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RCJ: Make Complicated Raw Milk Rules Voluntary

Conservatives respond with... crickets!

Secretary of Agriculture Lucas Lentsch is supposed to decide today whether to implement new rules on the production and sale of raw milk in South Dakota. If he reads the Rapid City Journal and acts like the good Republican that he is, he'll make these regulations voluntary and give consumers free choice in the milk marketplace:

In our view, the state’s proposed raw milk testing rules are a solution in search of a problem. If people want to drink raw milk and are aware of the risks, as slight as they are, and dairy producers want to sell raw milk to their customers, where’s the harm?

Since the state has gone this far on the matter, the Agriculture Department should issue its new rules on a voluntary basis. Producers can voluntarily comply with the rules and say so on their containers.

It’s not as though there is a threat to public safety. Milk is being tested for pathogens now, but the proposed rules are potentially confusing and burdensome to producers. Producers are concerned about the cost of compliance, and consumers are worried about the availability of raw milk under the new rules.

Adding more regulations is not how streamlining government is supposed to work [editorial, Rapid City Journal, 2013.06.20].

That's a good conservative argument for restraint in regulation and promotion of local industry, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance. So why don't I hear any of Lentsch's conservative followers in the blogosphere or big-name conservatives like Governor Dennis Daugaard and Senate candidate M. Michael Rounds making that argument?

Update 07:46 MDT: One conservative who's on the raw milk ball: Rep. Steve Hickey (R-9/Sioux Falls), who says on Facebook this morning that Sec. Lentsch should drop the new rules and start over. Yay, Rep. Hickey!

4 Comments

  1. Michael Black 2013.06.24

    Politicians only want to get rid of the part of government regulation they don't like.

  2. Robert Klein 2013.06.24

    Yup, nothing to worry about here. Outbreaks of food-born illness were, of course, rare, before pasteurization was mandated. And the risk to public coffers from thousands of people suddenly showing up at the emergency room is insignificant! The same people who say that it is immoral to terminate a pregnancy surely wouldn't want to mandate safe children.

    (sarcasm alert high)

  3. Emily Wahl 2013.07.17

    The thing you have to understand is that at the time of Louis Pasteur, there were major sanitation issues in the milk supply that people had access to. These were not family farms raising grass fed cattle and using all sorts of cleanliness precautions. What was going on was cattle being fed the waste products from whiskey refineries, and living in their own filth in cramped conditions. This milk was even worse than today's CAFOS. Pasteurization fulfilled a need that is created by poor animal management. The milk that comes from a well cared for animal on a small scale farm is, and always has been safe, due to the high quantities of beneficial bacteria present in the milk. It has the ability to kill any contamination that could be introduced. Pasteurized milk is actually vulnerable, because it can not kill pathogens.

    There has never been a single illness in SD connected to raw milk. What there has been are a lot of people grateful to have access to milk that is easier to digest and a great source of nutrition.

    Raw milk regulation will waste tax payer money every year, and is unneeded. As the above article stated, the conservative approach should be one of allowing people to make their own decision about the foods they consume.

  4. Joan Williams 2013.07.17

    Why does the SDDA seem to ignore all the policies adopted by other states? There are plenty of states that have done all the homework already, and have far more consumers potentially affected by this issue than SD will ever have. It's not necessary to start from scratch here.

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