stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Sally Fallon on Raw Milk

Dec 5, 2007 farming, sustainable agriculture

My dad actually sent me this and I’m not sure what to say; I think I’m getting through to him.

It’s a speech of Sally Fallon’s–founder of A Campaign for Real Milk (i.e. Raw Milk). Specifically a “Keynote Address for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Conference, Amherst, Massachusetts August, 2003″

The bottom line is that she is advocating all people switch to raw milk, but rather than standing on the environmental/health soapbox of the issue, she tackles it from a very compelling economic angle.

She is well spoken, she is well informed, and her speech is worth reading if you can find the time.

Here’s my favorite part:

Let’s turn to the subject of economics. I am sure that many of you realize that today we have a system in which money is created out of nothing. Money is a medium of exchange that can be based on the productivity of a society–in other words, the government prints money based on the Gross National Product, the sum of goods and services produced in the country– or money can be created out of nothing by private banks and loaned to governments at interest. Because our money today is created out of nothing, it seeks to get its clutches on real production–industry, agriculture, trade and so forth. I call this Vulture Capital. Vulture Capital is always in search of prey–it cannot live without eating up the real sources of wealth.

Vulture Capital must always seek new sources of wealth. After exhausting the manufacturing sector, it turned to the types of industry typically carried out on the local level–shoes, clothing and food. It has glutted itself on animals–pigs, chickens, dairy cows and fish–taking them off the land or out of their natural maritime habitat–and placing them in confinement. Only one sector of the food animal economy cannot be completely managed by the industrial farm system and that is beef. The early stages of beef production must be done in the open, on the range, in order for the industry to be economically viable. This is the real reason our government tells us not to eat beef. It’s because beef cannot be completely brought into the Vulture Capital system, not because it causes heart disease and cancer–this is just a smokescreen.

Having gobbled up most of America’s industry, food production and agriculture, Vulture Capital is now exploring uncharted territories, seeking to lay claim to all food (through a system of mandatory irradiation) and all seeds (through genetic engineering.)

Incidentally, I read the speech this morning before going to work, and when I called my dad to discuss it, we both couldn’t recall seeing anything but cows in fields as we drove along the highways of the midwest. Included in that driving are several trips my dad has made to Iowa–a state filled with pigs–and the trip Ellie and I took to Michigan.

It’s not anything we’d ever thought to notice until it was pointed out that we ought to notice.

Think about it, when is the last time you’ve seen pigs, or chickens, or sheep, or anything else while driving along?

More than likely your answer will be you haven’t. Personally, outside of cows, I’ve seen more alpacas this year than anything.

And why? Because these days most animals are confined inside CAFO facilities.

CAFO is an acronym you see a lot in the news as of late, and although I think many people have the proper picture in their mind of what that is exactly, I’m not sure most actually know what it stands for: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

Here is her hope for the world:

Although we constantly hear rhetoric extolling the efficiency of very large farms, rising costs and declining prices are rendering this model more and more untenable. The farm of the future is not the mechanized CAFO or mega-mono culture, but the 30-cow dairy farm that sells directly to the public or provides products to shareholders. This model will flourish because the day is coming when no conscientious couple will dream of starting a family until they have found a source of pure and healthy raw milk for their children; when no town planners will proceed without first setting aside the most fertile land for the local dairy; when no doctor will omit raw milk as part of his treatment; and when no government official will dare to impede access in any way to raw milk and other pure foods–and that raw milk will come from small, local farms.

Tags: Raw-Milk, Sally-Fallon, Vulture-Capital