alainlatour.com

As you may or may not know, Ontario farmer Michael Schmidt is on a hunger strike, defend­ing his right to dis­trib­ute raw milk. Michael has been fight­ing a bat­tle with law­mak­ers in Ontario for at least 5 years. He has also been dis­trib­ut­ing raw milk for 17 years through a cow share pro­gram. Not one of his clients has ever fallen sick from drink­ing raw milk.

In fact, I’m embar­rassed to say, Canada is the only G8 coun­try to ban the sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion of raw milk.

There is no evi­dence what­so­ever that raw milk  is unsafe for any­one, when prop­erly han­dled and dis­trib­uted. The same can be said of most food products.

This, how­ever, is a moot point. As I wrote in my let­ter to Premier McGuinty and my local MP, Ms. Carolyn Bennet, gov­ern­ments have no  busi­ness telling their cit­i­zens what they can or can­not eat.

I am, after all, right­fully free to smoke and to drink alcohol.

Of course, I wouldn’t be sur­prised to find that some local politi­cians would love to tell every­one what to do.

I urge you to write to Premier McGuinty (dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org)  and your local MP (find him or her here). If you don’t have much time, feel free to copy and paste from my let­ter, which I have pasted below.

“Dear Dalton McGuinty and Ms. Carolyn Bennet,

I urge you to take action on dairy farmer Michael Schmidt’s case. He may well die because the gov­ern­ment wants to dic­tate what we can and can­not eat.

Health prob­lems have bal­looned in the West since gov­ern­ments started inter­fer­ing with out diet. There was a time when we ate far more lard and ani­mal fat and drank raw milk and ate raw milk products. 

Yet we were all far healthier. 

Could it be because we ate far fewer grains and a lot less sugar?

At any rate, even if raw milk were unsafe (which every G8 coun­try but Canada knows isn’t true), I ask you this: what gives law­mak­ers and politi­cians the right to for­bid I drink it? 

After all, I am allowed to smoke, am I not? I am allowed to eat candy, am I not? 

Or would you rather for­bid all Ontarians do those things too?

You might well find your deci­sion on this case will deter­mine next election’s results.

Best regards,

Alain Latour.”