A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.
The product in question: unpasteurized milk.
It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking an order to stop the farm from shipping across state lines any more raw milk or dairy products made from it.
The farm’s owner, Dan Allgyer, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, but his customers in the District of Columbia and Maryland were furious at what they said was government overreach.
“I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the large milk producers,” said Karin Edgett, a D.C. resident who buys directly from Rainbow Acres. “I don’t want the FDA and my tax dollars to go to shut down a farm that hasn’t had any complaints against it. They’re producing good food, and the consumers are extremely happy with it.”
Read more:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/28/feds-sting-amish-farmer-selling-raw-milk-locally/
Tara Holste says
There are many members of this club right here in Chestertown. If you’re interested in finding out more about us, and how you can help, please join us on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/grassfedonthehill or https://grassfedonthehill.com/ (site should be up by 5-4-11).
Janice says
Years ago when we first arrived in Kent County, we purchased raw milk from a local Kent Co farm. It was not only wonderful tasting, but it provided a great learning experience for children who accompanied their parents to the farm and watched mothers separate the cream from the milk with a bulb baster and turn that cream into butter. Like magic! See what kind of answers you get if you ask any young child where butter comes from and how it is made. Bet they don’t know. And they and their parents will never know the delicious tastes.
Neli says
Sincerely, I don’t understand all this fuss about not being possible to buy raw milk here in the States (some of them). I came from Azores, and remember the farmer coming door to door to sell his raw milk to the whole town. As a child I used to go to the front door to colect the 2 litters of milk in a jug. My mother would give us raw milk as breakfast and would boil one part for my baby sister. No one ever got sick with the milk. The milk fat (cream) would rise to the top if left on the counter for a while (we didn’t have refrigerator), nobody had refrigerator back then. The milk was consumed that same day (it was a mild climate and inside the stone houses the temperature is always cooler). This happened in early 70s, so not so long ago. The whole archipelago was raised in raw milk for hundred of years, people survived and I never heard anything of people dying because of the milk. Now, that progress has catched there to, they sell ultra pasteurized milk in triangular cartoons that taste like plaster of paris. In 2006, I went there tried to make rice pudding with that milk and what came out was an unpalatable concoction, but the people has been brainwashed that the milk is better than raw, even the butter now contains corn starch…yes, that is right, I read the label and was appalled; no wonder the butter didn’t melt at room temperature. And all of this thanks to the European Union regulations. Give me raw milk, please, my grandmother used to let the milk out for the night so she could eat the soured milk the next day, she lived to old age.