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The Real McCoy Exclusive to STR November 3, 2006 Several
years ago a friend invited me to have a drink.
It was wonderful, like nothing I had ever tasted.
I wanted more. I
needed more. That one taste
started me on a journey of research and wellness.
Where could I get some of my own?! That
drink was raw milk, unpastuerized and non-homogenized.
I have to admit, at first I was hesitant.
So conditioned was I, that pre-sip, I had a flashing image in my
mind’s eye of going to the emergency room with food poisoning, having
to explain to my loved ones why I had willingly done something so
stupid. But my friend had
been drinking it, had even given it to her children, and they were all
still standing. Such was the
deception I, like most fellow civilized people, had fallen prey to:
conventional wisdom. The
unquestioned need for the strong arm of government and the money behind
big business, to unite in an unholy union to “keep me safe.” I
am ashamed to admit this, but it was true.
In my defense, this brainwashing began before I was of sufficient
age to realize what was happening to me.
In fact, the machinery was in place well before I was conceived,
but I’ll limit this discussion to milk. When
I was first introduced to raw milk, it was dangerous here in At
that time one could be arrested for purchasing raw milk from a farmer,
much like the other failed experiment in alcohol prohibition.
Only a few years ago a farmer could have found himself on the
wrong side of bars for supplying my “milk fix” too.
It is still not a right guaranteed by law in The
reason I am able to obtain raw milk today and still sleep nights is
because of an ingenious program in use in several states.
Here in While
farmers in other states were busy working for their rights to peacefully
conduct business supplying customers with products they wished to buy,
Chuck Oliver, too tried to work with the state legislature here for a
long time. Up until then,
only the farmer was able to drink real milk without danger of being
prosecuted. The wheels of
justice turn slowly, if at all, (sometimes so slowly that they go
distinctly in reverse) and Chuck finally gave up trying to obtain the
state’s sanction. One day
he simply informed the What
is Milk? What
is commonly known today as “milk,” is a highly processed,
bastardized, unrecognizable fluid only remotely related to a cow as its
source of origin. It is
absolutely unfit for human consumption.
It comes from cows that are drugged with hormones to increase
production. Those hormones
pass into the milk supply, causing premature sexual development in
children who consume it. The
hormones have an unknown effect on adults who consume it, but government
and big business don’t want to talk about that. The
Weston A. Price Foundation is a charity founded on the human health
studies of Dr. Weston Price, who has studied diet, agriculture and
medicinal traditions throughout the world. The foundation is a fountain
of useful information about what they refer to as “real milk:” “The
source of most commercial milk is the modern “Vitamins
A and D are greatly diminished …when milk cows are fed commercial
feed. Soy meal has the wrong
protein profile for the dairy cow, resulting in a short burst of high
milk production followed by premature death. Most milk (even most milk
labeled "organic") comes from dairy cows that are kept in
confinement their entire lives and never see green grass!” Those
cows become ill much more often than humanely treated animals, and so
are often fed a steady diet of antibiotics, which also cross over into
the milk supply. Imagine the
impact on your overall health and ability to fight infection that
ingesting a steady supply of medicine unbeknownst to you could do?
Suffice it to say that there is no mad scramble for research
grants into the study of it, nor does it make headline news in medical
journals or mainstream media. Debunking
Pasteurization Dr.
Joseph Mercola, in an article on raw milk at Mercola.com
says, “While
it is certainly possible to become sick from drinking contaminated
raw milk, it is also possible to become sick from almost any food
source. But it seems that raw milk has been unfairly singled out as a
risk, when only a very small risk exists.” (emphasis mine) The
recent hysteria of E. coli found in spinach is a perfect example.
The FDA was quick to jump on the hype bandwagon.
Doug Hornig, writing for Casey
Research, is not impressed. He
makes several key points. “Our regular readers will be aware . . . that
we are eternally skeptical when the government says it is doing
something for our own good, and so we decided to take a closer look at
the spinach fear that has suddenly gripped the land. Was it justified,
or was it an overreaction engineered, once again, by those zealous
guardians of our welfare down in D.C.?” (Our
‘help’ didn’t do much for the Branch Davidians, the Vietnamese,
the Afghans or the Iraqis, but the federal government kept chugging
along, didn’t it? In fact
it grew itself exponentially. And
this list is only partial, recent history.
