I went to Meet the Author, David Gumpert at Molten Java in Bethel. Gumpert wrote The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights. Not a bad crowd for 6 PM on a Wednesday—farmers, consumers, raw milk advocates, bloggers, journalists, locavores, children, and avid readers. David Gumpert was warmly introduced by Ed Hertz (the Milkman).

Gumpert talked about how he got into raw milk from business writing, about the apparent obsession regulators have against raw milk and the lengths they have gone to in an effort to eradicate it. He says the issue isn’t just this one product, raw milk, but that “raw milk is a proxy issue; it is symbolic of other issues.”

When asked why they’re going after raw milk drinkers and suppliers with such a vengeance, Gumpert and the audience speculated:

• Raw milk consumption is associated with the lunatic fringe; raw milk drinkers are the modern-day hippies
• Regulators feel that the problem of food-borne pathogens has already been solved. Why re-introduce it?
• Commerce. Follow the money. Are the large commercial dairy producers anxious to see their profits slip away?
• If raw milk can heal our chronic conditions, would we need as many pharmaceuticals?

Gumpert spoke about the FDA public relations campaign against raw milk and how the old press releases would always say “drinking raw milk is like playing Russian roulette with your health.” Evidently, people don’t trust the FDA, because raw milk sales would go up after each of these campaigns! So the FDA started going after the raw milk producers: small farms.

Gumpert spoke about the upcoming food safety legislation. He told how it gives all decisions regarding food standards to the FDA, greatly increasing their jurisdiction. The FDA could impose universal irradiation and put an end to raw food in general. The bill is supposed to protect us from food-borne illnesses but is really tilted against small farms. The bill has passed in the House and is coming before the Senate this week. If you’re at all inclined, now would be a good time to call our Senators. By the way, the FDA is currently working on regulations for creating compost. Another by the way, the new food safety bill fulfills our (the USA’s) obligations to the WTO and WHO.  WTF?

It is important to realize that raw milk advocates are not against food safety. As Chris Hopkins of Stone Wall Dairy said, he “would rather go from fixing a symptom to fixing the problem.” He explained how pasteurization merely fixes a symptom of a poor process. He said that we now know how to make good, healthy milk holistically.

Attendees had a chance to sample raw cows milk from Stone Wall Dairy, raw goat milk from Butterfield Farm, and low-pasteurized un-homogenized milk from Ronnybrook Dairy.

Gumpert let us know we can look forward to a new film about raw milk called Farmageddon.

Check out this book review by one of the event’s attendees.

Read David Gumpert’s take on the evening.

Looking for raw milk? In this area, you can get raw milk at:

• Holbrook Farm
• New Morning Natural Foods
• Chamomile Natural Foods in Danbury

See my Foodshed page for more local food sources.