Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLRegulating Eating
Should the government really have the right to tell us what we can eat? A recent editorial by Amy Alkon at Mens News Daily says no and it got me thinking. Generations of folks ate what they produced on their own farms and those of their neighbors and most never became ill. There were no alternatives anyway as we were an agricultural society with a minimal knowledge of what bacteria or germs would cause sickness.
In the past year, there have been several raids and closures of farms and businesses that offer raw dairy products. Usually these raids are prompted by an outbreak of illness such as E. coli but that isn’t always the case. While it’s believed by most that one of the responsibilities of government is to keep our food safe, one has to wonder whatever happened to personal responsibility.
People should have the right to eat naturally if they so choose but there is an assumption that those people are educated about what they are eating. Sadly, that’s not always the case. Along with access to excellent resources, the internet has provided us with a lot of misinformation and some outright bullshit and that can lead to people ingesting things that can be risky.
I drink raw milk from my goats and I make cheese with the same unpasteurized milk. I eat eggs from my chickens and the meat from my livestock which I process myself, in my home, without governance from USDA or any other political machine. I haven’t contracted E. coli, campylobacter, brucellosis, bangs disease or any of the other disease that humans can be exposed to through eating animal products. But I am educated about the risks and the steps necessary to diminish risks to my health.
My sister can not drink the very same milk that I use regularly. She is immune suppressed and for whatever reason, had an allergic reaction to something in the milk. My mother is leery of raw milk because, for her, the chance of becoming ill rates higher than the benefits of eating raw. She has had my milk; she eats my eggs and meat, but she buys most of her milk and cheese from the grocery store.
I’m torn on this issue of healthy vs government. I’m not trusting enough to eat raw products produced by most others because I don’t know what kind of precautions those people are taking in processing the products they offer, but I also don’t think government should have the right to indiscriminately close down the few places where the public can obtain natural products. So I’m torn.
Here’s my take on it: educate yourself. And not with Wikipedia. Understand your own health needs, your medications and possible interactions or allergies and then, if you feel raw is the way to go, do so in small steps with products obtained from trusted sources. Ask questions before you eat. Take a look around. Find out what process and handling is used in milking or harvesting the products you intend to use and start slowly to see how your body reacts. I’m reminded of a Wife Swap episode in which one of the families ate exclusively aged raw meat, meat I’d be leery of feeding my dogs. But none of them got sick. In the largely sterile world we’ve come to live in with our antibacterial soaps and antibiotics and preventatives to battle exposure to any type of germ, most people could not eat that sort of thing without ill effects; they just don’t have the overactive immune systems that particular family must have.
The long winded point being: raw is good, until it’s bad, if it becomes bad. Be aware, make educated decisions and don’t blame anyone else if your choice results in ill effects. Then maybe the government can go back to doing something else with their time and our money.
- Naimhe
