This was an interesting story in Politico the other day, about how raw milk became politicized. Raw milk is unpasteurized milk, of course, popular with certain foodies, but mostly with you-cain’t-make-me anti-government types.
Truth be told, I only had it a couple times. I’ve probably told this story before, but: In college, my boyfriend Bruce rented a house a couple miles outside of town, and it abutted a small dairy operation. The farmer would sell Bruce gallons of raw milk for something like $2. Being a New York City boy, he thought this was the coolest thing ever, and to be sure, the milk was something, with an inch of cream on the top of the jar and the milk below nearly as thick. It was nothing like supermarket milk, but I don’t remember it being an orgasmic experience or anything.
When I mentioned it to my mother, she turned as white as the milk. “Don’t you dare drink that!” she said, and explained that she’d had a classmate who contracted brucellosis from raw milk. She was sick for weeks, and returned to school looking close to death. I came back to Athens and conveyed this news to Bruce, who said, absurdly, “The cows look fine.” But I stopped drinking it when I was there, and that was the end of it.
You all know me. Generally speaking, I favor western medicine, progress and scientific advances. I get vaccines, swallow Big Pharma’s product line when it’s called for, trust doctors when they give me advice. I see pasteurization as a great leap forward in public health. And while I appreciate that milk-borne disease is less common today, and people who sell raw milk claim to be diligent about having their herds tested, etc., ultimately I don’t trust them enough to take a chance, especially for something like milk. Supermarket milk is just fine for something I don’t drink a lot of anyway.
But because everything these days has to be politicized, now it’s raw milk’s turn. From another Politico story:
Loosening regulations on raw – or unpasteurized — milk, which the Food and Drug Administration believes poses too many health risks, has been gaining steam on the state level in recent times, with at least half of states now allowing the sale of raw milk directly to consumers and several more seeing raw milk-related bills being introduced in the previous two sessions.
Now, with the introduction of two new bills in Congress by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), proponents of legalizing raw milk are making strides on the national front, too. Massie’s first bill, the “Milk Freedom Act of 2014,” would overturn the interstate ban on raw milk, and his other bill, the “Interstate Milk Freedom Act of 2014,” would allow interstate shipment of raw milk only between two states where raw milk sales are already legal.
The Milk Freedom Act. Jesus wept.
The swing in momentum can, in part, be attributed to a transformation of the argument that advocates are using. The debate used to be centered on the health and nutritional benefits of raw milk versus the safety of pasteurized milk, but the likes of Ron Paul — who mentioned the issue in several speeches during his 2012 presidential run and introduced similar bills when he was in Congress — have turned it into one about freedom of choice.
Of course. Because lord knows we must all be given freedom to make ourselves sick unto death.
EDIT: I just realized I linked to, and quoted from, the wrong story. I fixed the link, but the quoted portions above are from a 2014 Politico story on the same topic. Here’s something from this year:
Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years. (The Iowa vote broke almost perfectly along party lines with nearly all Republicans in favor and only a handful of Democrats defecting to their side.) And it’s not just in Iowa. Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming all have passed laws (or changed regulations) since 2020 legalizing the sale of raw milk on farms or in stores.
To be clear, raw milk is still a niche product. According to an FDA study relying on 2016 and 2019 data, 4.4 percent of Americans report consuming raw milk in the past year, although the number has almost certainly grown since then. Though raw milk’s appeal remains small, its increasing popularity among Republicans nevertheless demonstrates a scrambling of the political poles in which the American left-of-center, long associated with anti-establishment sentiment, has become more deferential to institutions as the right-of-center, long associated with the establishment, has seized the iconoclastic fervor inherent in America’s DNA.
I hope your weekend was a good one. It got cold again here, but we had a date night of sorts on Friday. Had dinner, then dropped by Greektown to visit the casino. Didn’t spend a dime, but the people-watching was great. It was disappointing to see how joyless gambling seems to be these days. With the exception of the craps tables, no one was smiling or laughing or doing anything other than pushing a button on a screen. So many games have been converted to computers. There’s video poker, video blackjack, even video roulette, although that one has a real wheel under a plastic dome. I’d think people who make the effort to go out to the casino might want to interact with other humans, but I guess not. We did a walkthrough of the floor, had a nightcap in the puzzlingly named Urban Cocktail lounge, and went home.
