ONTARIO: Court rules against raw milk farmer

28.sep.11
The Star
Tracey Tyler

DURHAM, ONT.-- The Ontario Court of Justice dismissed every one of Michael Schmidt’s arguments that distributing and purchasing raw milk was a well-informed consumer’s constitutional right. He was acquitted Wednesday of three charges, but could be fined $5,000 for each day he continues to distribute his milk.
There will, he says, be an appeal. “The whole thing is a big loss, but we’re going to keep going.”
The province’s successful appeal of a Jan. 21 ruling in Schmidt’s favour was the latest chapter in the farmer’s four-year battle to keep milk flowing from his raw milk operation, which he described as a fight for “food freedom.”
Justice Peter Tetley’s decision, he predicted, “will stimulate incredible resistance” to government food controls, including the legislation he was found guilty of violating — Health Protection and Promotion Act provisions that prohibit distributing and selling milk that has not been heat-treated to kill bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli.
Raw milk advocates maintain pasteurization destroys beneficial enzymes, but authorities including the World Health Organization say the loss is minimal and the benefits of heat-treating outweigh the risks of drinking it raw.