B.C. raw milk lovers who are members of the Home on the Range cow share appear to have reached an agreement with the Fraser Health Authority enabling them to continue to get shipments of raw milk.
Their milk, however, will not be called milk on the label. Instead, the liquid will be labelled as “Cleopatra’s Bathing Lotion” and indicate it is not fit for human consumption.
Michael Schmidt recently took over the Home on the Range operation after former director Alice Jongerden decided that continued legal battles with health authorities were not worth the effort.
Schmidt was successful at getting Ontario to approve the distribution of raw milk by member co-operatives when he lived in that province.
He met Fraser Health’s regional director of health protection, Tim Shum, on September 28 along with about 200 others.
Schmidt told Business in Vancouver September 29 that Shum agreed not to take any legal action without first consulting him.
“If I buy windshield wiper fluid, I can decide to drink it or not,” Schmidt said. “There are lots of products that are not taken off shelves because they are not fit for human consumption.”
B.C. Supreme Court had ordered Jongerden to stop distributing raw milk produced from 20 Jersey cows on a Chilliwack farm to 400 cow-share co-op members.
Health officials were concerned that pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter can contaminate unpasteurized milk.
Schmidt won his 4 p.m. meeting with Shum after he decided to set up a kiosk outside Fraser Health’s offices earlier in the day. From that kiosk, he gave out raw milk samples to passers-by.
Schmidt said, “No one from Fraser Health came out to put a stop to it so they must not have thought that it was a hazardous product."