It’s Monday, then. And I have a load of work to shovel. Best get to it.
basset said on March 18, 2024 at 11:04 am
We used to buy raw milk from the Amish down in Daviess County, very similar to your description. You had to know someone to make a milk connection – aside from the pasteurization issue, the state didn’t allow milk to be sold from springhouse coolers, had to use electric refrigerators.
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alex said on March 18, 2024 at 11:25 am
Apparently the right-wingers are scapegoating migrants for the uptick in measles now that anti-vaxxers are such a coddled constituency.
I just finished reading another piece in Politico, an interview with J.D. Vance in which he fancies himself a latter-day Charles de Gaulle and reveals himself as perhaps an even more grandiose idiot than the Orange Turd. Steve Bannon hails him as a public intellectual who’s bringing respectability to the MAGA movement. Too bad Trump’s kiss of death didn’t kill his Senate candidacy like it did for so many others. And although he’s jockeying for the veepstakes, I have a feeling that Trump isn’t going to share a ticket with anyone whose ego (or vocabulary) is bigger than his own.
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Julie Robinson said on March 18, 2024 at 11:32 am
My Iowa grandpa ran a dairy farm, so we drank raw milk when we visited. That thick cream and fat globules? Blech. They let us stir in chocolate sauce, which made it barely tolerable. Grandpa kept his milking parlor pristine, with water running through a chute system for the manure, and I doubt we were in any danger. But give me pasteurized skim milk for my cereal. That said, it’s impossible to find skim here; the lowest is 1%.
I went to Randy Rainbow Saturday night with my daughter and another friend. He was funny, of course, but it was sooo goood to be in a large group with our people. We could relax and let our hair down. Lots of fun outfits!
Lots of security too.
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Jeff Borden said on March 18, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Thomas Massie is am irritating little shit in the Rand Paul mold. Another guy who believes we’d enjoy utopia if we’d only let the marketplace run unfettered. He’s a gun nut, too, whose Christmas cards have shown his entire family wielding AR-15s. This is very on brand for him.
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David C said on March 18, 2024 at 12:32 pm
No matter how politely you ask, you can’t persuade a cow to not shit when she needs to shit and that’s just one way milk gets contaminated. On my grandparents’ dairy farm, nobody drank even their own milk until it was pasteurized. My grandfather sold his herd the year I was born 65 years ago. How do we manage to keep going backwards?
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Jason T. said on March 18, 2024 at 12:46 pm
David C. @ 5:
My brother recently gave me a book of “Codified Ordinances of the City of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, 1945” that he found at a swap meet.
In addition to a ban on the sale of “rubber prophylactic devices” by anyone except a registered pharmacist or licensed medical doctor, there’s a ban on the sale of raw milk, that even goes (to our amusement) into a detailed description of the definition of raw milk, and which mandates regular testing of milk being sold to the public.
1945. Why, indeed, do we keep going backwards?
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Scout said on March 18, 2024 at 1:24 pm
The kook factor in this country has become so ridiculous I wonder if there is any hope at all to unfuck this mess. When you have the GOP thug candidate for POTUS threatening a bloodbath and the media spends the entire weekend trying contextualize this, we’re living in bizarro world. Even when we re-elect Biden and Harris in November, the well funded Project 2025/Heritage Foundation/Seven Mountains axis of evil will still be plotting domination.
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Peter said on March 18, 2024 at 1:50 pm
OK, I have to ask – the Politico article references the Milk Freedom Act of 2014, and the Interstate Milk Freedom Act of 2014.
Seeing as the NN community is existing in AD 2024, I have to ask:
– was it transcribed wrong?
– did Politico make the error?
– did Massey put the wrong year on the bill? (likely answer)
– did Massey introduce this legislation in 2014 and is only now getting around to advancing it?
Ai yi yi.
