The Sacramento Bee published a good article on Saturday:
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/646503.html
The Complete Patient blog has done two stories since the hearing, and the comments there are almost a community bulletin board for the raw milk movement -- plus the blog does excellent coverage of related issues all over:
SRM has realized that the link shown below DOES NOT link to a version of the bill that contains changes made during the hearing on Wed. 1/16. This version is from 1/14, prior to the hearing. It is the most recent version of the bill available online at the California legislature's site, but it is not the most recent version of the bill in existence. As soon as the new text becomes available, we will link to it here. Sorry if this caused others any confusion, as it did for us. -- AuLait
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_1601-1650/ab_1604_bill_2...
This email was just sent to supporters.
It is confusing that the compromise bill specifies a standard of 50 coliforms/ml will be enacted in July, but also says that research will be done to determine what the standard should be. I understand there was a need to compromise in order to keep the flow of raw milk from being cut off entirely, but am not sure whether we are locked in to the 50 standard or not. If we are, there's no reason to have six months to study the problem. It seems like both are features of the bill for now. -- AuLait
So far post-hearing updates and reports are showing up in the comments thread at the Complete Patient blog:
http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2008/1/17/with-nearly-1000-at-...
Crowd estimates are now ranging widely from several hundred to nearly a thousand, but it sounds like it was a very good showing and a spirited hearing nonetheless.
Here's Mark McAfee's (Organic Pastures) comment from that thread (reproduced in full):
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The Complete Patient blog has an update -- 950 people showed up today, which is great, and we thank every one of them! And the Ag committee supports the new bill:
http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2008/1/17/with-nearly-1000-at-...
It appears likely that we will have a six-month stay on any coliform testing, which is good. The possibility of a 50-per-ml standard coming out of that six months is not so good, as 50 coliforms is just as harmless as 10. We are NOT out of the woods yet on this, so please keep posted and stay active!
CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS POSTING: THE HEARING BEFORE THE AG COMMITTEE WILL BE ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16. MONDAY THE 14TH WAS THE DEADLINE TO GET COMMUNICATIONS IN TO OFFICIALS, AS THEY WERE TO WRITE THE NEW BILL ON THAT DATE. SRM APOLOGIZES FOR THE CONFUSION. -- AuLait
Aajonus Vonderplanitz sent the following message out to his supporters today, 1/10/08. Please note the State is in fact following through on its promise to enforce AB1735 starting immediately. We need your help now!! - AuLait
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Hi, raw-milk lovers,
As of January 10, 2008, our access to raw milk is still unprotected.
The following email from Aajonus has been posted at Jim Ellison's blog -- http://www.wewant2live.blogspot.com -- I have bolded some of the text for emphasis. Please consider using our Donate and Join Us (to sign petition/join lawsuit) pages if you wish to help! Thank you. -- AuLait
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Monday, December 31, 2007
Urgent for Raw Milk Lovers in every state and country
Delicious and healthful, natural raw milk is a staple food for more than 30,000 California families. California raw milk producers are small-scale, independent farmers who are focused on quality and safety and produce their milk and other products carefully and responsibly with respect for nature. Yet, as of January 1, 2008, you may no longer be able to obtain raw milk in California.
Presently, raw milk is tightly controlled and rigorously tested by the state, and it is as safe as, if not safer than, factory-farmed pasteurized milk. Nevertheless, even though raw milk has not caused any disease outbreak, health department officials slipped into the 2007 California Farm Bill a new and scientifically baseless regulation that will cause raw milk to pass inspection only about half the time -- which means that our raw dairy farmers will be forced to either dump half of their product, or sell that half of it, for much less money, to the big industrial distributors -- who will pasteurize it. Either way, they will lose a large proportion of the value of their business.
As a result, these small farmers will likely go bankrupt, and thus will no longer pose a threat to industrial agriculture by showing the world a different and a better way to farm. Consumers like us will find it much more difficult to obtain the raw milk that can still be sold under the new rule, because there will be a whole lot less of it available -- again, reducing or eliminating the economic competition that raw dairy poses to corporate, industrial dairy production. Many of us suspect that this is the real goal of the regulation -- to put the producers out of business -- and that state regulators are promulgating the new rule on behalf of powerful agribusiness interests.
The bankruptcy prediction is realistic -- it happened to Stueve's Natural raw dairy in 1999, when the same type of regulation was instituted by the LA County Department of Health Services. In response (spearheaded by Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz), a law was passed in 2001 that made the standards for raw milk equal to those applied to pasteurized dairy. Not one case of illness resulted from this change -- but Stueve's was already out of business.
We must prevent this from happening again. SaveRawMilk.org is a group of California citizens whose goal is to stop the raw-milk regulation in AB 1735 from taking effect on January 1, 2008, and protect access to raw milk in the future. Our legal representation aims to block the enforcement of the legislation, but we need everybody's help.
We know that in any effort like this, it's important to build coalitions as broadly as possible. Thus, we are working with Dr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Right to Choose Healthy Food, the Weston A. Price Foundation, and the Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
There are many ways you can get involved. You can add your name to our database and sign our online petition, and help us fund the very expensive legal process. Please donate! We are unlikely to accomplish our goal without your financial support.
Our thanks go to all of you who have contacted us, gotten involved and donated. We thank you for your patience while we've been bringing up this site and securing representation.
Please spread the word about our website. Help us protect your right to choose healthy food, and help support independent, safe and sustainable agriculture.
"We already have an excellent and well constructed raw milk testing protocol in California which includes bacterial counts and tests for all of the pertinent pathogens. The state has not been able to shut us down with these regulations not because the regulations are insufficient but because our product is clean and safe. So now they come up with a new regulation that contributes not at all to product safety nor, at the bacterial levels we are talking about, to product quality. Rather, the regulation seems to be solely for the purpose of limiting the raw milk industry in the state to an insignificant level that would be entirely inadequate to meet the demands of the people of California for raw milk."