Now they’re destroying the Bill of Rights for our benefit too.)
Hornig continues: “First of all, hundreds of strains of E. coli
bacteria already reside in your gut. In fact, you wouldn’t have
intestinal health without them. They’re the good guys.
Unfortunately, they have a handful of cousins that can cause food
borne illnesses, and one . . . is particularly toxic, and is responsible
for most of the serious medical conditions associated with the
bacterium. Even if you do
ingest (it) you won’t automatically get sick.” Hornig
quotes nutritional consultant Jon Barron here: “Those with healthy
populations of beneficial bacteria in their intestinal tracts are
virtually immune to problems. There is simply no room for ingested E.
coli to take root, colonize, and multiply—not to mention the fact that
the beneficial bacteria gobble up any stray E. coli they encounter. In
other words, the outbreak has less to do with contaminated food than it
does with the epidemic of compromised immune systems and intestinal
tracts.’” Foundational
to the philosophy of the Weston A. Price Foundation is the encouragement
of healthy bacteria in the digestive tract.
It is the main argument for the promotion of raw milk. Dr.
Mercola goes on to cite a study outlined here
by the Weston A. Price Foundation that documents the high number of
cases of food borne illnesses that are due strictly to processed
foods, and not one that is due to raw milk.
The government does not require those foods, which have wreaked
havoc on humans, even killing children, to carry any kind of warning
label. Does something smell
fishy to you? As the queen
of soul might ask, “Who’s zoomin’ who?” The
Weston A. Price Foundation tells us: “Pasteurization
was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant
fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty
production methods. But times have changed and modern stainless steel
tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make
pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. And
pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria for Johne’s disease
suspected of causing Crohn's disease in humans with which most
confinement cows are infected . . . .
Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for
pasteurized milk.” The
Weston A. Price Foundation also tells us, “Today's milk is accused of
causing everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer, but when
Americans could buy Real Milk, these diseases were rare.”
It
is the processing of milk that makes it dangerous to ingest.
During processing, the fat in milk is contorted so as to no
longer be absorbable or useful to the body, so it is stored as
cholesterol in the bloodstream. The
enzymes, which naturally occur in milk, are also destroyed, rendering it
no longer a “living” food and decreasing the body’s ability to
absorb and utilize nutrients and feed the “good” bacteria in the
digestive tract. “Pasteurization…diminishes
vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C,
B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is
associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants,
growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and
cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before
maturity. Processors must
remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal
clarification.” Bovine
Growth Hormone BGH
is a naturally occurring protein hormone, which controls milk production
in dairy cows. Recombinant
bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is a dangerous, synthetically engineered
version which causes increased susceptibility to infection and disease
and stimulation to cancer-accelerating hormones. It is widely used in
dairy cows in the Mike
Ewall, a writer for ActionPA.org, has plenty to say of producers of
bovine growth hormone. He
writes as if he is an opponent of milk, when actually his written
opposition is one against processed milk.
He has this to say about producers
of BGH, and remember, none of this would be possible without the
strong arm of government backing. “Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Upjohn, and American
Cyanamid are the four corporations that stood to profit from the $500
Million to be made from worldwide marketing of rBGH. While they all
competed to develop rBGH, only Monsanto has continued to develop and
market it. The first 3 of these four companies are convicted corporate
felons. All 4 of them have a history of chemical plants that explode,
toxic waste spills, deadly toxic gas cloud releases, consumer
pharmaceutical products that kill people and produce birth defects,
conspiracy to fix prices, antitrust violations, predatory and
monopolistic practices, and/or failure to inform Federal officials of
testing results indicating fatalities connected to their products. “Monsanto,
one of the top 10 polluters in the These
are the folks that the FDA puts in charge of your health, Decriminalizing
Fat Conventional
wisdom is like a drum being beaten.
Often, a trend promoted long enough stops being questioned, takes
on respectability and is eventually accepted as truth.
For instance, not long ago women were convinced that
breastfeeding was backward, unnecessary and no better than
bottle-feeding mass produced formula.
Now we know differently. If
natural is better for babies, why wouldn’t it be for adults? “Diet
dictocrats” as Sally
Fallon calls them, tell us that fat causes heart disease.