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nancy said on March 18, 2024 at 5:05 pm
It’s not you, it’s me. I linked to the wrong story. Fixing it now. P.S. I are dumb.
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brian stouder said on March 18, 2024 at 1:50 pm
Scout – agreed. I suppose one could argue that 1968 was a genuine nadir (ass-deep in an interminable war on the other side of the planet, out-right bloody murder before our eyes in American politics, and busted-glass and riotous murder in the streets of our cities)….one shudders at the thought of what will be unleashed upon us, if Donald Trump succeeds in grabbing the steering wheel, again
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Dorothy said on March 18, 2024 at 1:53 pm
Elections. Ugh. I’m working the primary tomorrow and maybe on Wednesday I can regale you all with stories of stupid shit I hear voters say. But maybe not. I’m always hopeful. Mostly I just want the f’ing commercials to stop. If I hear Bernie Moreno’s name on television after Tuesday morning I might just shoot myself. Mike and I are hopeful he gets his ass handed to him tomorrow because he is touting his endorsement from the guy who can’s secure a bond these days. And we hope that means it’s the kiss of death for ol’ Bernie.
I had Practice Makes Perfect training on Friday last week and don’t you know I accidentally left behind my training manual. They give you a new one for every election so this will be the third one I own. I drove up to the Board of Elections first thing Saturday to see if anyone turned it in. Of course they did not. Someone walked off with it. One woman told me “these are gold because they’re all out of them!” One nice lady offered me her book, but hers is for Roster Judges. I’m a Paper Ballot judge. A book is better than not having one so I accepted it and thanked her profusely. She was a trainer, not a poll worker, so had no more need of it. Each book covers ALL of the responsibilities, but in the Paper Ballot section there were some pages that had fresh paragraphs taped over top of incorrect pages so the book she gave me didn’t have that. If I have any problems I’ll just have to ask the Voting Location Manager to step in and help.
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Mark P said on March 18, 2024 at 2:05 pm
The Trump apologists are busy running around trying to “contextualize” Trump’s threats to mean something like economic bloodbath rather than what he clearly intended. Even Elon F! Musk is doing it. I mean, Trump has been calling for violence for YEARS. January 6 is just the worst, but he has said “you” should go after one of his judges. He has threatened “bedlam.” Courts where he is charged report increased threats of violence. ABC news found 54 cases around the country where people charged with threats or actual violence have referenced Trump in their explanations for what they’re doing. So Trump has a long history of inflammatory incitements to violence, and now we’re supposed to think he’s talking about the economics of the auto industry? Everybody knows what he means, especially his followers, and he wants it to be clear to the rest of us, too.
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Julie Robinson said on March 18, 2024 at 2:31 pm
I was supposed to be a poll clerk tomorrow but they are expecting such low turnout I was excused. Democrats canceled their primary and Republicans only have the Presidential race.
I really wasn’t looking forward to 12 hours of smug Republicans.
We have another primary in August for local and state races, then the general in November and I plan on being at both of them. Two primaries seem like a waste of money to me.
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Jeff Borden said on March 18, 2024 at 2:31 pm
Decades of being a dishonest fraud and deadbeat have boomeranged on the Orange King. If he can’t raise the bond money, Letitia James will start grabbing his precious building, but nobody wants to pony up a half-billion for this loser.
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David C said on March 18, 2024 at 2:56 pm
We do the same thing, Julie. We had a primary for local offices last month. We have the Presidential primary/local office election in two weeks. The Federal office primary in August and the big one. Those could easily be combined into two. Four elections in a year is ridiculous.
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LAMary said on March 18, 2024 at 3:10 pm
We spent summers at our house at the northeastern end of Long Island which was neither posh nor hip at the time. We got milk delivered from a local dairy. It was pasteurized but not homogenized. The adults in the household would ski the cream off top of the bottle for their coffee.
