© AgMedia Inc.
by SUSAN MANN
The trial of Durham-area farmer Michael Schmidt, who’s facing 20 charges related to selling and distributing raw milk, wrapped up in a Newmarket Court yesterday with the Crown Attorney’s final witness.
The judge’s decision won’t be made for several months, says Schmidt’s wife, Elisa Vanderhout. Final arguments also still have to be made.
Schmidt, who defended himself during the seven-day trial, wasn’t available for comment.
Vanderhout says they couldn’t afford a lawyer, which would have cost $200,000 to $300,000 for this case. In addition, “you become limited in how much you can actually argue because time is money.”
She says that Schmidt was “amazing” in presenting his case. At least 50 supporters turned out for the first and last days of the trial.
The charges against Schmidt stem from a 2006 armed raid on his farm involving Ministry of Natural Resources and other government agencies. Government officials seized equipment and computers.
Schmidt had been running a ‘lease-a-cow’ operation where people paid a $300 fee for six years for a share in a cow. There were four families per cow. Customers also paid a per-litre service fee. That money was for Schmidt to feed and milk the cows plus bottle and deliver the milk to people.
Vanderhout says they weren’t breaking any laws because only the people who owned a share in the cows got the milk. Laws in Canada don’t prohibit farmers from drinking the raw milk from their own cows.
In a written statement supplied to Better Farming, Health Canada says selling unpasteurized milk, also called raw milk, is prohibited under federal Food and Drug Regulations. That regulation came into effect in 1991. Before that some individual provinces had regulations in place requiring milk sold to the public to be pasteurized.
In Ontario, raw milk sales to the public have been prohibited since 1938 as part of the provincial Health Promotion and Protection Act.
In its statement Health Canada says it would only consider changing the law prohibiting raw milk sales if Health Canada scientists were satisfied that any new technology or technique replacing pasteurization is effective in producing safe milk for consumption.
Health Canada maintains that the only way to ensure milk is safe to consume is through pasteurization, which kills the organisms that cause disease. It advises consumers not to drink raw milk because it can make them seriously ill. Bacteria found in raw milk, for example, salmonella, E. coli and listeria, have been linked to food-borne illnesses and serious health conditions, from fever, vomiting and diarrhea to life-threatening kidney failure, miscarriage and death.
Any possible health benefits from drinking raw milk are far outweighed by the serious risk of illness, Health Canada says.
Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO), assistant communications director Bill Mitchell says they support the current health regulations. DFO thinks there’s good science behind the legislation and the “public is well served by the requirement that milk be pasteurized.”
Schmidt, Vanderhout and others disagree that drinking raw milk is dangerous. They say people should have the right to choose if they want to drink it. In other jurisdictions, such as California and Germany, raw milk sales are allowed. BF
Comments
I'll bet Mr. Schmidt thinks we should have a cigarette with our milk. Dolts always insist on their "right" to be idiots.
More power to you Mr. Schmidt. You are fighting the good fight.
Mr. Schmidt: You are fighting the good fight. More power to you
our little cowshare in British Columbia is working well, going on two years of operation. We have many reports of improvements in the health of shareholders. No one has gotten sick from the REAL MILK
what's comical is seeing the kneejerk bleats from ignoramuses, entrained in propaganda from the Dairy cartel, that we ought not to be allowed to use and enjoy our property, ie. the milk produced from our cows. Last summer 17 people in Canada died from eating processed meat, the sale of which was - and continues to be - legal. But you won't hear the ignoramuses mention the fact that Health Canada admits one in 400 packages of such meat, is contaminated by listeria. Such which carries the greater risk of food poisoning?
I recommend that those so emphatic about outlawing pure fresh whole raw milk, do your homework : get a couple of facts to rub together before sounding off. Start with the idea that raw milk is sold in most of the states in the US ... what is it they there know, that Ontario farmers haven't managed to figure out since 1938?
what about unpasteurized honey that you can buy in any store is that legal? what not milk.
The next logical step for our nanny government to take is ban the sale of raw meat and raw eggs - both contain pathogens which could be transmitted to humans... (We forget that Canada was weaned on raw milk.) It's also ironic that the government will allow the public to willfully poison themselves with alcohol or tobacco - two products that tax our health care system more than anything else.
The same people who say raw milk is bad (how did we ever survive before Health Canada ?) say that fluoride is good for you, aspertame is good for you -and the list goes on. What a brave new world we live in.
Why is it that our public servants feel that they have the right to restrict our freedom of choice. They forget that they are here to serve the public, not the other way around. It is so typical for them to rant and rave about something as natural as raw milk - but has anyone read a food label lately - look at the crap they allow to be added to our food without a peep. They'd rather stomp all over the little guy, but shake in their boots when they have to confront the corporate manufactured food machine.
Sometimes you have to wonder if what they want us to buy is even real food.
Health Canada does not involve themselves in any elite high end foods called organic. They are concerned with regular consumer food safety. The regular raw milk that they see comes from our dairy farm factories. If 31% of the raw milk coming form US farm factories has one or more of those nasty pathogens listed above, then wouldn't our regular milk have an alarmingly high risk factor as well? Obviously yes, Health Canada, DFO, and the experts at Guelph's University agree.
Since it is fairly easy to overwork dairy cows to a point were they become very susceptible to these pathogens, you would think most dairy farmers would avoid doing so. DFO requires that for each cow you want to milk you have to pay them $30,000. Perhaps ten times the cost of owning a cow? How many years do you have to milk it before you break even? Who in there right mind would give up 50-60% of their milk output and income to make clean pathogen free milk? Farmers need at least 20 cows to make a living. Unfortunately this is a factory system that produces dirty pasteurized milk for the masses.
Organic milk farming produces clean live healthy raw milk. This raw milk has an active living immune system that prevents the milk from going bad and boasts your own system. It has white cells, that we have in our blood. Milk has such a high concentration of carbohydrates, fat, and protein that a special digestive complement exists so that a new born with a sterile digestive track will be properly nourished. Pasteurization kills the living milk and serious compromises the digestive components in the milk. Some also suggest that pasteurization allows us to ingest harmful components of milk that would not be absorbed from raw milk. People that drink organic raw milk don't get colds, flu, or suffer from lactose intolerance. Dirty pasteurized milk has been a burden on our health care system long enough!
We need to get out of the stone ages, and make the production, sale, and distribution of dirty factory milk illegal. Organic raw milk should be legal, and it should not be pasteurized.
Health Canada is full of crap; there are many products that should not be on the shelf but raw milk is not one of them. In fact anything in its raw natural form, which is free of the garbage from processing, chemical based herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers preservatives and not mention growth hormone and genetic modification, is far superior than the man made equivalent. And we shouldn't be paranoid of a little bacteria it's everywhere and that's why we have an immune system, the immune system needs a workout once in while too to stay healthy don't baby it too much.
What is being done here is mass manipulation through the media to make us believe a certain way, and then Health Canada swoops in saves the day by yet striping away another freedom and 1 by 1 all our rights by which this country was built on are being stripped away. and anyone who decides to stand up for our rights (Michael Schmidt) is being shut down and threatened with imprisonment if they don't shut their mouths even if they are doing what is right.
Freedom of choice no the pros and cons and make an informative decision. I believe most adults are capable of this for themselves and their families and should have the right to choose.
"THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FREE COUNTRY"!!!!!!!
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