Photo by BRYAN PATRICK / bpatrick@sacbee.com
By Carlos Alcalá
The Sacramento Bee
Excerpts:
Pattie Chelseth thinks she has the right to sell you a fraction of a cow.
Chelseth, operator of My Sisters’ Farm in Shingle Springs, keeps two cows owned by 15 people.
A cow’s owner can legally drink its milk filtered but unpasteurized, so she believes each of those 15 owners is entitled to a share of the raw milk.
California’s Department of Food and Agriculture sees it otherwise.
“We consider that a commercial transaction and subject to the dairy food safety laws,” said Steve Lyle, the agency’s public affairs director.
A battle in a milk bottle is brewing, as small farmers challenge state and federal regulations.
Chelseth is trying to land the latest blow, floating an ordinance for El Dorado County that she thinks would give small producers the right to sell unregulated goods – milk, cheese, home-baked pies and more – directly to the person who consumes them.
She will hold a local meeting at her farm on Friday.
She said there are at least eight other dairy shares in El Dorado County, and others are interested.
“If it’s a private customer, from person-to-person,” Chelseth said, “that shouldn’t be regulated.”
For her to be regulated and inspected for milk would be a $100,000 proposition, Chelseth said.
She’s not even trying to be in business. She bought a cow in order to get raw milk for a grandchild, she said.
She started the herd share when others came to her for raw milk.
The Department of Food and Agriculture has served her with a cease-and-desist order, Chelseth said.
“We see it as a food safety issue,” said Lyle.
Chelseth is promoting a “Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance,” modeled on ones passed in Maine beginning this year.
The El Dorado ordinance, like those in Maine, reads more like the Declaration of Independence than a county law:
“We the People of the County of El Dorado, California, have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods, thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms and local food traditions.”
“This is all about freedom,” Chelseth said.
“I refuse to be underground,” she said. “I’ll go to jail, and I won’t drink anything but raw milk.”
The Raw Milk Revolution
Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
by David E. Gumpert
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