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Sherri said on March 18, 2024 at 3:31 pm
I was thinking that ten years ago, I would ignore the crazy people who ended up on the ballot in random states or the nutso legislation that got introduced in states, because it was just noise. But it’s not just noise, because those crazies get elected and the nutso legislation gets enacted these days. The GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina is a Holocaust denier, among so many other things, and he’s the current Lt. Governor! The candidate for state superintendent has called for the assassination of President Biden. Legislation has been introduced in Kentucky to authorize the use of deadly force against homeless people found to be camping on private property, and the legislation bears the hallmarks of the Cicero Foundation, a think tank founded and funded by Joe Lonsdale, one of Peter Thiel’s buddies and the co-founder of Palantir.
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Deborah said on March 18, 2024 at 4:20 pm
If you’re not already reading Brian Klaas I highly recommend it. This is his latest, I think it’s readable if you don’t subscribe https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/why-do-dictators-hold-electionsbut
Whenever I start to get optimistic about elections I get kicked back into depression.
I’m trying to figure out where best to donate this election season, last time I went by my heart instead of my brain and wasted a lot of money (a lot to me anyway) on folks who didn’t stand a chance. Julie Robinson how is your Representative Frost faring regarding re-election? I gave to his campaign last time and was so happy to see that he won, is he looking good this time or no? I keep getting donor requests for him and I do think he’s a good guy but I don’t want to waste my limited funds for someone who’s doomed. If anyone has info on who best to contribute to I’s appreciate it.
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JodiP said on March 18, 2024 at 4:20 pm
Hi all, dropping in as I do occasionally. A dear friend has announced he’s not voting for Biden due to the war in Gaza and the support for Israel. I am getting worried about this. People are very angry with him. Then I see the headline that grocery prices might decide the election in WI. I am not taking a Biden win for granted and it’s terrifying.
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Julie Robinson said on March 18, 2024 at 5:24 pm
Deborah, I would guess he’s pretty safe as we are a deep blue district. He won’t have an opponent until the August primary and I don’t know anything about the four candidates on that ballot. But he’s been very active, got appointed to Biden’s anti-gun violence group, and just organized a rally that brought Lin-Manuel Miranda here, with thousands in attendance.
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Scout said on March 18, 2024 at 5:40 pm
Deborah, consider throwing a few bucks Ruben Gallegos’s way. He is running for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate seat against (s)Kari Lake. It’s an important seat to hold to keep the Senate blue as well as shutting out an extremist MAGAt nutjob.
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Jeff Borden said on March 18, 2024 at 5:48 pm
Two points:
1.) Netanyahu hates Biden and is doing everything he can to undercut him. Bibi knows tRump will let him do anything. Anything.
2.) We need to remind those offended by Biden’s response to Gaza that tRump despises Muslims and tried to prevent them from immigrating here while he was in office. His thuggish cultists aren’t exactly welcoming, either.
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Sherri said on March 18, 2024 at 5:50 pm
Joann, the fabric store, has filed for bankruptcy, and all the stories talk about the consumer pullback since the pandemic. But there’s another story to tell about Joann.
The company was bought by private equity back in 2010, and the PE firm took advantage of the pandemic boost to take it public despite almost a billion dollars in long term debt. Typical of PE takeovers: lard the company up with debt, then IPO at a propitious time to try to get out from under. Without all the debt, the capital raised in the IPO might have been enough to invest to update the stores and survive the inevitable post-pandemic consumer pullback, but that’s not how you pay back the investors in the PE fund, is it?
I wish business reporters would cover the whole story, not just the immediate story, when a company that has been through the PE cycle declares bankruptcy. It didn’t take me more than a few minutes to find the whole story, from when PE bought Joann, to how much debt they had when they filed the IPO, to now.
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David C said on March 18, 2024 at 5:59 pm
Don’t spend more than a buck or two on whoever is running against Marjorie Traitor Greene. Marcus Flowers pissed away $16 million in 2022 and lost by 30 points. He probably could have had the same result and spend only a million or two. The rest of the money would have been better spent elsewhere. It’s the type of district where you run for the fun of being an annoyance to her by telling the truth about her.
I’d hate to see JoAnn go completely down the tubes. We don’t have a Michael’s close by so that would leave Hobby Lobby.
