You Can Run, But It’s Getting Tougher to Hide from Raw Milk Regulators Like PA’s Bill Chirdon
It’s tempting for many producers of raw milk to think that if they stay far enough under the radar, or off the grid, that they can escape the clutches of super-zealous regulators like Bill Chirdon of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
That’s what Nancy and Glen Wise of Elizabethtown, PA, thought five years ago when they acquired a couple cows and began selling raw milk, yogurt, butter, and cream—to complement the existing chicken and vegetable sales from their 23-acre farm. Gradually, the raw dairy business expanded, and they now have twelve cows and thriving dairy sales.
They didn’t want to deal with the state, its raw milk permit…and its prohibition on selling other raw-dairy products like yogurt, butter, and cream.
“We were hoping to do this quietly, selling to customers, and not making a fuss,” Nancy told me last week. “Now we are in a spot we don’t want to be in.”
The spot they are in is that last month they were sent three citations for selling “manufactured” raw dairy products, and also for selling raw milk without a permit. They are due in court in Elizabethtown (920 S. Spruce St.) on Tuesday, the day after Mark Nolt’s trial on Monday in Mt. Holly Springs. (The two towns are apparently within an hour of each other.)
It seems someone—perhaps another farmer, or a consumer afraid of raw milk—tipped the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to the Wises’ activities last summer. In September, a PDA agent came to a farmer’s market and gave Glenn an application for a raw milk permit.
But Glen felt he didn’t need a permit, since he and Nancy sold their products as part of an organization known as CARE (the Citizen’s Alliance for Responsible Ecofarming), which has several thousand members and serves as a private milk club. Each of the Wises’ customers must pay a $20 membership fee to join CARE.
The campaign targeting Glen Wise and Mark Nolt is part of a larger campaign against Pennsylvania raw dairy farmers, and coincides with the arrival of Bill Chirdon from Dean Foods as the state’s top dairy safety official in 2006. Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation provides details of that campaign in a posting on Rep. Ron Paul’s web site.
The larger point here may be that farmers involved in raw milk production need to stand together. It’s tempting for many to think that the raids and searches and citations are merely targeting dairies that are too publicity hungry or too uppity in challenging the authorities. I’m afraid it’s not like that. The regulators in many states are deadly serious about stamping out raw milk sales, and they’re following up on any and all tips from any and all individuals. They’re sending undercover agents to make purchases and infiltrate buying clubs and herd shares. It’s repression at its worst, but the larger point is that so long as farmers keep quiet while their brethren are being harassed, they are making life easy for the regulators.
The Complete Patient
in Food, Government policy
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Reader Comments (28)
I hope to meet all of you that will be at the Mt Holly Springs tomorrow.
My sign states.
MARK NOLTS
RAW DAIRY
SAVED
MY LIFE
See you there. Don
(Abbreviated version with due respect to the original)
First they came for the herbal supplement manufacturers,
but since I drank raw milk, I did not speak up.
Next they came for the leafy greens growers,
but since I grew my own I did not speak up.
Then they came for the raw milk farmers
and there was no one left to speak up for them.
If we dont speak out now its ALL OVER.
Just go back to sleep America for we shall all be SHEEPLE in the truest sense of the word.
Though farmers can still provide their own families with raw milk if the product is outlawed, consumers have no such recourse.
So, what do you suggest we do as government employees...ignore our mission/vision/education/passion and play solitaire on the computer all day? You misundertand the government worker. Clearly, this government employee has no life because she is engaging in discussion on this blog, Oh well, maybe something positive will happen, someone (including the government workers reading this) will learn something, or share information with people that otherwise seem to be from another planet.
Darth
Are you reading and posting to this blog on company time?
When I see comments like these:
" concerned2:
Are you reading and posting to this blog on company time? jean"
I have to say it really pisses me off.
jean, you obviously don't read this blog regularily, or, if you do, you don't have the intelligence to understand what has been going on.
Were you a regular reader (I'll assume you are, rather than assuming you are just stupid...sorry David) you would know that C2, affectionately known as "Darth", IS a public health employee, on the scientific, not bureaucratic, side.
You would know that she (yes, Darth is a "she"...I'll bet five bucks you haven't even read enough of this blog to know that) came to this blog taking the government's anti-raw milk side. She and I went head to head on several issues, from appropriate testing techniques to the difference between commercial raw milk and small, farmer to consumer raw milk.
And she listened.
And thought.
And, I believe, agonized...
And then she actually became somewhat of a convert on the issue, at least as it relates to small farmer to consumer raw milk sales.
She and I still disagree on some things...so what? I really don't want a mirmadon on EITHER side. I want someone who has a brain that they use.
She does...you, obviously, based on your smartalec comment, don't.
Were more folks in the public health field blessed with her attitude, we who believe in raw milk would have FAR less problem with the bureaucrats who ARE stupid, and refuse to think.
It took NO thought to post your ignorant, stupid comment. I'll take a government employee like Darth over someone like you 24/7.
I've never met Darth...never talked to her except on this blog...but I consider her a friend.
You I don't. Your attitude does FAR more damage to the raw milk side than any guvment ass ever could.
