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Raw milk is illegal to sell in most states.  But still, because the demand is high, farmers still do it.  To get around the laws, they offer ownership "shares" in a cow or similar methods (gifting).  Raw milk is often sold over state lines to avoid the laws in one state to makes the sales in a state that is legal.

Raw milk is one of the biggest black markets in the US.  In fact, it ranks right up there near drugs.  Check out some of the FDA raids on YouTube.

So, the demand is there.  The supply is there.  How do we get the two together legally (or pseudo-legally)?

I'm thinking that because bitcoin is anonymous, a farmer could sell milk online for bitcoins, people purchase it and have some sort of receipt of transaction.  Then, they go to a pick up location, get their milk, and everyone is happy.

Now, because no cash is being exchanged and because bitcoins are anonymous, it might be possible to get around the laws here.  I know that in some states, gifting milk is not illegal and the whole cow "shares" thing is legal in some areas, too (you can drink the raw milk of your own cow).

What do you guys think?  Is there a possible solution here?

If you guys want to die of food poisoning, that's fine with me.

here in australia you can legally buy unprocessed 'bath milk', as long as you're only using it to add to your bath water and not drinking it *wink wink*

is this not possible in the US?

Nothing about bitcoin changes this.  Almost all laws banning things ban the distribution AND sale so that even if you gave it away for free it would not be any different.

The "problem" of raw milk is not so much a problem of currency but a problem of violence against farmers. I don't see what Bitcoin can do to prevent that. At the end of the day, when people wearing an earpiece, and a concealed weapon poking out from underneath an ill-fitted suit show up and confiscate your property and lock you into a metal room, Bitcoin won't do a whole lot of good.

disclaimer1: I used to own a cow share and had it for a few years. I never got sick from drinking the milk. In fact I never felt stronger. I only stopped my share because I have cut down dairy since it causes me to be congested.

disclaimer2: anyone who thinks raw milk should be illegal is an idiot.  The only thing you are doing by letting a government decree that you can't order raw milk for yourself is you are removing choice from the consumer. You are saying that the government should treat people like idiots because they are not capable of making their own decisions. That is automatically wrong because the government is an idiot already.

Ultimately you could sell raw milk on silk road I guess. But I don't think it would be a popular thing to do... despite what some may think people who drink raw milk like to research where their cows come from and sometimes even visit their farm. Plus you can already order raw milk online from places I think......... organicpastures

Seriously? My schoolmates and I grew up on raw milk. I've never heard of anyone getting sick.

We used to have [raw] milk chugging contests in the cafeteria. I drank at least 3 glass-fulls a day in my school years, all from the local dairy.

haha next up:

Milk Road, by Dread Farmer Roberts

You almost beat me to the punch.

Rumor has it that the Amish use a secret internet to sell raw milk, among other things--Yoder Road.

lol!

Shipping drugs is actually probably a lot easier than shipping milk products too.

If I ran a dairy farm though......... i'd use bitcoin anyway. because it's awesome. And I'd also probably just put a disclaimer on everything "for pets only" . as far as I know if it's for pets it isn't regulated the same you can ship it anywhere you want.

go all in and write "for bathing pets only"

This is milk cartel propaganda.

http://chriskresser.com/raw-milk-reality-is-raw-milk-dangerous

Might as well take the marketing to the nth degree: To be used only for the soaking of alpaca socks prior to washing in the gentle cycle of a standard washing machine. For best results, don't use commercial dryers, and preferably sun drying of your precious.

http://www.davidicke.com/images/stories/January201395/raw-milk.jpg http://www.wordtracker.com/attachments/google-plus-sign.jpg http://www.warrioralpacasocks.com/product_images/uploaded_images/mens-alpaca-socks.png http://www.etftrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/110660-glowing-green-neon-icon-alphanumeric-equal-sign.png http://www.colourbox.com/preview/3655283-504549-sports-collection-1st-place-winner.jpg

Raw milk is obviously more dangerous then pasteurized.  You are 10x more likely to get sick from raw milk then from pasteurized. The nutritional value is close but raw milk is better.  Raw milk advocates say it tastes better.  I would love to try some myself.  

While raw milk is more dangerous, so is riding a bike or skydiving.  None of these things are illegal.  Raw milk should be legal and just labeled properly.  

it tastes 'better' only in small quantities. like with one spoonful of cornflakes. but i'd never be able to keep down a full glass of it; i think i'd have a heart attack.

Don't most of us consume raw milk when we're babies anyway :P

I've drank some when I was younger. Pasteurised milk they sale at the grocery taste like it's diluted with water. Now I'm only drinking almond milk.  :P

All things being equal, that might be true, but they're not. Consider that store-bought milk is mixed together from many different suppliers.

How can you say its 10x more dangerous? Got any peer-reviewed studies to prove that? By what basis is it considered more dangerous? Bacteria count? What about beneficial bacteria in raw milk? The human body is a veritable petri dish, and the more variety of bacteria in your body, typically is more healthy overall. You're more resistant to infections, stomach ailments such as ulcers, and colon disorders. Its a big mistake to destroy the bacteria colonies in the human body with antibiotics, and then boil them out of milk, juice, and other healthy sources that we should be using to replenish the good bacteria count.

i think it might be legal for pet food, but for human consumption, not legal.

This thread wasn't meant to start a discussion about the virtues or dangers of raw milk. 

