Capital Times, Dec. 16, 2004
By: John E. Peck
Being one of those Midwest children who grew up drinking fresh milk out of the bulk tank, I was bit surprised to read Mr. Oncken’s latest column (Wisconsin State Farmer 12/17/04). Not only does he echo questionable claims made by the food industry about the virtues of pasteurization, but he goes on to sing the praises of confinement livestock operations. On the other hand, most farmers, consumers, and even outgoing Bush Health Secretary, Tommy Thompson, realize there is something horribly wrong with our current system of industrialized agriculture. This is also why the fastest growing farming sector consists of local, natural, and organic products – free of the cancer-causing chemicals, synthetic hormones, antibiotic residues, genetically modified organisms, and cannibalistic protein supplements upon which corporate agribusiness depends.
As is well documented in Ron Schmid’s recent book, The Untold Story of Milk, the campaign to vilify and outlaw raw milk in America has been underway for over a century and is based upon tall tales of disease epidemics that never really occurred. For instance, there were only 256 cases (and 3 deaths) from undulant fever – aka brucellosis - reported for the entire U.S. between 1923 and 1944. Similarly, the impact of bovine tuberculosis was relatively insignificant compared to human tuberculosis in the early part of the 20th century. Mandatory pasteurization has been no panacea for milk-borne health problems, either. In 1973 nine million people in Michigan were exposed to PBB, a toxic flame retardant agent, after contaminated livestock feed found its way into the milk and meat supply. Another 200,000 people got sick (and 18 died) in 1985 from milk pasteurized in northern Illinois that was still contaminated with Salmonella.
What is well known is that livestock confinement is not healthy for animals, consumers, and farmers. Visit any factory farm and the reality is obvious. Mastitis runs rampant with frequent rBGH injection, requiring more (sometimes illegal) antibiotics. Forced to produce milk faster than nature intended, cows “burn out” prematurely and millions of heifers had to be imported from Canada and Mexico just to sustain U.S. herd levels – until Mad Cow came along. Cows fed a corn/soy ration laced with other dubious additives (chicken manure, blood/bone meal) end up with chronic acidosis and painful laminitis, especially when forced to stand on concrete all their lives, instead of getting outside to eat grass. Numerous U.S. farmworkers have now died from ammonia and hydrogen sulfide fumes after being sent by supervisors into manure lagoons, and a recent IA study has linked elevated rural asthma rates with living downwind from factory farms. In countries such as Sweden where confinement livestock operations are illegal, many of these threats now facing the U.S. food supply have been essentially eliminated.
Corporate controlled markets and corrupt government officials, though, marginalize alternatives. Farmers often have to “incorporate” simply to get any form of support and limit their liability. At the same time, they are compelled into signing one-sided contracts and technological use agreements to gain access to markets, inputs, loans, and so forth. Some of these same contracts even deny family farmers the right to question agribusiness behavior or to organize collectively as independent producers – underhanded tactics familiar to anyone involved in the labor movement. Personal freedom ends up sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit, and the proud yeoman farmer that so inspired Jeffersonian democracy is reduced to a poor medieval serf.
Adding insult to injury is a whole host of misguided subsidies and discriminatory policies. To give a few examples, DATCP’s Milk Volume Production (MVP) program grants up to a $1 million in state money per confinement operation to buy more cows, while the National Milk Producers Federation’s CWT program actually pays farmers to kill their cows – 35,000 last year alone. Both the Congress and the White House are violating consumer right to know by failing to pass County of Origin Labelling (COOL), mandated in the last Farm Bill. The USDA twiddles its thumbs on implementing food safety rules and national tracking systems that would actually stem the spread of Mad Cow and other preventable
diseases. Meanwhile, WI’s controversial livestock facility siting legislation is now poised to pre-empt local control in favor of state technocratic rubberstamping of factory farm permits.
In 2004 New York dairy farmer, John Bunting, authored a 40 page report “Questioning the Future of Dairy Policy – Are Large Dairy Farms Sustainable?” (available from the National Family Farm Coalition #1-800-639-3276). His analysis affirmed what many land grant college experts have “discovered” (and which family farmers already knew) – that the most efficient, profitable, and sustainable operations have herds ranging between 50-100 cows and rely on low-input pasture-based systems – just like in New Zealand, a primary beneficiary of the current U.S. dairy trade deficit. Even Gov. Doyle has now accepted the viability of smallscale family farm agriculture in WI’s future with his new Organic Taskforce and $7,500 GROW grants for farmers interested in transitioning to grazing. Too bad this reality remains a secret to dairy industry pundits like Mr. Oncken.
