Sadie Frown of the Week: The FDA and Their Milk "Sting"

Sometimes (okay frequently) I wonder about our federal government's priorities. I mean, when you have a president who went into office saying that we needed to decriminalize marijuana because we "aren't winning the war on drugs" you can't really be shocked when the federal government, following his election, doesn't really care if the commercial growing of marijuana runs rampant on their own property (as it does in our area). Let's just say I don't expect to see the military convoys that go back and forth on the freeway that goes through our county stopping anytime soon to deal with the cartels that have moved in. In fact, at the moment, the state government is talking about taking away the licensing fee that funds our entire local law enforcement (they would actually be cutting more positions for our county than we have in our entire county!).

Yet we can rest easy knowing that the feds still go after the real criminals. Take this story, for example. Here's a highlight:

"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...."

Read the entire story here.

Now we don't buy raw milk, but I have a good friend who wrote a beautiful, informative post on it not too long ago.

And I have to say: I've never seen anyone have a knee cap blown off by a dairy farmer who sells raw milk. I don't see dairy farmers walking around with their attack dogs in town and I've never had a dairy farmers out of control pit bull jump up on my stroller. I've never had a child go to the ER in the middle of the night because a dairy farmer's product was seeping through the walls into my home, causing the child to be unable to breath. I've never had a dairy farmer neighbor cuss a family member out for stopping on the side of the road to introduce themselves (because they were new next door neighbors and in these parts that's what you do!).

I've seen all of the problems above living in a part of the country known for marijuana production, as a result of that "industry."

But I'm sure our federal government totally has their priorities straight...