Raw Milk: Call for Action

Fundraising t-shirts for Canadian Constitutional Foundation

Take Action Now – Raw Milk – Michael Schmidt Hunger Strike

As many of you already know Michael Schmidt is on a hunger strike. This is day #19 and he is getting weaker by the day. Many of us are getting very concerned about this and I have been asked to circulate this letter so that people can take action. As you will see when you read Michael’s letter to Dalton McGuinty, what he is asking is not out of line and should be part of his rights as a Canadian citizen. . . .
From http://balanceyourapple.com/2011/10/18/take-action-now-raw-milk-michael-schmidt-hunger-strike/

Dalton McGuinty Premier of Ontario

Queen's Park Office 111 Wellesley St. W.
Toronto, ON M7A 1A1 Tel: (416) 325-1941 Fax: (416) 325-3745

Email: dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Ted McMeekin — Minister Of Agriculture, Food And Rural Affairs tmcmeekin.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Deb Matthews — Minister Of Health And Long-Term Care dmatthews.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Dr. Eric Hoskins — Minister Of Children And Youth Services ehoskins.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Raw Milk is one issue that seems common to many countries.

The Food Supply in general, GMO's, Organic Farms.

The Panic of 1873 was the start of the Long Depression, a severe nationwide economic depression in the US that lasted until 1879. In 1874 thousands of unemployed demonstrated in NY’s Tomkins Square Park. The largest demonstration ever at that time. The NBER dates the contraction following the panic lasted from Oct 1873 to Mar 1879. At 65 months, it's the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months. Following the end of the episode in 1879, the U.S. economy remained unstable, experiencing recessions for 114 of the 253 months until Jan 1901.
The depression began with a building boom in Europe, with rapid building construction taking place in Vienna, Paris and Berlin.
Mortgages were easy to get and large British banks happily made loans to developers. Mortgages were also available from new savings banks designed for the middle-classes. People used half-completed buildings as collateral because credit was so easy to obtain. This created a housing bubble.
The crisis hit when Russia and Central Europe couldn’t compete with American exports of wheat and other crops, including kerosene which undermined the use of rapeseed oil for cooking. Banks no longer wanted to lend so easily. Eventually the stock market in Vienna crashed and the crisis spread to Western Europe.
http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/03/housing-bubble-of-1870s-long-depression.html
http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2009/05/financial-crisis-of-1870s-lessons-from.html
http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/09/black-blizzards-and-black-rollers.html

California apparently does allow the sale of raw milk but requires a permit to do so.


"Some Like It Raw", an article on raw milk legislation and the appalling behavior of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, with evidence of influence by large dairy lobbying organizations.
"The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized", an article on raw milk, consumers, laws, and microbes good and bad.

Organic Pastures Family-Owned and Operated Organic Raw Dairy, Farm, & Creamery


Claravale Farm Producing Pure and Natural, Raw Dairy Products Since 1927

Real Raw Milk Facts

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! Network is a 1976 film about a TV network that cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for its own profit. It is an Academy Award winning film and #66 on the AFI's 100 Movies list.

'A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have".~ Thomas Jefferson

Our small Kootenay BC organic farm and cowshare. Enjoy our website, and pasture based organic working knowledge and theories. http://www.wildthingorganics.ca/index.html Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers"

Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons for various benefits such as to avoid the build up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one species is continuously cropped. A traditional element of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals and other crops Crop rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants.

The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.

During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds which were in part created by the dry and bare soil conditions itself. These immense dust storms—given names such as "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers"—often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

This was a man-made disaster. It was the uprooting of hardy plains grasses that could withstand drought by the planting of the cash crop of the day, wheat. Hordes of immigrant farmers who were given huge plots of land by the government to settle, combined with a crop that was water hungry and then a hundred-year drought added up to an environmental disaster.

Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many of them [though not all of them] came from Oklahoma) traveled to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbetter than those they had left. Owning no land, many traveled from farm to farm picking fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck later wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men about such people.

Not until a particularly big black blizzard made it to Chicago, New York and then Boston did the media finally give the decade of hell proper news coverage to the rest of Americans.

Surviving the Dust Bowl, 1931-1939

Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms - Folks This Ain't Normal

Raw Milk Saga continues...

http://balanceyourapple.com/2011/05/04/michael-schmidt-on-food-sovereignty/

This isn't anything new. It's been done in North America since the late 1800's according to some New Thought authors. In Ontario as well as other Provinces, States and Countries it's a legitimate concern for people to be able to make that choice. And the farmers are responsive enough to ensure the quality of their milk.

The Bovine: This blog is about rights issues around access to raw milk. http://thebovine.wordpress.com/

Where can I find real (raw) milk?
USA: http://www.realmilk.com/where1.html
Non USA http://www.realmilk.com/where-other.html


Canada has an advantage over the US. No growth hormones. Let's hope that continues and some agency doesn't try to slip one by the consumer.

