Tennessee Milk Anarchy

"Raw milk can be a raw deal," puns John Dreyzehner over at the Tennessean. Literally! Well, that's kind of the point, right? Pasteurized milk is a pasteurized deal, which is precisely what us kooky 18th-century anti-science throwbacks are trying to avoid.

Dreyzehner is the commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health, but we won't hold that against him. In his essay he points out that pasteurized milk "does [not] cause lactose intolerance," which, so far as I know, is an argument that no raw milk drinker has ever made. "Lactose intolerance" is an inability to digest dairy; it's not a milk-borne pathogen. I do get the point he's trying to make, though, but it's kind of a moot one, at least as far as my body is concerned. Sometimes I sink a gallon and a half of raw milk a week. If I tried to do that with pasteurized milk, I'd obliterate myself, and the funeral by necessity would be closed-casket. There's a marked difference between the way the two products are digested by the body.

Dreyzehner also notes:

In 1987, the Food and Drug Administration prohibited distribution of raw milk across state lines for direct sales to consumers. Since then, some have taken extreme measures to obtain raw milk, even buying and consuming raw milk labeled as pet food. Although it is legal in Tennessee for individuals to consume raw milk from their own cow, goat or sheep, it doesn’t change the risk to public health.

The quickest way to get something blacklisted is to label it a menace to "public health," whatever that means. Anyways, the pet food loophole is an "extreme" measure? It's not like we're running bottles of the stuff in from Canada and going to war against the Untouchables. People just figured out a clever labeling scheme to get around the dictates of the government food buttinskies. Extremism just isn't what it used to be.

Elsewhere, Dreyzehner is apparently a noted supporter of the pro-abortion rights lobby. Wah wah wah. So it's "My body, my choice," except when it comes to things of which he disapproves.