The Hartford Courant blogged about the current debates going on about raw milk here in CT.
It’s not often you hear a couple of nuns with doctorates stand up for the right to sell cow’s milk, but that’s part of what is at stake under a plan to limit the sale of unpasteurized milk.
He’s talking about the Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem where a cloistered group of Benedictine nuns are raising five dairy cows on about 400 acres.
From the Connecticut Post article:
Sister Telchilde Hinckley, a Ph.D. who heads the abbey’s dairy, and Sister Noella Marcellino, a Ph. D. who works on the cheese production there, said that up to 60 people a day are fed from the milk and milk products created by the 38 nuns who live there.
“I think it’s important to remember for us food safety is not a theoretical concept,” Hinckley said, adding that they’ve been licensed to sell raw milk for 30 years. “We drink the milk that is produced by our cows, we eat the dairy products that are produced by our cows and we share them with our guests and we are also able to sell a little bit of those products.”
She said that small farms have the advantage to keep close track of their quality. “In one way you can provide a much-safer product coming from a small farm than might be possible in a very large farm that’s commercially oriented,” Hinckley said.
There’s more to the story…
I agree that a very big advantage and reason for supporting small local farms is the opportunity to keep track of the quality of the food produced (milk, produce, whatever it may be) and the greater chance that the practices will be more transparent to the consumer. Plus, there is the investment in it – the producers are more directly accountable and they have incentive to keep their practices in line with real food safety and sustainability.
I hadn’t seen the Courant article, but I am off to read more about it. I hope that this raw milk debate in our state at least may have some hope of making people aware of the importance of a sustainable, local source for food. While nothing is ever guaranteed, at least we have a considerably better chance with our local farmers/producers – as the quote put it – its not just theoretical for them, its the everyday and its important.
I’m just getting rather weary of the government “helping me.” No one is required to drink raw milk and no one could mistake it now for anything else. I wouldn’t doubt that industrial milk is behind all the “concern.”
I don’t know, they look kind of shady to me!
Agreed, I’m sick to death of all the “government help”. I guarantee you my raw milk from my backyard goats is clean, healthy and just plain good. We are so used to pasturized, homogenized, bovine growth-ized, we don;t even know what real milk tastes like anymore. Without that “hint ‘o plastic” we’re lost!
Crabby: Ya mean the hint ‘o plastic isn’t part of the “natural” flavoring? 🙂