Who Will Cross the Finish Line First?
What legacy will we leave our children?
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This is Part IV of a 4-part series about some of my personal experiences over the years as a Raw Milk Mama and activist. It includes details I’ve never shared before, and experiences that are difficult to write about.
These are real and true personal experiences and will be quite difficult for some to believe. It was difficult to believe even living them.
Black market definition: The illegal business of buying or selling currency or goods banned by a government or subject to governmental control, such as price controls or rationing. (American Heritage Dictionary, online)
Part I here – Raw Milk is Flooding DC
Part II here — The Black Market is a Race to the Bottom
Part III here — There is no "Easy" Solution: Only a Simply One
Our choices today determine the legacy we leave behind–will we repeal the prohibition before food insecurity becomes a messy outcome?
Milk and alcohol have a twisted and convoluted history here in America. It was the rise of the Whisky distilleries in the mid 1800s that led to the deadly swill milk of the mid and late 1800s as our cities exploded in population. Several years before the 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture and distribution of alcohol, authoritarian minds took raw milk on its own solitary march toward prohibition.
The prohibition of alcohol wove in and out and around the ban on raw milk for humans, with corruption and plenty of propaganda pushing both narratives forward for the benefit of wealthy businessmen.
Since the first ban on raw milk until today, America’s small dairies have seen a constant constriction making it harder for small dairies to succeed to feed Americans this whole, health-giving food.
But unlike alcohol, today it is difficult to source clean, safe raw milk. Our cultural view of raw milk remains locked in a prohibitive mindset. A few scattered state laws provide some relief, however the federal policy is stuck in an obsolete 1800s worldview: that raw milk is dangerous.
Is that true?
Leading up to the 1920s alcohol prohibition, alcohol was blamed for many social ills and became (and still is today) a scapegoat for our problems.
Oddly, life-giving, life-affirming raw milk got twisted into a story whereas raw milk is now the scapegoated “villain” while alcohol is endorsed, encouraged, subsidized and flows freely into our neighborhoods and homes despite its clear harm.
Today, “there are more than 178,000 deaths (approximately 120,000 male deaths and 59,000 female deaths) attributable to excessive alcohol use, making alcohol one of the leading preventable causes of death in the United States, behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.” (NIH.Gov)
Why then, when we KNOW alcohol is a direct cause of many health problems and deaths, is it still widely available. Yet raw milk–which has statistically zero related deaths–continues to elicit an unnecessary social stigma, persecution, and, in some cases, prosecution?
As a young mother, pregnant, or nursing my children, I could find liquor stores everywhere around me. No questions asked if I wanted to load up my cart with booze and drink to my hearts’ content. (I didn’t, but I so easily could). All around me fast food signs and advertisements directly teased and tempted my children, while our society celebrated candy and how much we could buy and consume. Candy was everywhere. It was an unspoken expectation that my children would eat all the candy they wanted that kind strangers or loving family could thrust into their little hands.
And yet, as I weaned my own children, I had a choice. I could indulge our country’s sick obsession with sweets, fast food, and nutrient-robbing junk, or I could provide them with the best possible food I could find and the best chance at life and health. I chose the latter. And that included raw milk.
The burden and hurdles I encountered to get a little bit of raw milk from clean, trusted sources, was almost beyond belief.
Even when I did find those sources, the ways the government harassed and criminalized them–and us mothers–was a travesty.
I watched good, clean farmers get shut down for providing neighbors with a couple gallons of milk while teenagers in the same rural neighborhoods died of drug overdoses or alcohol-related deaths.
But the swell of mothers looking to nourish children with clean, wholesome raw milk was beginning to make a difference.
The courage of some of the farmers who saw a law against raw milk for what it was–a policy failure–and chose peace and noncompliance, inspired me too.
And so we kept going.
Bridge building for true food security
Food insecurity affects ALL our families. What would happen in the case of massive food insecurity is too awful to even think about. So most people don’t.
They refuse to consider it and even plan ahead with a modicum of effort.
The last time the country had to contend with an economic + farming crisis was in the great depression era, during and after prohibition. And during that time about 26% of Americans were living on family farms.1 As of 2021, not even 1% of our population is considered “farm workers.”2
In the 1930’s, many more Americans had access to land and the knowledge and skills to produce a good bit of their own sustenance. WWII rationing gave people a strong and compelling reason to grow their own food. “Victory Gardens” were a huge hit and Americans came together to solve the common problem of food shortages.
Many of us alive today haven’t known widespread hunger. We haven’t known what it’s like to live in a whole society that had to tighten their belts.