Having said that, when we had dairy goats, we drank raw milk all the time.  We weren't making any kind of health or political statement about it, we just didn't know you were supposed to pasteurize it.  We just drank it fresh, cause we never thought about it, really.  Over a decade drinking it, our neighbors drinking it, etc, no one ever got sick.  So, I guess it is possible to get sick from it, and I know it is possible to get sick from pasteurized milk, too (people do every single year), but I've never had that issue with it.

This was more of a thought experiment about an obviously huge market in the US that is currently illegal.

From what I can tell, the laws state that you can't sell the the milk (it is not against the law to purchase raw milk, from my understanding).  But, as bitcoin is not a real currency (wink, wink) and no exchange of currency happens when you exchange the milk, would that be legal?  Is gifting raw milk legal?  And if gifting is legal, is bartering legal?

I don't know.  I just know that there is a huge market out there and the current situation doesn't seem to be getting better.  To me, huge demand + huge supply = opportunity.

yes, the laws speak specifically to the sale of raw milk.  I am not sure about giving away for free, and consumption is legal (you can drink the milk from your own animals).

First of all, bathing in milk is very uncommon in the US, and usually only happens in spas.  But the answer to your question is no, not legally.

This is generally not true in the United States.  Since the consumption of raw milk isn't actually something that can be banned under US law, for a variety of historical reasons, it's actually the act of engaging in commerce that is prohibited with raw milk.  It's actually a law that exists to favor major dairy producers & grocery stores, since raw milk wouldn't safely survive the lengthy trip from factory farm to the grocery store to the average home refrigerator reliablely enough to compete with the small farmer who simply offers the day's raw milk for purchase.  Raw milk, kept refrigerated and consumed quickly, isn't dangerous.  It's the delay that the modern food industry adds to the mix that is risky.  Bear in mind, milk was designed to be consumed immediately; yet well before the age of refrigeration, the early production of cheese was a process that took days.

yeah the point is noone here actually bathes with bath milk either... that's just what goes on the label to make it legit ;)

so, the question then becomes, what is the definition of commerce, and by what time scale?  If someone sends you a bitcoin payment today, and you give them raw milk next month in person while you are just chatting in the parking lot, have you committed a crime?  Or, if someone gave you a piece of paper, and you gave them raw milk, is that commerce?

I think there might be a gray area here that could be exploited, but it would have to be done in just the right way to have legal protection. 

I live in New Hampshire and purchase raw milk from my coop. It's legal here in the home of the Free State Project.

Some may say it's more dangerous than pasteurized milk. I say fooey.

I suspect that the reason the dairy cartel pushed for pasteurization laws so long ago is because their dairy practices were so bad, and so unhealthy that the milk WAS dangerous and needed to be pasteurized just to keep people from getting sick. Problem was the bad companies didn't want to be the ONLY ones pasteurizing their milk, because it was a sign to the customers that their milk was unsanitary. So, they pushed for laws to force EVERY dairy farmer to pasteurize so that the bad companies wouldn't stick out like sore thumbs. It's also no coincidence that only big corporate farms could feasibly absorb the cost of milk pasteurization, whereas the little organic dairy down the road couldn't. So, the little guy down the road went out of business and corporate dairy rules the day.

I think PASTEURIZED milk is unhealthier than RAW milk, because in order to sell RAW milk you've got to have good clean, safe and sanitary dairy practices. Those that pasteurize can afford to get blood and puss and feces contaminating their milk because it's all going to get pasteurized anyways.

Oh, and by the way, anybody who thinks government regulations are about safety need to pull their heads out of their asses. Government regulations are NEVER about safety and ALWAYS about stifling innovation and squishing competition!

You should all watch this movie:

http://farmageddonmovie.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1609113/

"sale or distribution"

Yes drinking from your own cow is ok. Getting it free from someone else is distribution.

Why, yes! There is a such a study!

From the CDC's nice little wrap-up on it

• During 1993–2006, 121 outbreaks reported to CDC were caused by dairy products where the investigators could determine if the dairy product was pasteurized or unpasteurized (raw). These outbreaks included 4,413 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations, and 3 deaths.
• 73 outbreaks (46 from fluid milk and 27 from cheese) were caused by raw milk, and 48 outbreaks (10 from fluid milk and 38 from cheese) were caused by pasteurized milk.
• Probably no more than 1% of the milk consumed in the United States is raw, yet more outbreaks were caused by raw milk than by pasteurized milk.
• If you consider the number of outbreaks caused by raw milk in light of the very small amount of milk that is consumed raw, the risk of outbreaks caused by raw milk is at least 150 times greater than the risk of outbreaks caused by pasteurized milk.[/li

If you want to go by outbreak count, it means you are 150 times more likely to become sick.

Not good enough?  Then let's go by illnesses count(sick/hospital/death) The study (which you can read in full here http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/pdfs/11-1370.pdf ) says

Source	Illnesses	hospitalizations	Deaths
Raw	1,571	202	2
Pasteurized	2,842	37	1

First thought? "See! Pasteurized milk is more dangerous! More people got sick!" Wrong. More got sick in the same sense that three people got sick at a high school and two got sick at home for home school, does that make home school safer? Hell no. But back to numbers. For the sake of simplicity let's say everyone drinks milk in the US(US pop 313,914,040), 99% drink pasteurized milk, 1% drinks raw. The percent of people who have been harmed by pasteurized milk is 0.00089629% or about 9 per million users, but at the same time, the percent of those who have been harmed by raw milk is 0.0500455% or about 500.4 per million users

If you go by illness count, drinking raw milk means you are 55 times more likely to become sick

Want to go by hospitalizations next? 540 times more likely to end up in the hostipal

How about deaths, surely you don't want to die, becuase you are 198 times more likely to die

This study was conducted by a group who are accredited by the ACCME ("ACCME? who the hell are they?!") which is a council who set the standard for continuing medication education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accreditation_Council_for_Continuing_Medical_Education) Founded by the lovely people at the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Association for Hospital Medical Education (AHME), the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB)

You're turn. You have a study saying it's safer?