Bob Hayles
Thornberry Village Homestead
Jasper, GA
706.692.7004
Thornberry Village Homestead...owned by God, managed by Bob and Tyler.
The above quotation that so angered you is attributed to ME - cheryl - NOT jean.
Who doesn't have his facts straight?
I find your chiding of me very insulting. I read this blog every single day - and I am a farmshare owner/raw milk producer, too.
I have defended you to the end and have held your bravado in high esteem. Please don't make me rethink that decision.
The fact that concerned2 is participating in this discussion is wonderful; however, if she is doing so on company time, and if doing so is NOT part of her job description, she is abusing her office's internet connection. On the TAXPAYER'S dime.
If she is participating in the discussion on her own time, I applaude her.
I asked a simple question - a valid one, I believe, considering the amount of money the taxpayers continue to throw at various government programs, including those that continue to harass the raw milk producers.
Bob, it is you who owes me an apology.
And one to jean, for misquoting her.
Bob,
Thanks for the nice words. I've enjoyed our interaction (and others) and learned so much. While I am blogging on my own time, I have plans for using this information/knowledge in a productive (though maybe small way--I'm not a big Chirdon guy even though Darth sounds large) in my field of work.
C2
>The fact that concerned2 is participating in this discussion is wonderful; however, if she is doing so on company time, and if doing so is NOT part of her job description, she is abusing her office's internet connection. On the TAXPAYER'S dime.
i'd much rather have concerned2 participating in this blog on my dime than harassing small and sustainable farmers on my taxpayer dime.
bob, ain't you 'shamed? how could you take the wrong person -- or even the right person -- to task like that?
jean,I apologise.
As for the gist of my response to the comment itself, I stand by it, despite your explanation.
Since you read this blog regularily, you know that Darth is a public health employee on the scientific/research side.
If you know anything about research, you would know that there is more to it than just playing with petri dishes and test tubes, and looking through a microscope.
You would know that it involves investigating what has gone before in the issue you are looking into. It involves LEARNING about an issue, and trying to start your work on a clean slate, without preconcieved notions that would possibly, falsely, lead you to an incorrect conclusion.
It involves looking at ALL sides of an issue, not just the easy one...especially one that would be easily validated by your superiors.
A scientist's investigation of the issue they are looking at should not involve tunnel vision, with the entrance of the tunnel dictated by "conventional wisdom".
If Darth's time spent here, learning, is on her own dime, I applaud the fact that she gives a damn enough to educate herself and keep an open mind, as she obviously has.
If her time here, learning about our side of the issue, despite the preconcieved ideas the general public health community has, is spent on work time, I consider it justifiable research and taxpayer money well spent.
Bob Hayles
Bob Hayles
By the way, our superiors can be a real pain sometimes, but we are glad they don't send us lab rats out on undercover milk purchases...trained, badged enforcement agents do that job.
C2
The farmers that produce the fuel for this movement have their task at hand. They are the ones shouldering the risk. They are the ones pedaling the bicycle. The notion that they have to man the handle bars too, is wrong. It’s the CONSUMERS that should be speaking up and directing this campaign for legalization. They are the ones with the numbers, and the ones that elected officials will tend towards hearing. The farmer has a different avenue to vent his outrage, and it’s not calling up the authorities and telling them they are wrong or “here I am doing it anyway’. Their place is continuing to keep the good stuff flowing, and creating strong communities centered around this perfect food. It is through these COMMUNITIES that the power of the movement lies, not the individual farmer. It’s through the mobilization of these communities that change can be affected. Farmers doing bulls eye impersonations, or tricks for the camera, will set this movement back.
It’s clear that this revolution will have to be won state by state, a nationwide resolution is still far from any traction. And there is a blueprint for success, one just has to look at Ohio. Getting ‘in’ with candidates running for office, working with them to understand our position, and then getting them elected, will take us further than any ‘made for TV’ charade. Focusing our numbers on those that need a vote, concentrates our energy where it can do the most good. We’ll never change Chirdon’s mind or others like him. What we need to do is make sure that the people that fill these positions of power, do so with people that are educated about, understand fully and are sympathetic to our cause. It worked in Ohio, there is no reason it can’t work in PA.
The authorities will see to it that there will be plenty of martyrs for our cause. There is no good reason for farmers to ask for it. Is it wiser for a PA farmer to encourage 50 letters to the legislature that named Chirdon director, or to try and show him (and the system) up by conducting some spectacle at the courthouse? Is it smarter to meet a powerful force that is directed at you head on, or using a minimal amount of energy to redirect that force away from your vital organs. No, we cannot let our outrage get the best of us. We must maintain clear heads and look at the situation through calm and collected eyes. We cannot let the misguided, the Chirdons, dictate our strategy by stirring our emotions. As long as the milk keeps flowing, we’ve won. (and MN knows this, that’s why he continues to sell his milk).
It will be the volume of the consumer, and the pressure they can muster towards the establishment, that will best further our cause. Outspoken or not, farmers can do more for the cause by creating outspoken consumers (and they can do this best by continuing to produce the good stuff...silently if need be).
Kirsten was on it.