Kyle Nabilcy
When you wander the vendor booths at a symposium, and you see a book titled Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, you have just been given your first hint that someone's preaching to the choir in Conference Room B.
I encountered that very book at the second annual International Raw Milk Symposium at Monona Terrace on Saturday, April 10. The symposium is put on by the Farm to Consumer Foundation, and funded in part by the Weston A. Price Foundation. Weston A. Price was a dentist who practiced around the turn of the 20th century, and has since been lionized by those who find his teachings on nutrition and “traditional lifestyles” particularly compelling. His presence looms over much of the world of raw milk advocacy not unlike L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology.
"Traditional" is a word that I heard a lot at the symposium. I had hoped to see the presentation from nutritionist Sylvia Onusic, Ph.D, but arrived to find out it had been rescheduled for earlier in the day. I managed to sit down and discuss some of Onusic's presentation with her after she'd finished. She has experience with raw milk policies in Europe — Slovenia in particular — and informed her audience about the mlekomat, or raw milk vending machines found in Slovenian farmers' markets.
She thinks that these dispensers would succeed in the United States as well. They're farmer-owned, but inspectors are given swipe-cards that grant 24-hour access to the inner workings. The milk is stored in stainless steel tanks inside the machine, and customers fill their own containers and pay by volume dispensed. Slovenians love cutting-edge technology, Onusic told me, and their government respects and supports traditional foods and practices.
This is usually the tipping point in conversations at the symposium, when reasonable, "drink what tastes good to you" opinion veers into "the government hates it, and thinks your food is evil" invective. This latter sentiment was expressed to me in those exact words by Kimberly Hartke, a publicist for the Weston A. Price Foundation, and it reflects the trajectory of much of the discussion I witnessed. I saw a distinct conservative, anti-government vein running through the event. Bumper stickers and t-shirts all shouted roughly the same slogans: "I heart raw milk” and “keep the government off our farms.” Right-leaning libertarianism with a soupcon of left-wing distaste for corporations was sentiment day.
That, and the sketchy science. Professor Ton Baars of Kassel University in Witzenhausen, Germany, gave a presentation on the differences between milk from conventional and biodynamic farm operations. Biodynamics, if you haven't memorized The Omnivore's Dilemma yet, is the practice of treating an entire farm operation -- grazing, harvesting, milking, slaughtering -- holistically, as if the entire farm was one organism with each biological process on the farm feeding into the well-being of the next. It's not necessary for raw milk production, but the two often go hand-in-hand: better grazing, better milk.
From touchy-feely beginnings about the purity of the olden days in the remote Swiss villages studied by Weston Price — "No problems with allergies and asthma... People lived another life" — Dr. Baars moved on to the seemingly hard science of pathogen studies. However, his columns were unlabeled and his terms undefined. In defending the occasional incidences of E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria in the "good" farm milk, he stated, "You can always find something."
Meanwhile, the German government's move to warn pregnant women off of vorzugsmilch (filtered raw milk, sold in German markets like the mlekomat in Slovenia) is "all part of the negative campaign" against raw milk. The benefits of vorzugsmilch were "proved" by the name applied to it, which means "favored" or "preferred". Baars discussed the biodynamic advantages of dairy cows having horns; he mentioned no specific causes for the benefit, just that there were some signs that horns were associated with nutritional content. Truly, you can always find something.
The presumed benefit of this conference, at least by my understanding, was that it would bring pro-raw milk attention to bear on the legislation currently being debated in the Wisconsin State Senate and Assembly. This would perhaps be more true if there had been a palpable local presence. Instead, the global aspect dominated; when I asked how much of the attendance was local, I was instead told that there were four countries and 28 states represented. I was the only one from Wisconsin at my lunch table of eight.
Many of the unclaimed name tags at the registration table were from Wisconsin residents. I'm sure there were many casual attendees from the area, but they weren't the ones speaking throughout the majority of the symposium and break-out sessions. Instead, I spent lunch listening to Massachusetts farmers talking about how we need homogeneity in our classrooms (ironic, considering their negative views on homogeneity in milk), and a Vermont activist telling us that the people who get nervous about high somatic cell counts in raw milk (that's not good) "aren't the customers you want anyway." Oh, and one of the farmers at my table had multiple food allergies. Go figure.
I'm taking this thing to task, I know. In fact, all the people I met were quite friendly and their aims are righteous: healthy people, happy customers. They're not advocating for secession or anything really crazy. They care greatly about the food they put into their bodies, as we all should. But I didn't feel like I was among foodie compatriots at this symposium, because frankly, there's plenty of room for safety in good food. Saying that raw milk will eliminate asthma, allergies, school shootings, naughty children and divorce (yes, I heard all of that there) is 100% full-fat foolishness.