The legal argument is sound, and this would be a good market for Bitcoin.  But I kind of doubt that the market is that large.

Does raw milk go better with raw cookie dough?  ;D

This shows how powerful the propaganda of the "processed food" lobby is: their FUD make you think that it can be dangerous  not to buy their shit..
Same mechanism is used by banks to denigrate bitcoin.

Food safety is relative.  For example, nearly all salt for human consumption in the industrilized world contains iodine, because lack of iodine goitre in adults, and some types of mental retardation in infants.  Is the sale of tablesalt without added iodine illegal in the US?  No, it's not.  It simply has to be marked so that it cannot be confused with "regular" tablesalt.  I can buy it at Kroger or Wal-Mart under the names "Sea Salt", "Kosher Salt" or "Pickling Salt"; but it just never says just "Salt"unless it contains iodine.  Which is more dangerous, consuming raw milk (quickly enough to be reasonable) or consuming Kosher Salt?  Almost certainly the latter, but that point is moot.  Unpasterized milk should not be illegal in the United States, the idea is as Un-American as the table salt ban in NY city.

EDIT:  Additionally, consuming raw milk is as safe as pasturized, if the milk is consumed within a 24 hour period.  This was the economic motivation of the daily "milk man" deliveries of yesteryear.  They didn't even bother to refigerate it even after refrigerators were common.  To additionally reduce risk and impede bacterial growth, the milk man would usually add a silver dime to each bottle.  The silver in the dime would give off silver ions into the milk, which would not harm people but was toxic to bacteria.

Come on, don't be ridiculous. I've drunk raw milk all my childhood and I never had "food poisoning". You just boil it before drinking and you're good to go. You should also consider that it spoils much faster, like bread (when I was a child, we used to buy bread and milk at the same time at the bakery, for the day).
I've actually drunk milk that had just left the cow directly to my glass a couple times and didn't have any issues either.


Impressive.
You know what I just found out? If you buy 10 lottery tickets, you're 10x more likely to win the prize!!  :o


 ::)

to my knowledge, the laws do not say sale and distribution.  They specifically prohibit "sales".  Each state is different, though

It is important to note that the FDA has banned "interstate sales" of raw milk.  So, if you sell within your own state, you are fine, as far as Federal Law.

Years ago, Mathis Dairies in Atlanta was forced by the FDA to put a label on the milk that came right from the cow, bottled then delivered to local residents. Label read "ARTIFICIAL MILK"

From imdb:

Incredible that peaceful people obtaining and making healthy food is raided by anyone.

I found that out by going to a pro-raw milk website.  They feel the risk is negligible but still higher then regular milk.  I am pro-raw milk.  Basically it is about freedom, the right to control ones own food and allowing the small farmer to profit from his work.

Total inhabitants:
313,914,040

Raw milk drinkers: 1%
Pasteruized milk drinkers: 99%

Raw milk hospital cases: 202
Pasteruized milk hospital cases: 37


Chance of being hospitalized after drinking raw milk: 0.000064%
Chance of being hospitalized after drinking pasteruized milk: 0.000000119%

The chance of actually dying would naturally be even smaller.

Chance of being struck by lightening during one year in the US: 0.000001%
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike

Chance of dying in a car accident during one year in the US: 1.49%
Source: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081015210636AAoQgNK

Now, drinking raw milk may seem dangerous if you say that it is more than 500 times more dangerous to drink raw milk than pasteurized milk, however when realizing that the risks are so small, a multiple of 500 is really not that much.

There's actually a 0.000003001% chance that you during the next year is accidentaly hit by some object and die.

The risk that you drown during the next year is 0.000011971%

The risk that you get assaulted the next year and die is 0.000061256.

So from the looks of things, it seems like that the risk of drinking raw milk is about the same risk as getting ambushed and killed.

And it gets worse. If you're pregnant, you have a 0.0002% chance of actually dying when giving birth.

The risk of you dying at work the next year is: 0.000035%

The risk of you dying at home the next year is: 0.000127%

So, the conclusion is that your risk of dying at home during the next year is twice as big as the risk of you getting hospitalized from drinking raw milk.

Now, do you live in fear of dying in your home ?

Source: http://www.riskcomm.com/visualaids/riskscale/datasources.php


Edit: The problem seems to be that certain businesses are lobbying for certain rules to be made by the government. This is more often than not to stiffle competition and to gain an advantage, giving the small guys poorer leverage. Also, clean facts often seems to be missing, and many people believe the governmental propaganda without really looking hard at it. A great government would actually look hard at the facts and the numbers and see where they should put in their efforts. From what we can see about stats above, it seems like safer cars and safer roads would be better to focus on than preventing farmers from selling raw milk.

the fact remains that raw milk is a big market. There is no denying that.  Regardless if you believe in it or not, it's there.

There are farmers that are willing to sell it, and people willing to buy it, but can't.  Can bitcoin help with this situation?  I think so, but you have to do it just right to meet the requirements of the law.

How do you think we could make it work?

How to make it work? It depends what the laws are. How much is this being cracked down on ? It's not like it's wildly profitable like the drug business. Could not a farmer just sell by using word of mouth ? Then only accept new customers that are vouched for by long time trusted customers, and build up a customer base slowly ?