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Sherri said on March 18, 2024 at 8:38 pm
Traditionally, foreign policy is not a big factor in presidential elections. However, I’m not sure we can really draw a lot of conclusions about how things worked in the past. Israel/Gaza is a difficult mess for Biden, and he’s going to have to make a move on it. Schumer’s recent call for new elections in Israel are a hint that administration support for Israel is starting to fade. Biden made a gamble that if he came out early with strong support for Israel he could influence and restrain them, but that’s not working out, and Netanyahu has not exactly built a strong relationship with Dems. So, I expect Biden to put more pressure on Israel. Whether it will be enough to satisfy the people unhappy with Biden over Gaza, I don’t know. Whether they will even notice is another question; Biden’s best diplomatic work has tended to be under the radar.
I recently listened to a good podcast on the rise of the right wing in Israel from NPR’s Throughline podcast: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1198908601/throughline-the-rise-of-the-right-wing-in-israel
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Jeff Gill said on March 19, 2024 at 7:33 am
I had trouble from the opening line “For most of its early history, Israel was dominated by left-leaning, secular politicians.” Ben-Gurion and Meir were labor leftist on one level, but pretty darn conservative on others, and then Menahem Begin isn’t anyone’s idea of a liberal. He doesn’t take the top office until ’77, so you can say it was a Labor Party government for decades previously, but a highly constrained leadership, and then 47 years of shifting steadily to the right. Rabin & Peres were more centrist than Ben-Gurion leftists, and they had a pretty small window to work in before Netanyahu comes in, I think in ’96?
The role of the settler movement is worth giving it a hear, though. That’s the trend I think they’re really wanting to highlight. It rises as Arafat’s PLO control slips and devolves into whatever you’d call the Abbas regime today. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have been well served by their leadership since 1995, both sides haunted by internecine violence & assassinations.
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alex said on March 19, 2024 at 8:23 am
Forget Israel/Gaza. The House Repugs have decided to shift their risible impeachment efforts to the Afghanistan withdrawal instead and hope to mine it for election-year gold.
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Dexter Friend said on March 19, 2024 at 9:22 am
We lived 3/4 mile from the family farm and about 20 days a year stayed overnight at Grandma’s house. Grandpa was arthritic and Uncle Stanley did the farming and milking. Every night he brought milk to the house to cool for breakfast the next morning. We always had fried eggs in bacon grease, the bacon or sausage, toast and “breakfast food” which is what they called Wheaties. We’d spoon luscious cream and milk over the cereal and more cream into the little coffee cups Grandma would give us. No one ever got sick; they had been using raw milk all their lives. Child labor laws were not enforced as we baled hay, shelled corn for the chickens, hoed weeds in the vegetable garden, mucked the cow barn, ran errands for Grandpa, and also just fucked around doing all kinds of little jobs . At home, Dad always bought pasteurized gallons.
A few years ago, former M football coach Jim Harbaugh was asked what kept his players fit and strong. “Milk”, he said. “1% or skim?”
“We don’t allow that puss7 stuff!” We drink whole milk!” And so do I, to this day.
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Dexter Friend said on March 19, 2024 at 9:35 am
“…bloodbath” or “Blood Bath”
This fucking Trump stepped in it. We all know what he meant he was planning to unleash his minions upon society when (not if) the fucker loses to Joe Biden in November.
He said all Jews who vote for Democrats hate their religion, hate Israel, when they really just want this terrorist Netanyahu ousted quickly.
I have been railing against Netanyahu since even before the destruction of Lebanon in 2006. You can be a devout Jew and an Israeli patriot and still want this monster Netanyahu out as soon as possible.
I used to get called anti-Semitic for posting and protesting Netanyahu’s policies. Israelis and Judaism are one thing and the horrible government are 2 separate entities by comparison.
I never studied Judaism and in my Midwest life have only had a few Jewish friends, but it’s easy to see Israel has a problem in government. I heard 77% of Israelis want Netanyahu gone. Accurate? I do not know, but close.
