works. The main points I've excerpted here are just to show how politicians benefit as they shake down hardworking citizens, on all sides of a given issue, for cash, in a manner reminiscent of the mafiosa. When politicians have the power to affect change in a given area, corruption and discord and immorality soon follows. The root of this issue is not the reprehensible action government chose to take, but that it has the power to take any action at all.

In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk.

A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores. <.>

The first challenge to Hettinga came in late 2001, when Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) proposed a measure that would have forced Hettinga to pay in to the pool that Shamrock was governed by.

Shamrock's chairman, Norman P. McClelland, had contributed thousands of dollars to Kyl, beginning with Kyl's first House campaign, in 1986. <.>

In Nunes's first run for Congress, in 2002, he pulled in $130,000 from dairy interests, second only to President Bush among federal candidates, election records show.

Nunes's bill and Kyl's amendment initially went nowhere. So Kyl, a conservative Republican, found an unlikely ally in Reid, then the Senate's fiercely partisan Democratic whip.

Reid was no newcomer to dairy issues. Nevada's population was growing faster than its dairies could supply milk, so prices tended to be high. Milk plants that had to import milk from far away thought they could get it cheaper if they did not have to pay regulated prices. In 1999, Reid helped them out. He slipped an amendment into a spending bill exempting milk plants in the Las Vegas area from federal pricing rules.

David Coon, vice president of Anderson Dairy Inc., then the area's largest milk plant, hailed Reid's amendment as a "good example of the good we feel he has done fighting for our state." Reid later listed Anderson as one of 51 "soft money" donors to his Searchlight Leadership Fund, which funds Democratic candidates in Nevada.

The 1999 provision still left the Las Vegas area subject to some federal milk regulations. By 2003, fixing that had become a pressing concern as Dean Foods began construction on a $40 million, state-of-the-art milk plant outside town.

That year, Reid and Kyl saw they could make a deal. Kyl agreed to back removing all of Nevada from federal milk regulation, and Reid agreed to support legislation cracking down on Hettinga and protecting Arizona dairies from competition from low-priced Nevada milk. In 2003, the senators co-sponsored an amendment with both provisions. In effect, Nevada bottlers would get some of the same rights that were being taken away from Hettinga. Under this arrangement, the money the Yuma dairyman would save by operating outside the federal system would have to be paid in to the pool. <.>

Hettinga said that at Lewis's request he chipped in $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign later that year. He also gave $4,000 to Lewis's campaign war chest between 2003 and 2006, records show.

A few months later, Lewis used his power to kill the Kyl-Reid measure. "Congressman Lewis did it strictly on behalf of a constituent and because he thought Hein's deal was good for consumers," said Lewis's deputy chief of staff, Jim Specht. <.>

Eight groups with an interest in the legislation reported overall lobbying spending of more than $5 million in 2005 and the first half of 2006. Dean Foods reported spending almost $2.5 million, including $500,000 for outside lobbyists. One was Charles M. "Chip" English Jr. of Thelen Reid & Priest. English also represented Shamrock Foods, United Dairymen of Arizona and the Dairy Institute of California.

During 2005, English fine-tuned the language in the milk bill. "My hand can be seen throughout the bill," he said in an interview. Pick a paragraph in the legislation, he said, and "either I wrote it or I commented on it." <.>

Hettinga also turned to the courts. In October, he filed a lawsuit charging that the milk bill was unconstitutional because it was aimed at penalizing a single individual.

"I still think this is a great country," Hettinga said. "In Mexico, they would have just shot me."

Posted 11/27/06 (By Travis)

A Raw Milk Raid Leads to a Special Thanksgiving
11/22/06 Business Week

Posted 10/4/06 (By Travis)

The Raw Deal

10/1/06 Washington Post

The FDA requires milk to be pasteurized (heated) and homogenization (filtered). Why? If it is not treated as such, it is claimed we could get sick from bacteria. Thus, to protect us from ourselves, the FDA and other big government types will throw us in jail if we sell this sort of milk or dairy products. Sure, there are cases of raw milk being harmful, but there are also cases of pasteurized and homogenized milk being harmful.

In any case, this is a thorough, well written article; the author has a good sense of humor. :)

Case in point, here is a good contrast:

The FDA'S 2006 science forum was held in April in a cavernous, blue-carpeted hall at the Washington Convention Center. There were row after row of poster presentations with titles such as "Characterizing Perfluorochemical Migration From Food Contact Paper" and "Evaluation of Nanomaterials' Immunotoxicity: Examples of Polystyrene Nanoparticles."

Versus:

His wife also grew up drinking raw milk on a dairy farm. They feed their kids raw milk. He says he has never become ill from drinking it. Neither has his wife or his kids. In fact, he's never known anyone who has gotten sick from drinking raw milk. When I tell him that the FDA has called raw milk "inherently dangerous," he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, that's what they say," he says. The young farmer is not a man of lengthy explanations.

Reminds me of this quote:

State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

- Thomas Jefferson

(Added to 'FDA Tyranny')

Posted 2/5/06

Small dairyman shakes up milk industry

1/2/06 Wall Street Journal

A lone milkman is delivering misery to the doorstep of the giant dairy industry.

Hein Hettinga was once a simple dairy farmer who sold raw milk from his farm in Chino, Calif. Today the Dutch immigrant has expanded his operation so much, so fast, that some of the biggest dairy companies and cooperatives in the U.S. have banded together against him. They are lobbying for federal laws to close loopholes they claim he exploits. Mr. Hettinga counters that the only purpose of the proposed legislation is to kill competition -- and keep milk prices high.

"That's not right," says the 63-year-old farmer.

When special interests and the powers that be are able to restrict the 'creative destruction' that results in progress, our whole economy suffers. The 'arcane system of Depression-era federal rules' which make up the milk industry and many other food industries should be abolished. Long time readers will recall this previous 6/1/05 post:

Dairy Gets Squeeze by the Feds

6/1/05 The Seattle Times. In its 85 years of existence, Smith Brothers Dairy in Kent has survived all manner of misfortune and mistakes. There was the Depression, when milk sales plummeted. There were cow-killing floods. There were modern times, when it appeared the old-fashioned idea of fresh milk delivered to the doorstep had died. "None of that compares to this," says Alexis Smith Koester, 60, dairy president and granddaughter of the founder, Ben Smith. "This is the biggest threat we've ever faced." She's talking about the federal government.

In all of this, it is amazing to me that despite the restrictions, regulations, socialism, and the crushing presence of an overbearing government, American entrepreneurs still have the spirit to struggle on and fight.

See also, 'Harvesting Cash' a Washington Post story collection on agra subsidies.