I mean, if you put ads online or in a news papers, everybody can see it, and that's spelling problems if you want to avoid law enforcement.

Also I think many people want to see ther farmers eye-to-eye, to see who they're dealing with.

What are the consequences for 'breaking the law' in this regard ? And do the police really care about it at all ?

Nice job!  What I take away from that is "drinking raw milk is safer than driving".  So, if I ever get the chance to try raw milk I'll take it.  I'm fine buying my overpriced organic pasteurized milk everyday, tastes good to me.

I find it generally weird that people are so eager to extrapolate from their own experiences to a whole market. Of course raw milk can be made safe and as already said for both raw and pasteurized milk it's really unlikely that you get sick. Also if you consume the stuff at home yourself from your own goats I guess you have a higher interest in keeping everything clean.
As also shown though is that the risk is far higher in raw milk that IF something is contaminated, it might be worse than in pasteurized milk. The data that supports this was posted too.

Comparing this then and claiming "it's safer to drink raw milk than to ride a bike" is however a wrong conclusion. Take another bad example: "No human has died while staying on the moon, ever. This means we should all go to this totally safe environment in outer space and live forever!".

On the topic: How is Bitcoin better suited for this than just sending USD by wire/Paypal or paying in cash? Also farmers probably will want USD on their accounts, so they have to use something like BitPay which has Terms of Service that might not like this business or they have to learn how to do some kind of Forex trading on MtGox et. al. just to be able to afford the next bag of food for the cow...

Oh, and something else: How high are milk prices in the US anyways? To compare: In my country organic milk costs 1.05 EUR per liter (or more), cheaper (still local) non-organic one down to ~85 cents.

Try planting a seed that didn't come from Monsanto.

If you referred to my post, I didn't make a scientific conclusion, neither did I claim to do so. My aim was to demonstrate that the 'danger' that raw milk presents to the health of it's consumers is not all that much of a big deal, not to the extent where it can be justified to outlaw it for instance.

Likewise, I would be more than happy to enter a plane without the ordinary safety controls done on the passengers. I would be happy to accept the risk of 1 to 25 million to die because some terrorist fucked up the plane.

Also, it's stretching it to use such outlandish claims as we should go to a planet and live there without an atmosphere, because statistics shows nobody ever died there. Everyone can readily see that this is a stupid thing to do.

On the other hands, statistics compiled regarding the chances to suffer certain fatalities/accidents are more interesting, as that says something about the chance of it happening to you. While drinking raw milk could be dangerous, statistics shows that the chance of it happening to you is negligble, and that there's a lot of other things that is much more likely to happen to you.

After reading how much puss and fecal matter is in pasturized milk I dont drink it at all.  I hear raw milk is better but just stopped drinking milk completely I've been scarred.  :-\

- Just imagine how many of those you shake hands with don't wash their hands after going for a toilet visit.
- Just imagine how much of the fastfood you're served have residude of sweat, feces and dead skin cells from the workers that doesn't wash their hands after going to the toilet
- Nearly all fruits and vegetables have insects inside them, that you eat when you consume them.
- Your bed is most likely an infestation of different parasites that feed off you when you sleep.
- Your keyboard, your cell phone, they're all infested with bacterias.
- Imagine you sitting on a public seat in a bus, then using the same pant sitting in your bed, and proceeding to sleep there naked, it's quite likely that there will be leftovers of some hobo's urine in your bed.

And the list goes on and on and on... There's so many things that's 'grose', but that we don't think much about. But get this: We have immune systems, and we can deal with all these kind of things. So it's nothing to be afraid of or to obsess over.

Sweet dreams!

This pissed me off, so I did some research and found this comment (http://coastgab.com/index.php/topic,3833.msg95512.html) among other things. According to someone else who claims to have lived in Atlanta and drank that milk, the FDA had attempted to do that due to the lack of adding vitamin A and D to the milk, not because it was raw. Just the same, this individual claims the FDA has been unsuccessful. What is your source?

It may not be a good idea... but I think raw milk is more about common sense. Think of all the indigenous people that have lived off of raw milk without problems. So thats extrapolating others experience to a whole market.  On the same vein I find it a little bit weird that people are okay with legislation that is based off statistics. Considering that studies are largely flawed and inadequate and biased. They aren't controlled experiments. How easy is it to manipulate statistics your way? Pretty easy I think.  For instance of those who got sick from raw milk... what was the diet of the cows that they drank the milk from? What were the cows living conditions? That information is crucial and yet it's not there.  The same thing goes with meat... You hear studies all the time about how meat is bad for you and yet there are societies on earth... that have lived happily for thousands of years eating meat(and raw milk). So in these studies do they account for the diet of the animal? You are what you eat but you also are what you eat eats. Do they account for how the meat is cooked? Rare meat is healthier than overcooked meat. Raw milk from a healthy cow is actually more resistant to bad bacteria contamination than pasteurized milk is. So if someone does get sick from raw milk there is probably another reason.... the health of the cow.

It's a perfectly valid argument, called "reductio ad absurdum". When you compare incidence of disease and death associated with raw milk and pasteurized milk you need to take into account the relative numbers of the populations who consume it. 0 deaths on the Moon, is just because we haven't settled it yet. And there would be a whole lot more health problems with raw milk if we drank it to the same extent as pasteurized milk.
Except for that they have had problems with raw milk, and that they've adapted to that by various strategies such as extra attention to hygiene .... or boiling it.

