Could Bitcoin be a solution for the raw milk market?

[velacreations]

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

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

[Herodes]

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).

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.

[velacreations]

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.

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.

[velacreations]

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.

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.

[Herodes]

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.

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..

[velacreations]

Somebody just make a raw milk website with a couple of Bitcoin payment and delivery options already!

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

[Sukrim]

Somebody just make a raw milk website with a couple of Bitcoin payment and delivery options already!

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.

At those sorts of temperatures, not only does it kill bacteria, but some proteins also break down. I'm no expert on proteins, but presumably it alters the flavour and makes the milk less nutritious. A couple of other things would be interesting to know:

• what chemical changes occur to the fat content when it's heated?
• what difference is there (if any) in the utility of the milk as an ingredient or raw material of other products? For example: butter, yoghurts, kefirs, and baked goods?

I don't know for sure, but I would speculate that raw milk produces much better results in both cases.

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.

[foggyb]

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. 

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. 

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

[Beepbop]

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.

[MoonShadow]

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. 

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. 

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.

[velacreations]

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.

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.

[Elwar]

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.

[Mike Christ]

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

[notig]

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.

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

[Dayofswords]

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

[Beepbop]

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.

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.

[benjamindees]

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.

[velacreations]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[velacreations]

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.

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.

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.

[Bees Brothers]

Does raw milk go better with raw cookie dough? 

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.