Ohio Cracks Down on Amish

Here is another interesting piece from Jack Lewis. Boy, does he nail it!

Summary: Inspite of a soaring drug abuse problem, Ohio is wasting its resources attempting to entrap an Amish farmer who gave away some milk to an undercover agent--who asked for it.

Ohio cracks down on illicit, Amish "raw milk" cartel.
From CNN...

Stutzman is fighting the law that forbids the sale of raw milk, saying he believes it violates his religious beliefs because it prohibits him from sharing the milk he produces with others....

Last September, a man came to Stutzman's weathered, two-story farmhouse, located in a pastoral region in northeast Ohio that has the world's largest Amish settlement. The man asked for milk.

Stutzman was leery, but agreed to fill up the man's plastic container from a 250-gallon stainless steel tank in the milkhouse.

After the creamy white, unpasteurized milk flowed into the container, the man, an undercover agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, gave Stutzman two dollars and left....

"You can't just give milk away to someone other than yourself. It's a violation of the law," said LeeAnne Mizer, spokeswoman for the department.

Raw milk is legal here in Oklahoma, and I enjoy it as often as I can. I prefer it to homogenized because it tastes better. Some warn that the process by which milk is homogenized creates added health problems, because the fat is broken down, exposing added risks. One medical book describes the danger this way...

Homogenized cow's milk transforms healthy butterfat into microscopic spheres of fat containing xanthine oxidase (XO) which is one of the most powerful digestive enzymes there is. The spheres are small enough to pass intact right through the stomach and intestines walls without first being digested.

Thus this extremely powerful protein knife, XO, floats throughout the body in the blood and lymph systems. When the XO breaks free from its fat envelope, it attacks the inner wall of whatever vessel it is in. This creates a wound. The wound triggers the arrival of patching plaster to seal off that wound. The patching plaster is cholesterol. Hardening of the arteries, heart disease, chest pain, heart attack is the result.

Meanwhile in 2001 (the latest data I could find), 11,023 Ohioans were admitted to treatment for cocaine addiction, 5,769 for Heroin addiction and 17,619 for marijuana addiction. But I can't seem to find any reports of people suffering from raw milk addiction, let alone even the slightest illness from raw milk consumption in Ohio.

Seems like someone's got their priorities screwed up. [Great job, Jack!]

Category: American News & Issues.