This is an excellent point, except it work the other way: If you control the statistical analysis such that pasteurization is the ONLY variable (hygiene, diet of cow, length of storage, etc. is kept equal for both raw and pasteurized milk), I think you'll find that pasteurized milk comes out even better.

You can advertise to sell anything, that's not against the law, as far a I know.

I guess i need to go through each state and see what each law says.

I think the word of mouth model is currently how it is done.  And I agree, people want to see the farmer eye to eye, but I don't see that as a problem.  Especially if gifting is legal, then you "gift" the milk to customers, and then take bitcoin donations beforehand.

It is hard to say how much it is being cracked down on, but I know of at least a dozen cases int he last year alone.

Apparently, the cops do care, but it is not the normal police, usually it is like State Health or FDA equivalents.

Breaking the law consequences are different for every state, but usually amounts to seizing assets, seizing equipment, destroying product (milk).

Unfortunately, this would not be accurate, either.  Because living conditions (hygiene) for most pasteurized milk producers is quite terrible (literally standing in their own shit).  So, the comparison is not equal:

If you drank raw milk from a cow eating pesticide feed standing in their own shit getting constant antibiotics (typical commercial setup), you probably have a much higher chance of getting sick vs drinking pasteurized milk from the same cow.

However, if you had milk from a rotational grazing system (grass fed), in organic and sanitary systems (typical raw milk setup), then the difference would be negligible.

Still, I think we are focusing on the wrong thing, here.  It's not whether or not raw milk is more dangerous or better for you, it is the fact that people want it and there are other people that can provide it.

I think bitcoin might be better suited because money would not have to change hands at the specific time and location of the milk exchange.  also, it's anonymous, so gives the farmer a bit of protection.  The consumer doesn't really need protection, it is not illegal to buy or consume, it is illegal to sell and especially over state lines (Fed law)

You could easily set up a Farmer service with someone to help them manage the stuff and exchange for $$$ when needed.

Milk prices are low in the US, but raw milk is expensive...

Just looking online, it can range at about $5-15 a gallon.  If we take the low end of $5/gallon, and I saw a figure of about 3-4M people drink it in the US, then the market is worth at least $15-$20M.

Right some things you cannot avoid, but there are some you can avoid.  Like drinking liquids known to have high levels of cow puss and fecal matter. 

I bet that these people living in these societies did NOT have a life expectancy that comes even close to the ~80 years that are the norm is western countries these days.
Also their cancer rates were probably much lower... This does not mean that raw milk helps against cancer, but that people died before getting old and degraded enough to get cancer.

Don't get me wrong, I come from a country with a lot of cows and I guess it won't be too hard to convince farmers here to just hand me a couple liters of milk without pasteurization (and yes, I just looked it up, it seems legal here, but only if the farmer sells directly from the farm - probably to get over issues with long transport routes). It's just that nearly nobody wants to do that, not even the organic-hippie kind of people I know. Also it would probably be cheaper than pasteurized milk, because farmers get only ~25-35 € cents per liter for their milk, so if they sell me 1 liter for 60 cents, I pay twice as much as the market and it's still cheaper than buying at the supermarket.

Strangely it seems that rather people in the US want to go "back to the roots" in some kind of romantic "good ol' times" fantasy with raw milk. Even googling raw milk in german brings up several translated US pages on the first page telling you how evil pasteurization is instead of people asking in forums where to buy the stuff (and the forum posts are generally like "US americans seem to be really into raw milk, WTF? Is there anything to it?").
Maybe US milk from the supermarket just sucks (I generally wasn't impressed with food quality in the US at all when I was there) and the few farmers offering raw milk would also produce great pasteurized milk compared to the average product? Of course making a great mystery and whatnot around raw milk then helps their marketing and enables them to create such ridiculous prices. Over her by the way farmers would rather go the organic route, get certified and approved independently and prove their "worthyness" that way instead of offering raw milk and proving that they "dare" to sell the stuff and showing this way that they are confident that their product is good.

The farmer would still need to sell received BTC for USD by the way and then get tax issues...

not necessarily.  Most of the west's life expectancy can be attributed to health care, not diet.  In fact, life expectancy dropped considerably when agriculture was born, changing the diet to one primarily based on grains.  Only recently (last century or so) did life expectancy get back to to the level it was before the onset of agriculture, and the diet has not improved much.  Some would argue that it has decreased considerably in quality.  

"Primitive" cultures, like North America in the late 1400's had longer life expectancies than their Western counterparts.  In fact, something often noted by early explorers of America was how large and healthy the natives were compared to Europeans.

That doesn't mean it was raw milk as the cause of that. (correlation does not equal causation)  We do tend to assume that their diet probably had a lot to do with it, though.  And it is debatable how much milk those cultures actually consumed, anyway.  They were not eating frosted flakes with raw milk every morning.

There are "primitive" cultures in Europe that traditionally had longer lifespans than "civilized" Europeans.  One that comes to mind were cultures in the Swiss Alps that raised goats and cows.  They consumed raw milk and raw milk products regularly, and had better overall health than conventional Swiss people.  Again, the raw milk was probably not the only cause of their health, but it MAY have played a role.

most raw milk producers in the US have customers that inspect and visit the farms directly.  So, really, it is the ultimate credibility, the consumer can see for themselves the condition, etc of the facilities and farm.  Raw milk production requires a much higher level of sanitation and feed systems than conventional dairy to be successful.

unless feed stores, etc or services that the farmer requires take BTC.  I think that if a lot of farmers in an area started taking BTC, the suppliers to those farms would be quick to follow.

