For your children, your family, yourself, or your grandparents. Most people today assume that if it’s available in a store, it must be safe to eat or give to others. Man has not survived for thousands of years by not being careful about the food that he and his family ate! Today, only about one percent of our population produces the food for the world! Whether you only eat vegetables and grains, are celiac or, like me, enjoy a varied diet, we must all be vigilant that what we consume and what we give to others is as safe as we can get.
Like many of you, my ancestors were raised on a farm. We grew our own garden and picked our own fruit, whether wild or cultivated. We drank milk that our cattle produced, but never from a sick or treated cow – we didn’t even feed that questionable milk to calves, cats, dogs or pigs. We ate eggs that our own flock produced, and even stored extra eggs in the fall in a gel brine for the winter when the hens would quit laying because the daylight became shorter. We killed our own beef, hogs, and chickens, but never a sick one or one with a fever or that had been treated with antibiotics. We usually had the animal inspected by a veterinarian before slaughter, and always got a butcher experienced in looking for any abnormality in the carcass as we processed the meat. Except for potato bugs, our garden was never sprayed with any chemical.
Our family never kept sheep or goats, but grandma always bought wool to knit socks and sweaters with from the woolen mill in town. There was no plastic contamination in our environment because there were no synthetic materials in clothing, or other single-use plastics. The largest purchase of single-use plastic that we make today is probably in our car – did you ever look at a car after it was burnt? Maybe those old folks didn’t have the life expectancy that we have today, but the elaborate health system wasn’t as sophisticated either.
Most, if not all, safety regulations have been introduced because of serious ill-health outbreaks, such as tuberculosis, contaminations caused by E. coli, salmonella, clostridium, or even drug reactions.
Grampa used to bottle and deliver raw milk in town with the horse and milk wagon. He only delivered whole milk and cream. Skim milk was what we fed to the pigs! In the 1930s, milk was not pasteurized but because of a TB outbreak somewhere in the world, in about the late forties, all dairy cattle of milking age were tested yearly for brucellosis, and any animal testing positive was killed. There was never an animal that tested positive on our farm. Some cows just after calving would test “questionable” because of high immunity levels after calving, but a retest would prove them negative and safe to use their milk!
All female animals that might produce milk within a year were vaccinated so they wouldn’t get brucellosis. Once all Canadian cows became free of brucellosis, no more testing or vaccination was done. Agriculture Canada also said that if any brucellosis were to show up in the milk sample that is taken at every milk pickup on the farm (every two days), they would test that entire herd! Today all milk is pasteurized to kill all bacteria before it’s sold in stores and restaurants.
Grampa said, “If you don’t drink milk from your own herd, you shouldn’t be allowed to sell milk!” Raw milk should keep in the fridge for a week without souring. Grandma said; “You should always use sour milk to make biscuits. She used a drop of vinegar. Dad used to say; “Pasteurized milk don’t sour; it just rots!”
Today, all milk is tested for smell, taste, bacteria, sediment, and antibiotic contamination before it is delivered to the milk plant for bottling or processing into butter, cheese, or other “cowy” things.
Today, there are more recalls of vegetables like lettuce and broccoli and non-dairy drinks than of meat products. Some virulent strains of E. coli have become resistant to bactericides and some liquid manure in some states can be irrigated onto standing vegetable crops before harvest. Many beneficial bacteria that help break down soil particles and keep the biome in both your digestive system and animals healthy can be killed by very low levels of bactericide found in some feeds or foods. If you use some form of “anti-acid” like Tums, Rolaids, etc., maybe you should check it out before you have a serious problem. We’ll get into that next week.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
