How ironic. Just days after Ohio citizens voted to restrain trade and reduce property rights by passing state issues 2 and 5 (an increase in the minimum wage and a statewide ban on smoking), Jeff Eschmeyer of the Ohio Farmers Union contends in a letter to the Columbus Dispatch that farmers and consumers have a right to sell and buy raw milk. Mr. Eschmeyer is correct that Ohioans have the natural right to produce and consume milk in its raw form, but as recent laws and administrative rulings in Ohio have shown, having a natural right does not translate into a legal right.
In case you may feel that this is a local issue, BusinessWeek.com reports that California and Michigan have also engaged in this new war for interventionism; The War on Raw Milk.
Sadly, many smile as we continue to incrementally vote out the rights that founded this country. The power to vote out other’s rights will someday be the power to lose your rights. Every time a new law or issue is passed, the supporters claim that the issue at hand will be the last step. As Eschmeyer and others are now realizing, there appears to be no end to the dreams of do-gooders who see it as their mission to force us all to live as they chose.
Whatever happened to the motto “Don’t tread on me!” that defined our Revolution? Was there a second phrase to it that read, “But, I may tread on you?”
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I commented on this similar story here:
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/states-target-raw-milk-farmers.html
I read an interesting book about fresh (raw) milk: The Untold Story of Milk, by Ron Schmid. It tells the story of how pasteurization and homogenization became compulsory in most places. There were interesting circumstances and reasons behind the push for state regulation, but I think the net effect of the interference has been strongly negative.
One of the clever ways that people get around the law is through cow-sharing programs. Farmers sell shares to customers that give them partial ownership of a given cow or cows. So the customer technically isn’t buying raw milk, he’s just picking up milk from his own cow, and paying rent so the farm will take care of it.
I suspect that the demand for raw milk is increasing significantly. More and more people are learning about the benefits of raw milk.
Why should we be suprised that the government will restrict what we can eat and drink. It has been so successful with tobacco and alcohol that transfats, sugar, raw milk, beef, goose liver bans are only a matter of time.
The first comment has it exactly right that a loss of private property rights ONLY LEADS TO MORE LOSSES of similar rights. I live in Ohio and I tried to explain it but failed, probably because God was against me.
France is one of the only countries in Europe where raw milk product trade is still very liberal, (even though the regulation craze from the EC has already caused some damages in rural areas. Great cheese was sold unpacked on local country markets without any license by old grandmas, of course w/o any cooling facilities, nor incidents and that for generations, but that’s now almost finished….) Still, the finest (raw milk) cheese comes from there (and from Italy too perhaps), whereas Switzerland, with its great tradition also, but alas with its Germanic food regulation bias has given up, ruling the old raw milk trade illegal as well. Obviously, mortality isn’t significantly higher in France, nor was it for twenty years.
However, in France also, pregnant women are now explicitly discouraged to eat such raw milk products, even though they are tested against lysteriosis/toxoplasmosis through their doctor monthly as reimbursed by social security. The point is that, once that disease is actually traced in the body, there’s plenty of time to act with a simple cure against it before it becomes dangerous for the baby or the mother, no need to panic. However, the national social security deficit extends, and Statists must think about the costs of a vaccine and of a cure that they want to suppress from reimbursement for the general population… and they simply rule the raw milk as incompatible. What bothers me is that it used to be the same vaccination for both diseases, as my kid was born, so perhaps they plan to outlaw cats soon too (main origin for toxoplasmosis) to really cut the costs.
My hint anyways is that national social security as institution pushes the most thus for this milk prohibition, not medical science.
So true. Many of the raw milk advocates probably do not even see any connection between a smoking ban and restrictions on access to raw milk. So sad that many of those concerned with civil liberties do not care about economic liberties.
You commented at the last of your piece, “Don’t tread on me!” that was a part of our Revolution?; was followed by “Was there a second phrase to the statement, “But,I may tread on you”?
The statement should be “Don’t tread on me or I WILL tread on you!”
You do not have the stage to yourself! You cannot speak, then not allow others to respond. There is a law of actions bringing about reactions. Take the statement, “You smoke, I chew. Blow smoke on me and I will spit on you”.
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