I suppose from a spiritual point of view it takes someone in Government to say "What's right?" and act accordingly. No patronage, no pharmaceutical companies or agriculture companies waiving money. And a banking system that doesn't need bailing out.

We've just gone through a repeat of the "The Long Depression", lessons still not quite learned.

Until then we'll have the whistle blowers as a necessity and
the "milk police" to contend with.

Robert Collier was one of the few New Thought authors who through illness was directed to health products.

What's the harm.

You have a voice! You have a choice!

Local organic insiders watching closely as Monsanto sued over seed patents - http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/local/article/513187--local-organic-insiders-watching-closely-as-monsanto-sued-over-seed-patents
Monsanto Shifts ALL Liability to Farmers - http://organicalberta.org/news/monsanto-shifts-all-liability-to-farmers
Organic players join "pre-emptive" U.S. suit against Monsanto - http://www.albertafarmexpress.ca/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000407108
Monsanto Exposé: This film is a hard hitting look at Monsanto's history and origins in the chemical industry through its transformation into a biotech agricultural company and, particularly relevant for this website, its efforts to stamp out traditional seeds and replace them with patented genetically engineered seeds. It is a must see for anybody concerned about preserving our seed heritage and for anybody concerned about the general issue of food security. http://www.bcseeds.org/monsanto-review.php [BC Seeds is a project of FarmFolkCityFolk, supporting BC based seed growers and groups to increase the quantity and quality of locally grown seed.]
reviewers note: Through the wonderful technological inventions of computers and the internet the reader can check out all the assertions in this film and review for him/herself. Typing in a search phrase with Monsanto in it will usually produce more results than you care to look at.

In the same way that corporate control of seeds is a threat to our freedom corporate control of our computers, software, and the internet through closed source proprietary software is too. Consider the transition to free open source software in your fight for freedom.

Housing bubble of the 1870’s, the Long Depression

A real estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels relative to incomes and other economic elements, followed by a reduction in price levels.

The financial crisis of 2007–2010 was related to the collapse of real estate bubbles, notably in the United States.

=> the Long Depression <=

The Financial Crisis of the 1870's : Lessons from history

The Long Depression
The financial crisis of the 1870's has been called The Long Depression. Its effects were still being felt even in the 1890s. The Long Depression was a worldwide economic crisis experienced in the 1870s. Low wages for farmworkers speeded the drift of labour from the land towards the towns.

How Did The Long Depression Start?
The depression began with a building boom in Europe, with rapid building construction taking place in Vienna, Paris and Berlin.
Mortgages were easy to get and large British banks happily made loans to developers. Mortgages were also available from new savings banks designed for the middle-classes. People used half-completed buildings as collateral because credit was so easy to obtain. This created a housing bubble.
The crisis hit when Russia and Central Europe couldn’t compete with American exports of wheat and other crops, including kerosene which undermined the use of rapeseed oil for cooking. Banks no longer wanted to lend so easily. Eventually the stock market in Vienna crashed and the crisis spread to Western Europe.

The Crisis in America
In the United States, the Long Depression began with the Panic of 1873.
Before this the United States had seen an era of unprecedented prosperity. Housing and construction boomed. Shops were full of customers. Prices of commodities reached new levels.

The Panic of 1873 was the start of the Long Depression, a severe nationwide economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1879. It was precipitated by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia banking firm Jay Cooke & Company on September 18, 1873, following the crash on May 9, 1873 of the Vienna Stock Exchange in Austria (the so-called Gründerkrach or “founders' crash”). It was one of a series of economic crises in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
America became affected when the inter-bank lending rate shot up. The country had seen a boom in railroad construction financed mainly by large banks, such as Jay Cooke & Company.

They had created complicated financial instruments little-understood by investors to finance the railroads. Eventually this became impossible to sustain. Railroad companies went broke and large banks failed. Jay Cooke’s inability to pay its debts led to the stock-market crash of 1873, which is often called the Panic of 1873. The stock market closed for ten days as Wall Street attempted to deal with the problems.

More than 100,000 businesses failed after the Panic of 1873. Railroad construction was curtailed and building and manufacturing declined. Mass unemployment (unemployment reached 14%), demonstrations, and strikes beset the nation. In 1874 thousands of unemployed demonstrated in New York’s Tomkins Square Park. This was the largest demonstration that had ever occurred in New York.

The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months of contraction. Following the end of the episode in 1879, the U.S. economy would remain unstable, experiencing recessions for 114 of the 253 months until January 1901.

Read more: http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_financial_crisis_of_the_1870s#ixzz0GWNizWPn&B
Sources
http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_financial_crisis_of_the_1870s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
The Golden Age of Farming came to an abrupt end in 1870. http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/gcselinks/industrialrevolution/agricultural/GreatDepression.pdf