Actually, the FDA-approved processed fat, called trans fat, is
the culprit. The FDA gave
trans fats the seal of approval to the detriment of It
suits the powers that be to discredit fat in general, so now that is the
current accepted version of truth. Dr.
Price’s research reveals this about saturated fat: “Average
butterfat content from
old-fashioned cows at the turn of the century was over 4% (or more than
50% of calories). Today butterfat comprises less than 3% (or less than
35% of calories). Worse, consumers have been duped into believing that
low-fat and skim milk products are good for them. Only by marketing
low-fat and skim milk as a health food can the modern dairy industry get
rid of its excess poor-quality, low-fat milk from modern high-production
herds. Butterfat contains vitamins A and D needed for assimilation of
calcium and protein in the water fraction of the milk. Without them
protein and calcium are more difficult to utilize and possibly toxic.
“Butterfat
is rich in short- and medium chain fatty acids which protect against
disease and stimulate the immune system. It contains glyco-spingolipids
which prevent intestinal distress and conjugated
linoleic acid which has strong anticancer properties.” Real
Feed, Real Milk Today,
most Americans get their food from “superstores” which contain rows
and rows of products in boxes, which hardly qualify as “food.”
Extensive studies have been conducted on the disastrous effects
of processed foods on human health.
Such “foods” are laden with preservatives, toxins and
pesticides, which leave one starved for nutrients and a craving for more
of the same, leading inevitably to obesity and poor health. Here,
the Weston A. Price foundation paints a very different, refreshing
picture: “Real
feed for cows is green grass in Spring, Summer and Fall; green feed,
silage, hay and root vegetables in Winter. It is not soy
meal, cottonseed meal or other commercial feeds, nor is it bakery
waste, chicken manure or citrus peel cake, laced with pesticides. Vital
nutrients like vitamins A
and D, and the "Price
Factor" (a fat-soluble catalyst that promotes optimum mineral
assimilation) are greatest in milk from cows eating green grass,
especially rapidly growing green grass in the spring and fall.” Nothing
good comes easy. This is a
brief glimpse into the time and care invested in the health of cows that
will in turn generate health for the farmer, his family and his
customers. There is a quiet
movement afoot, promoting a return to small, independent farmers and
their locally grown and produced foods, especially raw milk.
Special emphasis is placed on a return to a direct relationship
between farmer and consumer, promoting responsibility for both parties,
and healing the disconnection between people and real food, not only for
ourselves, but for our children too. “What's
needed today is a return to humane, non-toxic, pasture-based dairying
and small-scale traditional processing,” says the Price Foundation.
There is a growing demand; sadly but predictably, the only thing
standing in the way is government. George
W. Bush is quoted as saying, “You can fool some of the people some of
the time, and those are the ones you should concentrate on.”
The continued bureaucratization of real milk is just another
travesty of an out of control government sticking its snout where it
doesn’t belong. It blinds itself to dangers when it benefits them and
goes about exerting strong-arm enforcement against people who are
quietly, peacefully going about their own pursuit of life, liberty and
happiness. Government
benefits directly from the inappropriate affections of the large
agricultural lobbies. It
creates an artificial need for more of itself, and more funding, even if
its actions are toxic to us. Americans
can no longer afford government protection, which slaughters the sheep
and protects the wolves. As
long as bureaucracy stands to gain power and money from our ignorance,
it will continue destroying our health. More
and more Americans are waking up to the fact that no bureaucrat, no
matter how well meaning if such exists, can keep them safe or well.
Au contrer, mon ami. Like
any good thing worth having, health does not happen by accident.
Like it or not, it has always been about taking personal
responsibility, and it always will be. The
good news doesn’t stop at raw milk.
There is raw butter and cheese, unprocessed, raw honey and
homemade, raw kefir – a beverage which is a veritable spring of living
nourishment for the digestive system.
Cheers! Where
can you get some of your own real milk?
Local sources are listed at: www.realmilk.com. The Weston A. Price
Foundation’s “Campaign for Real Milk,” can be accessed in whole here.
Its information has been used here with permission. Retta Fontana is an atheist, anarchist, baker, potter, parenting teacher and a student of forex.
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