Absolutely some of our neighbors, friends, and family have suffered through periods of food insecurity. I am not questioning that or in any way diminishing that serious issue.
I am speaking to food insecurity on such a widespread level that we literally cannot imagine what it would be like.
Homesteading is not the only answer. It’s a great beginning, but it won’t solve food insecurity for the cities and suburbs or the many ways in which food access is stratified based on class or income.
What will?
Building bridges, recognizing that we are all in a completely interdependent society and that laws must change so that we can ALL have the choice to become participatory in our own food production and food security.
That includes micro dairies in and around our densely populated communities, just like we used to have. It means once again we use common land to produce food and tend animals.
True food security means growing gardens, learning to slaughter and process meat, becoming cheese makers, processing vegetables into fermented veggies, canned veggies and dried.
And it means many of us must learn how to grow, harvest, clean, and sort grains, beans and other dry goods.
We all don’t need to be good at everything, but most should be decent at some things related to producing or processing food.
The food crisis is already here. And, like a tidal wave, it will swallow many Americans as they (and we) are out collecting seashells rather than running for higher ground.
This is not hyperbole. It could all-too-easily happen with the precariousness we have placed ourselves in.
We must think differently about our food, how and where it is produced, how much a part of that production we are, how we integrate it into our daily lives and our expectations.
How much more fun would it be if we went to the local farm for most of our daily milk, butter, cheese, eggs, bread, and veggies rather than the strip mall grocery store?
Imagine our personal health and ecosystem health if we saw our land as a partner, to nurture it wisely in support of our bodies.
Regulators and governments have a vital role to play in this immediately. Create access. Not through subsidies and food stamps, but through honoring and respecting our ability to co-create and co-produce food in our communities. Yes, that means we will need to shift some mindsets. It means we might have to forgo enforcement of ridiculous zoning rules in favor of true food security. It means encouraging the use of available land and resources for producing food that feeds people locally. And by golly, it means expanding all kinds of exemptions for hyper local, small-scale, and participatory food production.
Increasing food security anywhere, increases food security everywhere.
For all the conventional dairies hand-wringing over “public health” or foodborne illness, stop it.
You don’t want raw milk legalized because you think raw milk being illegal protects your market. It’s not because pasteurized milk is perfect. Conventional dairies postering against raw dairy will only bolster and strengthen an already too-strong black market that harms all of us on different levels.
There are few good people or good farmers in the black market. Mostly it’s people looking to make money on the backs of whoever they can. Just like the prohibition-era gangs were there for control and used corruption as their tool for profit.
Continued prohibition and advocacy against raw milk won’t work. It will only send people into the arms of the black market. And those who profit on the black market are there, ready to warmly embrace them and fill their heads with pseudo-legal fluff and jargon that does no one any good.
Furthermore, Americans must have options.
Many years ago, I got a call from a recent immigrant. She was looking for raw milk for her family. She wanted to take it home and boil it, she explained to me, like they do in her country.
I was shocked.
“Why,” I asked her, “do you want to pay these high prices for specialty raw milk that you’re just going to boil?”
And she explained to me that she wanted to know where her milk was coming from and that they boiled it at home (in the country she was from) so that’s what she wanted to do.
I quickly got past my bewilderment and I understood why this was important to her and millions just like her. I’d heard it hundreds of times myself about why people wanted raw milk from local farms:
“It tastes like home,” they would say to me with a whimsical smile. “It tastes like my childhood.”
It’s fine for the government agencies to express their opinion about raw milk. But it’s not fine for any government to take away our right to access locally produced raw milk from micro dairies.
We can decide if we drink it raw or if we want to boil it. Sure, go ahead and tell us we should pasteurize it at home, then let us choose.
Change takes action and sacrifice, not greed
The antidote to corruption and greed is peaceful noncompliance, not a competition to see who can be greedier and more corrupt.
Jesus didn’t respond to the corruption of the scribes and Pharisees by trying to be MORE corrupt than them.
Harriet Tubman didn’t win hers and hundreds of others slaves’ freedom by being worse than the slave industry.
Gandhi and the Indians who agreed with him didn’t win back governance of India by being more corrupt and greedy than the British.
Martin Luther King didn’t compete with the KKK to see who could be more cruel.
Nope, all of them sacrificed for the change they saw was possible. They actively stood against it and said peacefully with their actions simply this, in the famous words of Gandhi:
“You can have my dead body, but you cannot have my compliance.”
Capone on the other hand was a different breed. He wasn’t led by altruistic values of freedom.
