Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
27°/17°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Rain at 11:00 PM EDT on May 27, 2012
Chance of Rain
26°/20°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 28, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
32°/20°

18 Comments

news

Quebec’s Distinct, London’s Not Green, And There’s A Snake in My Boots!

By Christopher Bird

harper-motion061127.jpg
The House has overwhelmingly passed a motion recognizing Quebec as a nation within Canada. 15 Liberal MPs and Garth Turner voted against, although it probably would have been more if it had been a free vote for the Tories. Hey, remember when somebody, I forget who exactly but his name rhymed with “Even Carper”, promised that all votes in Parliament on non-budgetary matters would be free votes?
In other Parliamentary news, the Grits and the Bloc kept their seats in by-elections. Green Party leader Elizabeth May came in a reasonable second in the by-election for London North Centre, which, depending on your point of view, is either fantastic because the Greens have never done so well or terrible because this was a by-election where they could concentrate all their political power on one lousy riding and they still lost. Read the Torontoist interview with May here.
Next on the list of bad policy ideas imported from the United States: being unnecessarily paranoid about illegal immigrants.
Two homes in Toronto evacuated after a cobra gets lost somewhere in them. Also supposedly in the house: a badger and a mushroom. (Aren’t you glad I didn’t go for the tired Snakes On A Plane reference? We here at Torontoist like to switch it up on you now and then.)
And the OPP bust a raw-milk farmer. We are now all of us safe from the dangers of going on a three-year waiting list to drink unpasteurized milk. (Torontoist also thinks that Margaret Philp, the staffwriter at the Globe who covered this, must have greatly enjoyed writing the phrase “maverick dairy farmer.” Who wouldn’t want to be the bad boy of cow care?)

Comments

  • Chester Pape

    Salmonella, E. Coli, tuberculosis, rabies (yes rabies) and more, sure sign me up.
    http://www.foodsafetynetwork.ca/en/article-details.php?a=1&c=1&sc=1&id=384
    Don’t be bamboozled people, there’s a whole movement in rural Ontario that is conflating the legitimate issues facing farmers with a political campaign for “property rights” from the far right flank of the old Reform party.

  • http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~ljdursi/ Jonathan Dursi

    A badger, a mushroom, and a snake? Really? Am I the only one who remembers when
    http://wwww.badgerbadgerbadger.com
    was something everyone had watched until they couldn’t get it out of their heads?

  • http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~ljdursi/ Jonathan Dursi

    Err, too many `w’s in that www. Sorry.

  • Miro

    It only seems reasonable to me that farmers should be able to sell raw milk if they label their product so that people understand the potential risks. Why shouldn’t it be the buyer’s freedom to make an educated decision?

  • Chester Pape

    If none of the diseases involved were communicable then maybe that’s arguable but that is not the case.

  • Marc Robin

    I think our police forces could be doing something more useful than raiding a farm selling non-pasteurized milk. Aren’t there more dangerous things to be stopped than the minute chance of getting one of those diseases from the milk?

  • rek

    I’m not sure the raw milk sellers would jump at the chance to label their products with “may cause salmonella, e. coli, tuberculosis and rabies if not handled properly”.
    Public safety trumps a farmer’s supposed right to sell diseases.

  • Chester Pape

    I grew up on a farm (not dairy) and I’ve seen the inside of milking barns that are cleaner than most people’s homes. I’ve drunk raw milk a few times, I wouldn’t make a habit of it myself.
    It’s not a matter of “if not handled properly” even the cleanest facilities with scupulous udder washing doesn’t solve the problem of what can potentially be expressed into the milk by an apparently healthy animal.

  • x_the_x

    Does anyone actually read the stories that are linked to?
    In light of the fact that the farmer has been selling raw milk for years without incident, your “public safety trumps” argument is apparently groundless (also, I wonder how fast the leftish crowd on this blog would desert the argument if I substituted “right to privacy” for “sell diseases [ed. - hyperbole, anybody?]“. I’m thinking Mr. Kennedy et al. would walk away at the first sign of bleeding diahrea.
    Not that I would accuse you of playing fast and loose with people’s freedoms that don’t concern you, but don’t you think there should be some burden of proof before taking away this guy’s livlihood and depriving his customers of his (popular) product? I understand the communicable disease objection but it would be nice to have the risk quantified somewhat before drawing such a harsh conclusion. Its clear he isn’t selling SARS popsicles and the risk is very remote.
    Also, if you have ordered a cheese plate in a restaurant in Toronto you have almost certainly consumed raw milk cheese.

  • Chester Pape

    That’s kinda a “I drive drunk all the time and I ain’t never hurt nobody” argument.
    It’s not like people dont get actually get sick from this stuff, the original article’s statement that “few if any” people are sickened by raw milk is a distortion. There are regularly cases of Salmonella in Ontario and in 2005 where were 4 cases of E. Coli 0157, when you consider the small number of people who actually drink the stuff the incidence of disease among them is actually pretty bad.

  • x_the_x

    Chester, to confirm, those cases of E. Coli and Salmonella are from the consumption of this guy’s raw milk?

  • rek

    Chester – I’m not a milkologist or a bovinographer, the “if not handled properly” was just a stab in the dark at how they get into the milk.
    x – While I appreciate the point you’re trying to make, it doesn’t really matter if this one guy’s farm has no history of contaminated milk. The potential for contamination is as real as the potential for drunkk driver careening off the road into a bus stop. Engaging in either is deliberately irresponsible, and illegal, no matter their history.
    Health Canada also only permits sales of raw milk cheeses that have been aged 60 days.

  • Marc Robin

    You can get E. Coli from ground beef, or your local pizzeria (which I once did get…and as one article ). There are life-threatening bacteria everywhere. You can die from pneumonia you caught by touching a subway pole. Why not demand that every subway pole in the city be washed once per hour? No…we just try not to touch the poles, and wash our hands afterwards. Why single out this one case? Still a waste of resources to send a raid to this guy’s farm if you ask me, and as for those who would rather drink raw milk, let them. It seems like many of the cases cited for sickness are from schoolkids on a trip to the farm where they tried the milk…tell the trip organizers not to feed them the milk! As for the drunk driver analogy, it’s not at all the same. A drunk driver is endangering other people’s lives whether they like it or not. The people buying the raw milk are completely and fully aware of the risks (I hope), and are not endangering anyone else’s lives.
    I love raw milk cheese. :-)

  • Marc Robin

    sorry about the typo in the brackets there…must have hit ctrl-v by accident…

  • Patrick

    Don’t get me wrong, I do drink milk, but it’s pretty gross if you think about it.
    What other mammal drinks milk from another mammal… and then after infancy?
    Humans are weird, but cheese is so good.

  • Gloria

    It’s teat juice, essentially.
    It’s why I don’t like milk.

  • Chester Pape

    are not endangering anyone else’s lives
    You do understand the meaning of the word communicable? Don’t you?
    Sure there is harmful bacteria everywhere, but there are mitigations for that risk, you wash your hands, you cook the beef properly, you store food at safe temperatures. There is NOTHING you can do to reduce the risk of raw milk to a similar level, a healthy, well treated animal in spotless cleanliness can still shed bacteria directly into the milk internally.
    Raw milk cheese is a different thing, with the aged cheeses that are legal here you have some time for the bacteria to bloom, and time to test it for the most common problems, I think you can reduce the risk of aged raw milk cheese to an acceptable level in ways that you can’t with new raw milk or queso fresco.

  • rek

    Marc – You hope? Why not put the onus of responsibility on the other drivers while you’re at it? Drivers should be fully aware of the possibility that other drivers may be intoxicated. If they choose to drive knowing this, oh well!