Page 88 - Summer2018

J.I. Rodale, alorganicproject.org). Its founders are some farmstead cheese or start studying raw milk,

one of the of the central and most important leaders of reading the Raw Milk Institute food safety
original organic movement. They founded the website resources, Weston A. Price Foundation
founders USDA organic program and now have grown information (realmilk.com) and learning about
of the disgusted by it, as the program sold out to the the gut microbiome—because if you are going
modern big business interests. Organic is supposed to to produce and sell raw milk, you will need to
be about vital living soil, plants, animals, the become an expert in raw milk food safety, how
organic environment and humanity. Large CAFO cor- whole food is medicine, the gut microbiome, and
movement, porate interests owned by Wall Street have no the principles of good nutrition. You will need to
said that “It soul and are about one thing—making money start teaching and educating consumers to create
a market for your products. When the teaching
and eating up all others.
is not organic Look for the Real Organic Project label is done and the safe milking is done, you will
to produce and vote for it with your dollars. It means real have created a highly value-added market that
organic milk organic and it means local. will be hard to take away from you. No proces-
sor can take that away from you. Consumers
and then REAL ORGANIC IS RAW will love you and be glad to pay you well. Be-
pasteurize it.” So far, this story has been all about the train ing loved by consumers and being paid well are
wreck of ultra-high-temperature-pasteurized, concepts foreign to the consumer-disconnected,
ultra-dead, CAFO-produced “organic” milk; the processor-centric dairy industry. Consumer
deep throes of corruption, cheating and fraud in connected—that’s a real organic dairy!
the current organic dairy markets; and the loss Twenty years ago, our organic dairy left the
of family organic dairies all across America. deadly grip of the pasteurization-loving proces-
But now let’s shift gears and briefly discuss real sors and went raw! All of my thanks go to the
organic milk. The most important dairy product consumers who came to our farm and told me
you can bring into your life is the “organic milk what they wanted. I listened! Real organic is
that still has the organic in it.” This milk is alive, raw organic. Our contract with Organic Valley
vital, raw, pasture-fed, biodiverse, enzyme-rich, only lasted a short time before all of our milk
non-denatured, probiotic and straight from the was flowing directly to consumers. In fact it was
farmer. Organic Valley that kicked us out of the co-op
J.I. Rodale, one of the founders of the when they saw our raw products sitting next to
modern organic movement, said that “It is not theirs on stores all over California.
organic to produce organic milk and then pas- The science of milk genomics and hu-
teurize it.” Taken in this context, it is no wonder man health is just catching up to what we have
that the pasteurized organic milk markets are always known: raw milk and other raw dairy
falling apart. Those markets are based on long products are medicine for the human condition
shelf life and not gut life. They are based on a and always have been. The last words of Dr.
race to the bottom and a market disconnection Weston A. Price were, “You teach, you teach,
between farmers and consumers. They are based you teach.” Let’s gather friends to teach and
on processors making money while cheating build that market. With thriving raw milk sales,
farmers and denying consumers the whole food the world becomes a greener and healthier place
they need for good health. for all.
In the final assessment, if you cheat Mother
Nature, you will pay a dear price. That price is RESOURCES
being paid by organic dairymen who thought 1. milkgenomics.org/news-and-events/newslet-
they had a profitable and green niche product, ter-archive/
but really did not have much of anything at all 2. www.washingtonpost.com/business/econ-
omy/why-your-organic-milk-may-not-be-
when processors dropped them in favor of huge organic/2017/05/01/708ce5bc-ed76-11e6-
CAFOs. 9662-6eedf1627882_story.html?utm_
When desperate organic farmers call me term=.1eabbf3e2745.
for help, I counsel them to start making a 3. realmilk.com.

86 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2018