The Rat takes the Cheese

Not Big Milk, mind you; not the giant agricultural cooperatives and corporate farms that make up a large part of Big Ethanol and harvest crops of greenbacks for the Democrat Party but with the small dairy farmer, the guy who gets up at 4 a.m. to hit the stables, milk his cows by hand, and work into the wee hours to maintain his farm. The current administration has been engaged in an all-out assault on the dairy industry.

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First the Justice Department went after "raw milk" as a health matter. Raw milk is subject to minimal processing, without hormones, and no pasteurization. Some health conscious individuals prefer it, claiming that pasteurization makes the fats harder to digest, leading to an increase in obesity. They also do not like the hormones in milk from Big Dairy, fearing cancer and obesity as well. While there may be little scientific justification for these beliefs, in America the individual is entitled to believe and live as he chooses as long as no outside party is being injured. Small farms, banned from market sales of raw milk (even if appropriately labeled) were sometimes engaging in direct sales, shipping their product to the consumer or allowing the consumer to cross state lines to pick it up. EPA regulations banned the sale of raw milk, and the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund filed suit to overturn the ban. The FDA argued in court that Americans have no right to choose what they eat, and no right to decide what is good for your health. At one point, regulators actually made an ARMED raid on a dairy farm in California! Next the EPA, under the gentle guidance of Obamista Lisa Jackson, fell off whatever rocker it was precariously perched upon and declared milk to be a form of oil, subject to environmental regulations and forcing dairy farmers to institute draconian oil spill prevention and cleanup schemes. According to the Grand Rapids Press:

"But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil. The Hesperia farmer and others would be required to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November, though that date might be pushed back. "That could get expensive quickly," Konkel said. "We have a serious problem in the Gulf. Milk is a wholesome product that does not equate to spilling oil." But last week environmentalists disagreed at a Senate committee hearing on a resolution from Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, calling for the EPA to rescind its ruling. "The federal Clean Water Act requirements were meant to protect the environment from petroleum-based oils, not milk," he said. "I think it is an example of federal government gone amuck." But Gayle Miller, legislative director of Sierra Club Michigan Chapter, said agricultural pollution probably is the nation's most severe chronic problem when it comes to water pollution."

This will strangle small dairy farms; the enormous cost of implementing a hazardous-waste plan will simply put them out of business - or force them further into the tentacles of government regulation and support. Why is the Administration doing this? Here is one reason courtesy of the Modesto Bee:

How much does a cold glass of milk contribute to global warming? It turns out that producing and consuming milk in the United States accounts for 2 percent of the nation's climate-changing emissions, according to a new report from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. [...] As with past studies, this one found that plenty of the troublesome gases came from cows -- belching cows. But that's not all. Of that 2 percent contribution to global warming: • 19 percent of milk's impact comes from growing the feed for the cows. • 25 percent is from cows belching and passing gas; this produces methane, a potent climate changer. • 24 percent is from manure, also containing methane. • 4 percent is from energy use on the farm. • 17 percent is from trucking milk from the farm, processing and packaging and distribution to retailers. • 6 percent is at retailers. • 5 percent is consumption, including disposal of milk containers. The report does not consider the impact of cheese, butter or other milk-based products. The center is using the findings as a benchmark for improvements that reduce the emissions. The options include capturing methane to produce electricity and getting more milk per unit of feed.

So, milk is a factor in GLOBAL WARMING! We have heard this before, as cattle have been singled out for flatulating the End-Time, but now we are seeing the policies of the Gang Green, those environmental Nazis who want to return the Earth to a mythical pastoral paradise, in full display, at the expense of those most American of entrepreneurs, the small farmers. (It should be noted that the Nazis themselves were riddled with environmentalism, and their "final solution" was an attempt at "restoring" this paradise that the "invasive species" -the Jews - had despoiled with their capitalism and transcendent faith.) Ultimately, the purpose of power is power, as George Orwell so eloquently stated, and the war on milk is but an opening salvo of a far larger war. Control of food production and distribution is as ancient as Chaldea and Egypt, and every tyrant seeks to centralize food production for the purposes of controlling the populace. Dairy farms have been heavily subsidized since the Great Depression, and are a logical starting point for nationalizing the agricultural sector. They have already accepted the gifts of Mephistopheles, after all. There is always a heavy price to be paid when one signs on the dotted line with blood. Or milk, in this case.