He was driven by greed. 1 more dollar. 1 more speakeasy. 1 more hit on the bad guys. 1 more useless court case. One more milk sale…
Unarguably, there are pockets and facets of the US governance structure that foster corruption. Al Capone, like all those who use corruption to their advantage, took advantage of the structural and human weaknesses to compete with the government over who could be more corrupt.
No one wins when that becomes the aim.
Today, we cannot enjoy any success by competing with the corruption of the government. The only answer is to side-step the corruption and go straight to participatory production.
The end of prohibition opened up competition for alcohol. Albeit imperfectly, for sure, but competition increased. While one could hardly say that America is now a “free market” for alcohol, one can simultaneously see that–for the most part, (I know there will always be exceptions)–there is very little bootlegging and, comparatively speaking, very little illegal trade of alcohol.
It’s not a fairy tale ending as with any addictive substance, but it’s a long way from the messy, convoluted black market fringe that created an entire alternate and underground economy in the 1920s and 30s.
It’s equally a statement of moral courage on the part of Americans.
Do we or do we not have the autonomy to choose food and drink for ourselves?
It is time for the FDA to admit that they’ve failed.
Failed at the prohibition of raw milk – udderly failed. They have failed at keeping our food system and food supply safe. They have failed in getting out of the way so Americans can create their own food security.
The FDA would greatly benefit in realizing that there are those of us who care about food security and are reasonable.
It’s time to talk. It’s time to begin the long journey towards policy change. Our milk policy won’t change overnight with the stroke of a president’s pen the way FDR repealed the 18th Amendment, but we can start.
We can start with small changes and work towards an interdependent landscape filled with food security for ALL Americans and our guests from every walk of life and from every socio-economic bracket. We can know that we have the knowledge and confidence to leave the precious inheritance of food security to our future generations.
You cannot have good health if you do not have the right food. You cannot have the right food if you ignore local food security.
Take a look anywhere on the internet and you can find a plethora of farmers and businesses touting their wares. You can get frozen meat shipped to you anywhere in America from New Zealand, Australia, the far reaches of Brazil… “Regenerative farms” abound with claims of restoring topsoil and leading the way of food freedom because you, too, can now get a “grassfed” steak packed in a styrofoam cooler box and shipped to you from thousands of miles away..
Is that food security? Does that spring from the wells of “truth force” and sacrifice that one must germinate to enhance and bring about justice in all its many forms and intricacies. Will those freezer boxes of exorbitant expensive meat feed the children of the communities that lack food security–rich and poor?
Or will it only come from continual asking of how we can create local, secure food systems for the coming generations?
I’m telling my stories in the hopes that we can all begin to crawl out of the denial and find a better way.
I believe we can. I believe we must.
But it starts with an honest acknowledgement of the facts.
For some, this will drive you deeper into denial as you resist the reality of these facts. And for others, perhaps it will inspire an honest reckoning of your own responsibility for where we are today.
This is an honest reckoning I’ve had to personally wrestle with over the past 5-10 years.
How COULD our food system be so far gone? What could I have done differently, if anything, to bring about a different outcome?
Many of these questions will never have an answer. They are in the past and perhaps that is where they should stay.
But the question of what kind of food system we can have in the immediate future is a question begging for a new answer–a new beginning as we acknowledge the corruption around us and begin to take steps towards a brighter, cleaner, safer food system going forward.
Prohibition is a tragic tale of government overreach, the failed attempt to control basic human behavior, and the meteoric rise of organized crime setting a precedent that is just as much part of the flesh of America as our tales of cowboys, Civil War, rags to riches, and the always compelling story of the rugged American farmer. And prohibition–whether alcohol, or raw milk– can only end badly.
It’s time to end prohibition on raw milk and rise to the task of creating small systems that work. A locally-managed micro dairy in every community is, perhaps, the best antidote to rising food insecurity and the blatant corruption and crime that go with it. This is America, where the American dream is still possible
I’m a proud American and I’m dreaming.
How can we turn these dreams into our reality?
Together we will make a change!
I’m hosting a webinar in the next couple of weeks for paid subscribers. We’ll go over the real history of raw milk including recent incidents that have impacted raw milk farmers and consumers. This will include immediate action items you can take to help make raw milk more available and reduce persecution on our small farms. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers.
If you’d like to be part of this, be on the lookout for the paid subscriber post with the full details.
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Seems like there may be a small farm food security movement that REAL people can buy into in the near future...
I am looking forward to donating as much money and sweat equity into this vision that I can muster as soon as I am given access or an action prompt to the "simple solution."