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Icarus said on March 19, 2024 at 9:57 am
so my Crisis of the Week is this: after the game, my daughter’s soccer coach gets the kids together in a post-game huddle. He says a prayer. Of course, anyone who doesn’t want to participate can sit there quietly.
If I say anything, my daughter might be targeted. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I came along and uttered a Muslin or Jewish prayer.
God, I hate this state. maybe I should find a church down here and start playing soccer during the homily.
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Deborah said on March 19, 2024 at 10:45 am
Does anyone know if Colin Allred has a chance against Ted Cruz in Texas?
Scout, I will definitely give to Gallegos. Last time I split my donations among four candidates and only one of them won. This time I’m trying to be smarter. I realize that whatever Dem is running against Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t stand a chance so I won’t waste my money there. I’m thinking mostly of senate races like Tester’s in Montana and Sherrod Brown’s in Ohio.
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Jeff Borden said on March 19, 2024 at 12:19 pm
Tester and Brown are worth donations. Cruz is hugely unlikable –even to many Texans– but Texass is such a crimson shit show, it’s hard to see how Allred can pull it off.
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Jakash said on March 19, 2024 at 12:32 pm
By the time I was a teenager, my parents had switched us to 2% milk, for the health benefits, of course. (The same reason why we “enjoyed” Parkay, Blue Bonnet, or more likely the Kroger version of trans-fat-stuffed margarine instead of butter. Those were the days!) I don’t know if our stores even offered 1% milk at that point, but they had skim. We did not stoop to that, however, as my dad declared it to be “chalk-water.” To this day, I’ve gotten down from the 2% to 1% without much displeasure, but skim milk remains a bridge too far for me.
I think we visited farm friends and tried raw milk a few times, but being a townie, I was grossed out by it.
And there you have a few sentences with Andy Mooo-ney. Ugh.
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Jakash said on March 19, 2024 at 12:50 pm
You’d think that after the presidential elections of 2000, 2004 and particularly 2016, rational Democrats would have learned the cost of allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. (How’s that Supreme Court working out for you, Jill Stein voters?)
If there were some American political genius out there whose candidacy offered the prospect of peace in the Middle East and a better deal for the Palestinian people, one could *maybe* understand folks being so upset with Biden. Given that the only alternative to Biden is someone who is quite clearly buddies with Netanyahu and is also an incompetent, xenophobic criminal who actively seeks to throw Muslims and immigrants under the bus, withdrawing support from Biden and thereby making the other guy’s election more likely is almost unbelievable.
I don’t personally know anybody like the friend that JodiP mentioned, but I am worried about it, as well.
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Mark P said on March 19, 2024 at 2:39 pm
I switched to skim milk for my cereal years ago. I can’t stand whole milk any more. It feels like sludge on my tongue.
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Julie Robinson said on March 19, 2024 at 2:58 pm
Sludge, yes, that was Grandpa’s fresh from the cow milk. But sludge with lumps, at least that’s what the cream globules felt like to me. And not cold yet, either. Barf.
We just made an emergency coffee run to the polling place, where they welcomed voter #20 for the day. Hence, the need for coffee.
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ROGirl said on March 19, 2024 at 3:09 pm
I switched to almond milk in my coffee because it doesn’t spoil or upset my stomach. Jews who vote for Democrats hate trump, not Israel or anything else.
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Brandon said on March 19, 2024 at 3:45 pm
@Dexter: Jim Harbaugh loves milk.
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Jeff Borden said on March 19, 2024 at 5:21 pm
Traditionally, the candidate of a major party who has clinched the presidential nomination is given access to the kind of security briefings given to the president, but it’s important to note it is NOT required. The Orange King is in such dire financial trouble that he’d be denied security clearance because of the potential for blackmail and selling secrets. Let’s hope the saner heads in D.C. refuse to give this bankrupt fraud those classified briefings or they’re likely to wind up sold to Putin, MSB or some other malign player.
I can’t believe we’re in this position. Pathetic.
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David C said on March 19, 2024 at 5:48 pm
Jill Stein voters are still crazy after all these years. It isn’t their fault, it’s our fault for not voting for Jill Stein.
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