In my mind, it doesn't matter why people want something.  If they want to purchase it and someone wants to deliver it, then there is an active market.  And where's there's a market, there's a way.

Most mammals stop drinking milk at a certain point in their childhood.  This is how we were built / evolved. 
A few others are pretty fucked up and drink it all the time despite the obvious health problems that result. 

Milk Road?

i read these threads where people think there is a massive difference between raw milk and pasteurised milk, for raw milk to be so dangerous, or not tolerable by many people.

the difference is this:

its been heated

.. and thats it! no special chemicals or additives are needed for the pasteurisation process. so if you cant tolerate raw milk.. just boil it up in a saucepan and then pour it into a container.

raw milk is cheaper then pasteurised milk so if i could get a regular supply of it, id buy it by the gallon.

How is replacing "BTC" with "USD" any different than the status quo?  Unless you lie about it, which you could just as easily do with cash.

While you can certainly trade with people not using US Dollars (aka barter), and likely get away with that for a long time, eventually the IRS is going to want their cut of the dollar value of the bartering.

How is bitcoin any different?  Perhaps a little easier to conceal, and that's it.  If you are having problems concealing your giant phat piles of illicit cash from your illegal raw milk operation, then that market got to be a whole lot bigger than I remember.  I think the whole act of you giving product (milk) in exchange for consideration (bitcoin) makes it a sale.

If you want to pretend it's not an actual transaction - do so - but bitcoin really has nothing to do with it.

not really.  Raw milk is about $5-$15 a gallon.

Well - it would be possible to make an online portal of sorts where farmers could sell their stuff, and agree with locals to do the pickups. Of course the buyer could 'donate' to the farmer as a general donation, and then later on pick up milk in exchange for that donation, and then the formalities would have it that in fact it could not be classified as a bona fide trade, however I believe this would be wishful thinking, and I think consulting a lawyer on the issue might be the right way to go about it. As long as the intention with the trade is to get milk for cash/bitcoin/gold/whatever, then it's a trade as far as I can see.

Of course, hiding the funds as bitcoins as not as cash, it would be far harder for anyone raiding the ranch to find evidence of trade happening, the farmer could even have a brainwallet, so they would find nothing, even if they took all his electronics.

Still, there would need to be some contact between the farmer and the customers, and if anyone could sign up to such  site, then so could a law enforcement officer.

If you want to somehow circumwent a law that exists, then you should be damn sure that your loopholes won't backfire on you. Perhaps starting a campaign to actually have the law reverted would also be a good idea? Maybe it would not work, maybe it would, it all depends how much you'd put into it. I'd love to see 1 million people march to their local decision makers and ask them to reconsider their views.

Well, to me, the advantage is that you don't have to exchange money with the milk being exchanged.  So, if you are caught in a raid, the farmer is just giving people milk.  They would be hard pressed to prove that the farmer was receiving consideration in return for the milk, just due to the nature of bitcoin.

You are probably right, exchanging milk for consideration is probably considered a sale, in which case, BTC doesn't really help with that.

Bitcoin is easier to conceal, for sure.  I think people underestimate the size of the raw milk market in the US.  I've seen estimates that put it second to drugs in terms of size.  Even by my rough estimations, the market could be more than $15M annually, and I imagine it is several times that, just based on the prices people talk about.

I don't know if bitcoin makes this easier or better, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss.

that's certainly the best plan.  There are organized efforts to change these laws, but to my knowledge, nothing has changed, and farmers are regularly raided, even under the suspicion of sales.

It takes A LOT to change something like that, but if everyone worked togheter it would be possible, it might take years though, and in the end it might not even be succesful.

It's a pitty farmers get raided regularily, I feel I get very angry just from reading about it, it is very unfair. Sooner or later some farmer is going to shot a sheriff, and the farmer end up in jail for a lifetime, if it haven't happened already.


Raiding a farmer for suspicion of milk sales........ only in the greatest country on earth..

I'll do it, I just want feedback and suggestions on how it would help!

Delivery of raw milk is actually the weak link - if you cannot get and consume it yourself on the same day, you shouldn't drink that stuff at all. There's a REASON that pasteurization exists, and it's not to "filter out blood" but to ensure you get less sick than you could. Most examples here about "it didn't harm me" were about milk consumed the same day or from very nearby - not shipped/delivered. Unless you have a valid business model that involves a "milk man", you're up for trouble once your first customer dies or gets seriously ill (and looking at a few pages about the wonders of raw milk I guess the people drinking the stuff are also the ones that might be of the "If I can still eat it out of the bottle with a spoon and don't need fork + knife, it's still ok!"-type). If you can manage to pick up milk at some nice local farmers and deliver milk from last evening to the doorstep for breakfast - good for you, but then you might be better off in accepting USD and making sure you operate legally.
Once some fanatics from southern Florida start ordering raw milk online with you, I'd recommend you to stay away from that stuff and rather sell drugs on silk road - less chance that a customer dies, or worse - survives and sues you.

Proteins don't break down, they coagulate. With raw milk they do this in your stomach (pour some hydrochloric acid in a glass of milk and be amazed - that's what happens), with pasteurized milk they (in small amounts) do it before. Also some vitamins don't really get along too well with heat, so they also get destroyed partly. The (often unhealthy) obsession of people with vitamins is left for another thread I hope though...

There's not much happening to the fat when being heated, what changes though is the homogenization treatment that most milk gets to make sure the fat doesn't swim on top after a while but stays in solution. This means the "fat bubbles" are made smaller and stay in solution over the lifetime of the milk.

