Dairy farmer Michael Schmidt believes drinking raw milk is a constitutional right, but an Ontario court yesterday disagreed. Schmidt could face heavy fines.
“I can’t believe it,” Michael Schmidt said yesterday at his farm in Grey County.
In a 77-page ruling, the Ontario Court of Justice dismissed every one of his arguments that distributing and purchasing raw milk was a well-informed consumer’s constitutional right.
milk operation, which he described as a fight for “food freedom.” The sale of untreated milk is illegal across Canada.
But health officials maintain unpasteurized milk can contain deadly pathogens, including salmonella, listeria and the same strainof E. coli that killed seven people in Walkerton in 2000.
The Ontario health ministry says there were 145 cases of reported enteric illness associated with unpasteurized milk in Ontario between 2005 and 2009.
3 Wheeled Cheese 
Cigarettes are dangerous with lots of known health risks yet people not only have a right to smoke, and by doing so, a right to inflict their choice on to others when they smoke in the presence of people who choose not to. Also, the health risks and costs associated with smoking related illnesses does not appear to be enough of a concern for the government to step in. I don’t understand why we can not choose to drink raw milk. My choice to do so does not put others at risk, certainly not to the extent that something like smoking does. I don’t know why big business is so concerned as I believe most people will continue as they do now and just buy milk from the supermarket that is mass produced and makes money for the these companies. This is just another case of greed and hypocrisy on the part of the government and big business. Whenever there is an e-coli outbreak, or Lysteria or something along those lines with other foods or processing procedures, I don’t recall there being an outright ban on these products as being unsafe for human consumption. Instead, these companies apologize, change something about their operating procedures and go back to selling the same thing to the same people. If the government is truly interested in the well being of the majority perhaps they should consider the source and effects of some of the crap and garbage in our food that they want us to believe is safe.