Seize This

(Raw Milk, Part III)

by Retta Fontana 

Exclusive to STR

June 12, 2007

Previously, in The Real McCoy, I expounded the benefits of consuming raw milk.  In Raw Milk Is Not Crack, I reported the true misadventures of my local farmer.  Richard  Hebron sadly came into the crosshairs of the Michigan FDA for peacefully supplying raw milk to cow share owners who willingly purchased it.  I’m happy to report some good news, for a change, and that’s besides the benefits of raw milk obtained from healthy cows.  

No, I’m not going to tell you that our masters on high have decreed that we can walk in to any store and purchase whatever kind of milk we wish to drink. Get real!  That can never happen.  Everyone knows raw milk is a gateway drug!  Government-funded studies prove it, and therefore it must be true!  

I’m sure you don’t need an explanation, but all the same, here it is.  Big business is in bed with their sick friends at the FDA.  The relationship is just too beneficial to all concerned for freedom to accidentally happen.  No, this is how it works: Big agriculture gets a monopoly, the FDA gets to keep playing sadist with a pension, and the health of the unwitting consumer degenerates unnecessarily.  Big government always screws the little guy, even as it hands him candy with the other hand.  

Anyway, the news is much better than an obsequious gesture from the powers that be.   Recently, I obtained a questionnaire from a national group that has been fighting the “Diet Dictocrats” for years.  (For now they shall remain nameless.)  The questions seemed rather ho-hum until I came to one asking, “If raw milk were declared illegal in your state, would you find a way to obtain it anyway?”  

Would they be asking a question like that if the answer was never a “yes?”  Me thinks not.  Sweet Jesus, is civil disobedience alive and well among regular folk?  It was with relish that I checked the “yes” box myself.  I even smiled at the (government toady) postman who sent it on its merry way for me.  

The last time I picked up my raw milk order, there was an East Indian fellow who happened to be at the (secret for now) pickup location for another reason.  He made inquiries about the milk.  He said he’d heard about it on several occasions and asked if he could buy some.   

Because of laws against the sale of raw milk, Hebron had to refuse outright to sell to him the life-giving substance, for fear of landing in jail.  Apparently, one brush with armed government thugs was enough for him.  After all, this fellow asking to buy milk could be an FDA mole.  I considered offering him a taste of the gallon I had just purchased, which was technically mine now.  He seemed genuinely curious and harmless.  I then thought better of it.  If he turned out to be a spy, neither Hebron nor I would be going home to our families that night, possibly many a night.  (I’ve told my family never to bail me out if the state fingers me.  It’s my new “weight-loss regimen in the wings”--I’m sure there is nothing they can offer me that I’d willingly pass over my lips.)  

Aren’t we all criminals now?  Well, suspicious of one another anyway.  This is what a police state will get you.  

My report gets better than just civil disobedience, though!  This week, when I went to pick up my legal-for-now-if-you-jump-through-lots-of-hoops raw milk, I asked Hebron how business was.  “Really good,” was his reply.  “Great, in fact!  Lately, every time I make a delivery, the order gets bigger and bigger.”  I was very happy for him.  He seemed to have more to say.  I hoped he was about to say that he was beginning to break even, but was happily wrong in my expectation.  “I’m thinking of writing the FDA a thank you letter.  Since they seized my truck full of milk, I have people contacting me to buy milk shares from all over Michigan .  Business is booming!”  

How many businesses in Michigan can brag that they are booming!?  I can tell you, not that many.  Certainly no other which has the government riding roughshod over it.  Normally it’s the ones who are in bed with government whores (and those whores themselves) who are most successful.  

Well, well, well, all is not lost!  The law of unintended consequences is finally at work for the good guys!  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the worse things get, the better off we’ll all be.  If government played nice, it would not be worth it to lift a finger in objection.  However, the bigger and more intrusive it inevitably becomes, more people will be waking up in alarm--this is good.  They’ll be feeling more pain and more of them will become willing to lift government a very special finger!