Schmidt in January 2010, after winning his court case.For nearly a month now, Canadian rancher Michael Schmidt has been engaged in a hunger strike. For over 17 years, Schmidt has been crusading for the right to distribute raw milk to a few hundred Ontario consumers who own shares in his herd of cows. He says he has been unable to convince anyone in a position of power to discuss how he and other raw dairy farmers can simultaneously service their herdshare members and abide by public health safety concerns. Instead, as he told me last week: "My farm has been …

President Obama has been talking up rural job creation even as his regulators discourage it.Photo: Will MerydithWhen I'm not writing about food rights, I serve on the board of a small high-tech information service company that is growing quickly by serving a global market. Earlier this week, we had a board meeting -- it felt refreshing to be bouncing around ideas for increasing market share, dealing with competitors, starting new partnerships, and bringing aboard new talent to handle emerging sales initiatives. It was refreshing because it was a stark contrast to covering the crackdown around the country by the U.S. …

Private food clubs and small producers of raw milk and cheese have witnessed all manner of regulatory and legal interference in recent years -- confiscation of raw milk deliveries, quarantining of raw milk, searches of dairies carried out by armed state and federal agents, shutdown of cheese plants. But last week's multi-agency assault on Rawesome Food Club in Venice, Calif., marked the first time individuals associated with a food club or a small farm had actually been thrown into jail, in this case charged with 13 felonies and misdemeanors, and held on high bail (requested between $60,000 and $130,000). The …

This past weekend, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put out a press release stating it had epidemiological evidence connecting three illnesses from campylobacter to raw milk distributed in North Carolina. Possibly five other people might have been affected, the release stated. The consumers obtained the milk via a private food club that arranged delivery of the milk from South Carolina, where raw milk can be legally sold, to North Carolina, where it can't. A couple things were notable about the press release. First, it was issued on a Saturday, which isn't normally an FDA workday. That suggested it …

CNN is milking the raw dairy angle for all it's worth. As someone who follows closely the relentless campaign by the nation's medical and public health establishments against raw milk, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop in the European food-borne illness disaster. The "other shoe" is for some scientist or government public health official to seek to link the European tragedy to the battle here over raw milk. Sound crazy? I'd say. Verge on the paranoid? Definitely. After all, among all the culprits publicly linked to the tragedy -- cucumbers, tomatoes, and, most recently, sprouts -- dairy …

Portrait of the farmer as a young man: Eliot Coleman with children, circa early 1970s.Reprinted with permission from Melissa Coleman. I'm not sure exactly what it means to play a cameo role in a family memoir exploring the roots of today's food movement; but certainly it makes you keenly aware of how quickly the years are piling up. I'm referring to the tale of my brief, but apparently significant, role in helping launch organic farmer and author (and occasional Grist contributor) Eliot Coleman toward fame, chronicled in the new memoir by his daughter, Melissa, This Life Is in Your Hands, …

I’m from the government, and I’m here to take away your milk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has just filed a complaint in federal court, seeking a permanent injunction against Amish farmer Dan Allgyer in Pennsylvania. It accuses him of violating a federal prohibition on interstate sales of raw milk by shipping unpasteurized milk to a Maryland buying club's members. As part of its complaint, the agency says it carried out a lengthy undercover investigation to acquire raw milk, and as part of it, "FDA investigators picked up each unpasteurized milk order at various private residences in Maryland." All …

Photo: Chewonki Semester SchoolIn 2009, Maine farmer Heather Retberg learned that new regulations prohibited her from bringing her chickens to a neighbor's approved slaughtering facility. She’d have to invest some $30,000 she didn't have to build her own facility. So Retberg shifted her focus to raw dairy instead, selling directly to local neighbors. When she received a notice last year from the Maine Department of Agriculture that she needed a permit, requiring investment way above what she could ever hope to justify with her minimal sales, she’d had enough. She got together with four neighbors similarly upset with the new …

Italy's celebrated Pecorino di Farindola, pictured here, is now and has always been made from raw milk. We can get this right, peopleHas there been a serious jump in illnesses from raw-milk cheese recently? You might think so if you've read recent major pieces in The New York Times and The Washington Post -- or the study put together by product liability law firm Marler Clark, which documented 54 illnesses attributed to raw milk cheese in 2010. The FDA is certainly concerned. It has been considering significantly tightening the rule that allows producers to sell unpasteurized cheeses to the public, …

A week ago, Pennsylvania dairy farmer Edwin Shank did something no other producer of raw milk in recent memory has seen fit to do: he halted sales to his more than 1,800 customers, without any urging by local regulators. He made his decision based on private lab tests -- tests over and above those periodically conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture -- that showed the presence of the pathogen campylobacter in one sample. While no one has reported illnesses to Shank or state authorities in the three weeks since the questionable milk went out into the marketplace, the owner …