The Government Doesn’t Belong In Your Stomach

The Government Doesn't Belong In Your Stomach
Once you're an adult, it should be up to you to assess whether there are risks to eating unpasteurized milk and whether you're willing to take them. Well, it should be, but that's not how our our nanny state works.

A couple years ago, I signed up at a new bank after Bank of America fired me as a customer (I complained that they'd failed their fiduciary duty to me for, seven times, giving my money to women with ONLY a fake driver's license in my name -- no bankcard, no PIN, no signature check). (Details in my book.)

While I was filling out paperwork at the new bank, I met the nicest guy -- sweet hippie-ish goat farmer and owner of this "underground grocery store" in Venice. Underground grocery store? I found that hilarious. What did they sell, magic mushrooms? Nope, just milk that hadn't been pasteurized and blessed by the government.

Now they've been raided, writes P.J. Huffstutter at the LA Times, accompanied by hilarious footage at the link of the cops entering the hippie grocery store with their guns drawn. To be fair, even a hippie goat farmer could go off on the police in a raid, but considering the footage, I couldn't help but laugh. From Huffstutter's piece:

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

...On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are "healthy food" consumers -- a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form.

They want almonds cracked fresh from the shell, not those run through a federally mandated pasteurization process that uses either heat or a chemical to kill off salmonella and other possible contaminants. They hunger for meat slaughtered on the farm. And they're willing to pay a premium -- $6, $8 or more -- for a gallon of milk straight from the cow.

...Scientists and regulators point to epidemiological evidence linking disease outbreaks to raw milk: The milk can transmit bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, campylobacter and listeria, which can result in diarrhea, kidney failure or death.

"This is not about restricting the public's rights," said Nicole Neeser, program manager for dairy, meat and poultry inspection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. "This is about making sure people are safe."

As are helmet and seatbelt laws. But, you know what? If you're a grownup, and you're willing to either pay for your medical care or let us leave you in a little huevos rancheros-like pile on the side of the road, it should be your choice whether you wear a seatbelt, ride helmet-free, or, gasp, drink milk raw from somebody's goat.