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Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund – FTCLDF

January 6, 2010

Down on the Trautman Farm

Down on the Trautman Farm

Before New Years Day I wrote here about the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the Kafkaesque way they have treated Scott and Julie Trautman. Scott and Julie are certified organic farmers selling grass fed beef. They also have a small dairy herd. Until recently they were able to market their milk to the big homogenizing, pasteurizing operations known as Corporate Milk. Sadly, their desire to also market raw milk to the natural food consumer resulted in a conflict. Here’s what Scott posted on his blog today about how family farmers are fighting back:

How to Help

Every day that goes by, at least one new person comes along, is horrified by our situation, and asks, how can we help?

Thing is, not only our situation is horrifying. We are representative of what is being done to family farms, and what is being done to consumers. We are paying a high price for speaking out. Speaking out against injustice has always had a price.

What is different now – is – we are not alone. And we are not disorganized. So it is not just us against injustice, it is a growing army of people, disgusted with the direction our government is taking, and their corporate ‘leaders’. A variety of tactics, well thought through, designed to sidestep public interest, and even in cases make the public think it’s for their own good. Truly a world of ‘1984′: good is bad, and bad is good. 1 plus 1 is 3.

So, what to do?

First: Do not despair. Do not immerse yourself in conspiracy, in bad news, and take your mind to a place that presumes helplessness and evil. It is not an evil world, and we are not helpless. We are far more sensitive to what we invite into our minds than any of us will admit. Do not surround yourself with the bad. Search out the good – in your fellow man, in all its forms.

Second, do what you can. If you despair, you will be left in a state of “why do anything”. Do not give up – do what you can – whatever that is. Many of you have found the satisfaction in communicating with your representatives. With your friends, neighbors, about issues important to you. This is something. Valuing your participation in the world around you – and accepting you have an impact, and every something you do – you cannot presume that it is for nothing. We cannot know what even small acts, how it changes things. And notice how it makes you feel – to do something good. It feels really, really good. Better than any prurient pleasures we are deluded into believing is what feeling good is supposed to be.

Third, educate yourself. Speak with conviction and confidence to those around you. If you are knowledgeable, you will be sought out, you will be listened to. Become the master of your world – and be able to separate the wheat from the chaff; to tell what is the truth and what is someone else’s agenda. Those against will always use emotion and fear – and be very light indeed on facts and common sense. Through knowledge, be able to tell the difference, and do not accept anything at its face value.

Fourth, support those organizations that bring support together. Back to #1: do not despair – as our ‘enemies’ have changed adapted and manipulated the system – so too we have learned what we can do. We look at their strategies, and no, we do not lie, but we do organize and present a unified front, we gather our resources, and with the truth – and people – on our side, we will not be denied. We fight each battle as it comes, and we see this for the war that it is, and we are prepared to fight as long as it takes.

If you want to support ‘us’, Trautman Family Farm, I want YOU to support, with any kind of donation you can afford – whatever you can do, today -

Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund - http://www.ftcldf.org

Without a doubt – this war on family farmers and consumers – against Raw Milk – is a different battle today because of FTCLDF. Picking off farmers one by one – an old and effective tactic – is not working, and will never work again. That is 100% because of FTCLDF. But there are many battles ahead – and FTCLDF has the armaments we need – especially now, legal funds for those farmers bullied by the state.

When we speak together in a unified voice: we are powerful. These lessons we will take with us across all the injustice being done to us – our rights taken from us, our children’s futures stolen – we will organize and we will take it back, issue by issue. Right now: we start with Raw Milk.

So, Wisconsin – Trautman Family Farm supporters – Family Farm supporters – Raw Milk supporters – Your Rights supporters – show you are prepared to do battle – and give what you can today to Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Tell ‘em….

Scott Trautman, Proud Wisconsin Dairyman sent you – and that we stand together!

Let me simply add, “Un pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido!”

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Raw milk freakyosis

November 17, 2009

trautmancows
Scott Trautman has a problem that affects all of us. State authorities are forcing him out of the dairy business because he wants to sell raw milk products.

Early in the summer the Trautman’s had an open house. I stopped by to see their operation and to visit my brush mower which Scott is holding hostage. The Trautman farm is like a storybook: big old farm house with a wrap around porch, red barns, a machine shed, happy kids chasing chickens, chickens squawking and retreating to their roosts in the hay loft where the kids gather eggs every day, pigs and piglets pastured well out of the way and down wind, jersey cows and calves on the near pasture, hay fields, tractors, wagons, trucks, a big wood lot. The Trautman family has the whole family farm thing going for them, even a little store open Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings where you can pick up eggs or grass fed beef and pork. The store is a cozy gathering place with books and chairs and a table in a building set away from the house adjoining a barn. They have popcorn and honey and what not, local food all of it, though the honey is on consignment from neighbors down the road. The Trautmans don’t keep bees. I’m trying to remember if there’s a pot bellied stove. If there’s not there should be. It’s that kind of space.

There’s a glass fronted cooler in the store, the kind of cooler where you’d expect to see milk and cream, butter and cheese displayed for sale. Cluelessly I asked about getting some fresh milk and cream. As it happened, the farm was even then engaged in a struggle to save their dairying operation and they’d been enjoined against selling raw milk to the public.

Raw milk is risky. It’s not pasteurized. Pasteurization protects the public against tuberculosis, brucellosis, listeriosis, and several other diseases. We learned this in grade school. In fact, we learned the lesson so well that today few of us have ever tasted raw milk or cream skimmed from raw milk, or butter churned from the cream that was skimmed from the cows that Scott milks–thirty cows, milked every day, and their milk dumped on the ground because the wholesaler won’t pick up the milk and the State’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has rescinded Scott’s dairying license because Foremost won’t pick up the milk, and Foremost won’t pick up the milk because DATCP is “cracking down” on raw milk producers… there’s a horrible circularity here, a sort of Kafka-esque encounter with a heartless, mindless bureaucracy.

Scott’s cows are healthy, his operation is clean, there ought to be a way he could bring his raw milk to market. Raw milk dairies are conscious of the potential public health risks, and with few exceptions they provide food that is superior to anything you can find in the supermarket. But earlier this year thirty people came down with campylobactereriosis here in Wisconsin and the cause of their gastrointestinal upset was raw milk. State bureaucrats, concerned for their jobs and under pressure from the big dairy interests have cracked down on family farms. If you want dairy products in Wisconsin, you can have the pasteurized, homogenized processed products, but you can’t get whole raw milk. You might get sick. (Issues related to ground beef and other food borne illnesses notwithstanding, the State DATCP seems intent on driving small dairy operations out of business, while supporting the huge 1000 cow and more milking parlors, factory farms that treat cows about like chickens in an egg factory). As an aside, if you get food poisoning at the local Taco John’s will DATCP drive the restaurant out of business? Short answer: NOT!

There is a story unfolding here, and you can follow it and support the Trautman family by becoming a Trautman farm “fan” on facebook. The facebook page is here.

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Eat Beef!

August 9, 2009

In the interest of equal time for carnivores and in response to the recent “Eat Less Meat” graphic in the sidebar, I share with you a marketing message I received today from an organic grass fed beef operation up near Douglas City in Trinity County…

As for me, I’m doing my part for the locavore movement. [...]

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