Entering the Raw Milk Underground

This article was also published on The Art of Not Being Governed Blog.

This week I descended, unprotected by the solicitous watch of government, into Ontario’s raw milk underground. Well … I’ve yet to be fully initiated; I haven’t even bought any milk yet.

Not yet...

Like in any subversive marketplace, aside from a few vocal advocates, most players on the raw milk scene seem intent on maintaining a high level of privacy as a means of protection against punishment by the state. On Monday afternoon I had a rendez-vous with a “mooshiner” * (someone who deals in raw milk) at a southern Ontario Tim Hortons, trepidatious though they were about the encounter.

While I’ve always been a dairy lover, I’m not much of a foodie otherwise, and therefore never took too much of an interest in issues surrounding food and farm freedom. However, my amble into the raw milk underground began when I wrote about attacks on Ontario farmers by government, mostly from a property rights perspective and stemming from my interest in the expropriation case of Trenton Ontario farmer Frank Meyers.

After writing a blog post on the subject of farmers coming up against government, in which I mentioned the case of raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt, I received a message from someone asking if I was looking for milk, and suggesting that we should connect, if so. My interest was piqued, but after a little bit of communication, my first raw milk contact was spooked by the fact that I was publicly blogging and socially networking about raw milk, among other topics – too much exposure!

Drawn in by the creamy intrigue of the illicit milk trade, I posted on social media about my contact being spooked, and made an appeal for someone willing to sell me some milk. Eventually, a mooshiner did agree to meet me at a Tim Hortons, though they were cautious about what they could tell me, for fear that I may publish some information that would reveal their identity and connection to the raw milk trade. No milk sale was made at our first meeting – trust has to be established first.

We spoke for about an hour, and I learned a lot about the inner-workings of Ontario’s raw milk market, some of which I hope to share with you as I gain a better understanding of the milk landscape.

This mooshiner’s insistence on privacy and discretion, I learned, is based on a fear of reprisal by the government – the crown, local health boards and the CFIA -, the individual farmers whom they represent, as well as the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO), the organization responsible for dispensing legal milk quotas worth hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars to each farmer.

The mooshiner I met estimates that the majority of dairy farmers in Ontario – as many as 80% - engage in illegal “back door sales” of raw milk, and that almost all dairy farmers drink raw milk themselves. If that’s the case, then why don’t more farmers speak out in favour of raw milk legalization?

Under current legislation, most notably the Ontario Milk Act, dairy farmers are prohibited from selling milk outside of the DFO administered quota system. Quota-holding farmers are contractually bound to the DFO to produce a certain amount of milk to be pasteurized and centrally distributed for sale. Overproduction is penalized. Overproducing farmers are able to recoup some of the cost of production of the milk beyond their quota, as well as the associated penalties, by conducting back door sales. However, openly selling raw milk is a huge risk for quota-holding farmers, since being caught doing so would leave them without a quota that allows them to sell their milk to be pasteurized and distributed in the regulated marketplace, with fines and legal fees, and prohibited from selling any milk (raw or not) to provide them with a source of revenue.

I left the Tim Hortons without milk in hand, but on friendly terms with my new mooshiner acquaintance. Though more comfortable than at the outset, they were still concerned about what I might publicly divulge of our meeting, worrying that they might be identified.

It feels somewhat surreal to be operating in such a clandestine manner in order to procure something as seemingly benign as milk. I’m still learning about raw milk – so can’t speak too much to its health benefits or risks, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one who finds it ludicrous that I should have to enter into a “criminal” underground in order to voluntarily transact to buy food for myself, right?

Stay tuned for updates on my underground milk adventures!

*Try to come up with some milk and cow puns of your own for hours of fun!

BC Hells Angels Seek Judicial Arbitration with Rival Gang

Brian Hutchinson  reported, last week in the National Post, on a disturbing trend of systematic theft of private property by the state. There seems to be no end to the number of ways of which government employees can conceive to steal property by force, both threatened and enacted.

BC Hells Angels are seeking legal
remedy in a case of civil forfeiture.

Photo by Jason Payne/ Postmedia News

Similar to eminent domain, civil forfeiture is the "legal" process by which the state seizes private property which it deems to have been acquired from the results of unlawful activity, or is likely to be used to engage in unlawful activity. Legislation authorizing civil forfeiture is in place in ten provinces and territories across Canada. At first pass, it doesn't seem like such a terrible concept - that criminals should be made to pay restitution to their victims, in an effort to make them whole again.

Of course, the state does not dispose of seized assets by returning stolen property to its rightful owner, or paying restitution to victims of crime. As reported by the National Post, "most civil forfeiture cases in Canada involve marijuana grow operations and drug transactions". The property seized in the majority of civil forfeiture cases in Canada involve only non-violent "crimes", which being committed, created not a single victim. Doesn't it seem counter-logical that a non-violent, victimless act, deemed esthetically and socially displeasing to legislators, should be met with theft?

British Columbia Provincial Justice Minister Suzanne Anton defends the practice of civil forfeiture, claiming that it reduces the incentive for individuals to commit illegal acts by taking away the proceeds resulting from such acts.

Civil forfeiture fails to deter criminality. Instead it increases the incentive of the state to act in a criminal manner, stealing private property. Seized property is sold off to fund various "crime prevention" bureaucracies, and in the case of British Columbia, proceeds of sold off assets are put right back into the civil forfeiture program. Theft funded by theft.

While the incentive exists for the state to continue to practice civil forfeiture against individuals, the same incentive does not often exist for victims of this legally sanctioned theft, to mount a challenge in court. The cost of challenging a civil forfeiture case is often as much as or greater than the value of the seized property, so victims just walk away. Such is not the case for the Hells Angels, who have challenged the seizure of three of their club houses by the BC government.

Isn't it ironic that the state is attempting to steal from a group which it identifies as a gang, and which it claims operates criminally with the use of violence and theft? Isn't it even more ironic that the de facto criminal gang, in this scenario, the Hells Angels, is challenging the transgressions of the de jure criminal gang, the state, by means of judicial arbitration?

So what should the Hells Angels do if they lose their appeal? There's only one "logical" thing to do in a "civil" society, and that is to seize the proceeds of the crime from the transgressors (the state), to get back what was theirs.