More info can be found in wikipedia for example, in case you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Processing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization#Pasteurization_of_milk
As you can also see there, heating milk for a few seconds does NOT suddenly change it's contents and nutritional value completely.

If you use raw milk as ingredient for (especially) cheeses, you need to label them accordingly and again have to be very careful about contamination.
Butter = milk fat, more affected by quality than treatment
cheese = milk protein, see above. Raw milk cheeses exist but if you've seen how cheese is made, you'll also know why a few bacteria more or less won't matter there. Also the way cheese is created is not a very nice environment for germs to begin with.
yoghurt/kefir = more or less milk gone bad - here it might make a difference, but it would probably be far too risky to get a bad strain of bacteria in your milk. I doubt that you'd get really consistent quality out of raw milk and it pays off more to use good quality milk.
baked goods = far longer and higher heated than pasteurization during baking, why should a dozen seconds more matter in the final product?!

Again, it seems you are mixing "raw milk" and "high quality milk" in your mind - every milk on this planet starts as "raw milk" and can be used as such inside a dairy. It mostly isn't and that's for good reasons.

How we were built/evolved is about 97% speculation. So is the argument that milk is unhealthy.

Raw milk -> Pump -> Water block for GPU -> Pasteurized milk holding tank.
Just remember to adjust the flow rate with the temperature of the GPU to get the correct pasteurization temperature.

Also get some sponges that you can flush through the system to clean it periodically. This is how it's done at a dairy farm actually.

Humans are, in many respects, unique among the animal kingdom.  We can actually metabolize a great many toxins, and are likely the most diverse animal in this respect.  A great example of this is chocolate, which can kill most predators if consumed in any quantity considered normal to above normal for an adult human.  Basicly the quantity required to give a child a stomach ache is likely to kill a dog without a vet's intervention.  Some things that we sometimes put into a salad are also toxic to carnivores, such as some mushrooms.  Coffee beans are mildly toxic, also.  Other less dramatic examples of commonly consumed foods that are toxic to other animals (and to some degree, humans also) include, but are not limited to, avocados, many nuts and partcularly macadamia nuts, peanuts (which, technically, are not nuts), raisins, onions, garlic, several common spices such as chives, and artifical sweeteners such as xylitol; although it's also arguable that all artifical sweeteners are also toxic to humans, by their very nature.

So the argument that humans shouldn't be drinking milk because it's not natural to drink another species' milk or beyond the age of four is, at best, lacking in scientific support.

I completely agree with this.  I think the best strategy is to help locate farmers for consumers and let them meet each other on their own terms.  Then, possibly, the site could handle the payments for the farmer so no money exchanges hands at the milk delivery. 

That gives me an idea around the law.  Instead of buying raw milk, you buy a membership to a website.  As a free gift, we arrange for you to get 1 gallon a week (or whatever) of free raw milk direct from the farmer of your choice. We give our farmers a regular monthly donation to be available to give our members the free gift.

If the government has deemed raw milk is bad for you and has thus done the honorable thing and protected us from such a danger, then why question it?

We should be coming up with ways to use Bitcoin to reward politicians who pass more laws to protect us from ourselves.

Uncle Sam likes the way you think ;D

(Not sure if this is sarcasm but..) The FDA is far from honorable.

you clearly don't understand this...

the problem is people suing seeds that did come from Monsanto without paying them for the use of those seeds(like harvesting seeds from previous plants or buying them from someone else).

People are free to use seeds that didn't come from Monsanto. Why would they not...


That's how the laws work, if you are suspected of doing something illegal, they arrest you, they don't wait till they have full proof, that's the point of investigations and the resulting trial.

You sometimes go free due to technicalities. This is not one of them. This is handwaving that's easily seen through. Everyone from regular tax evaders to Scientologists have tried the "oh it's just a donation - pay no attention to the exchange of goods going on in response to the donation" trick - and they eventally have lost all the way up to Supreme Court.

If you get a lawyer that tries to tell you that this sort of "wink, wink, nudge, it's a donation" is a good idea, even he might get disbarred for being a terrible lawyer.

Make an .onion site called "The Milk Road".  Write up a simple tutorial for installing a Tor client.  Register milkroad.org, add your tutorial and distribute Tor clients there.  Add a few raw milk suppliers.  Contact the media.

If you are suspected of something, you are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.  If they were just arresting people, that would be one thing, but they aren't just arresting people.  That means they don't destroy your farm and facilities.  Technically speaking, they are destroying evidence, as well, which is unlawful.

if that's the only issue with it (the donation part), then it is easy to get around.  We list them on our website for a fee, so that is their fee. The farmer gives us tours, and we give him the money for that.  The money is a "share" of ownership of the farm, so our members are shareholders.

lots of reasons to give farmers money that don't involve raw milk.

Raw honey makes both go better. ;)

My siblings and I grew up milking goats and supplying the whole neighborhood with raw milk and chicken eggs.
Everybody was happy and healthy...  Good thing we didn't know about government's concern for us... otherwise we all might have ended up sick and dead...or in jail.

Looking back...we should have been selling that stuff instead of giving it away.

I looked at the movie farmageddon, and I saw many unebelievable things. Law enforcement officers holding families at gunpoint while simply stealing their stuff, also lots of lies, waste of tax payers money and so on. I was surprised this was possible, then again I thought it was the USA and I understand, I have never ever in my entire life seen so much stupidity as I've seen in the USA, so it figures. It's really sad though.

I agree, like almost all nutritional claims, this one lacks scientific support.  It's really hard (and most would consider immoral) to do a decent controlled nutritional study.  Also, nobody really cares anyway, we care more about tradition and fashion than nutrition in our dietary decisions.  After all we have health insurance.   

That being said, lactose intolerance is really common and there are a ton of people suffering from allergies, chronic problems, that probably are somewhat lactose intolerant and don't know it.  Casein has also been shown to be a strong factor in cancerous growth. 

Also, you have a good point, the last 10k years have seen these primates adapt to remarkably diverse dietary sources. 
For the record I'll eat anything you put on the table. 

 

Actually, human milk is another market that is regulated out of existence.  Human milk has a lot of advantages for infants but in some cases mothers are unable to feed their own children and have to resort to formula or rely on donated milk.  If there were a bitcoin-enabled market in human milk, more children could be fed in this way, and mothers who are able to produce extra milk could be rewarded.

Funny you should mention that, for I have a story in this regard.  My wife is particularly well suited to breastfeed multiples, and as my first born was starting to age out of breastmilk, my wife joined a breastmilk donation network for a time.  It was a religious calling for her, and for the next month or so, she laborously pumped, sorted, froze and shipped several gallons of breastmilk in single baby-bottles.  That was the first time that I had ever heard that there was a federal law against deliberately profitting from human sourced tissue or bio-products.  Yet, blood plasma companies work around this limitation by paying the donator labor time, because the donation process is time consuming.

It's also surreal how effective of a weight loss program that a high yield breastmilk extraction activity can be.  Presumedly, it's also pretty effective at sucking the nutrients out of the donator as well.

But I digress...

Apparently in this "capitalist" society, the only value of contributing life saving human-sourced bio-products is Marxist labor value.

This reminds me of another point.  Lactose intolerance in adulthood is a relatively uncommon occurance in humans, which is why it's considered a medical condition.  Whereas, every other mammal loses the ability to properly digest milk of their own species shortly following infancy, including actual dairy cows.  Lactose intolerance in human infants is far more rare than in adulthood, also.

This also implies; both from a scientific/evolutionary model and from a religious/creationist model; that humans are generally evolved/designed to consume dairy products, for the inability to do so in adulthood is abnormal.

I've read the great old rockefeller was given in old age  breast milk. Would be a nice way to go hahaaaaa.
People say we weren't designed to eat raw milk... that's debatable. But if you ferment it then it's not even worth discussing since fermentation is basically predigestion.

lactose intolerant folks or people with milk issues usually do well on goats milk, which I have always found interesting.  Another interesting point about goat's milk is that it is naturally homogenized, which makes it hard to separate the cream.  So, if you want goat milk butter, you need a cream separator, you can't just let it sit like cow's milk.

Pigs digest milk just fine (they have a similar digestion system to us).  It is common to feed pigs milk or whey as a protein additive to grain.

How about "Mega Milk" as a store name for humane milk products. Perhaps if Kim Dotcom gives his blessing, there could be some cross promotion with his Mega site. "Milk Road" sounds a bit like a pun to me, and I don't like how it emphasizes the long transportation distance. When dealing in raw cow's milk and lady's milk, you want as close delivery as possible - maybe even pick it up yourself.
https://i.imgur.com/3D5h94e.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/XHyVDGx.jpg

^^^ This. Humans are NOT carnivores (and as much as vegans would like it to be, also not herbivores) - we're omnivores and can eat and digest quite a wide range of things.

Still I didn't really see solutions to the 2 main issues:
1) Raw milk that's older than ~12 hours shouldn't be sold and if it's older than 24 hours it shouldn't be consumed (except if you cook it beforehand). Getting around that (freezing?) is hard and probably not safe in larger quantities. Large quantities does not mean just a few 1000 liters by the way...

2) It seems to be illegal to sell raw milk in some states of the US. No matter how you try to get around that ("But I only gave a tip!", "I paid for the gasoline he used!", "I pay for membership of the milk club!"), this stuff won't hold for long in court - why do you think prostitutes (probably also something illegal in some states in the US) don't sell monthly memberships to the BJ association?! Maybe you can rather make sure to have a deal with some farmers + local dairies to have "premium milk", "raw quality milk" or whatever sounds good to still have that local touch + charge a premium on high quality milk, but that's safe to drink and store, because it's pasteurized (but comes from happy, healthy, grass-fed cows)? It's also possible to only pasteurize, but not homogenize milk so the product would "feel" the same (and taste as well...) but can be shipped, stored, sold in local markets and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance

On another note I wonder why buying raw breast milk is legal in the US?

It's not.

brainwashed!, ignorance is bliss

MegaMilk.com is potentially for sale through GoDaddy's brokerage service. MilkRoad.com is registered in China, and doesn't seem to have a website on it at the moment; I have less success with Chinese domains.

Would anyone be interested in starting up an actual business? I have some experience with off shore hosting in Japan and Malaysia; as long as it's only controversial and only illegal in some US states, and not something blatantly illegal like drugs etc. we don't really need to make it an Onion site.

If you know me from other threads, I'm not interested in bitcoin as an investment vehicle in itself, but as a facilitator of trade, and I think there's a market here that deserves to be fulfilled.

I agree.  I think there might be potential, here.

I think the key is that the site is the facilitator, and through that role, you might be able to get around the regulations.

Step 1 needs to be research state laws on raw milk commerce.  See where the loopholes are.  Can you gift milk?  Can an owner consume it?  If so, use those to your advantage.

Once you have a model, seek legal advice on how everything will fit together.

Then, start by talking with the market, getting input from farmers that already sell raw milk and from customers that buy it.