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Raw milk farmer seeks court relief |
Orangeville Citizen January 25th 2007
By WES KELLER Freelance Reporter
Michael Schmidt, the nearby dairy farmer who faces charges of selling unpasteurized milk, is demanding that provincial investigators leave him alone pending a court decision on whether or not he is breaking the law.
In the meantime, in a letter to Ministry of Natural Resources
investigator Brett Campbell, Mr. Schmidt says he'll do two things:
first, he will continue to deliver milk to his "cow-share" consumers,
and second, he will disclose whatever information the ministry requires
to build its case against him.
In fact, he says, there is no case. "They're looking for a smoking gun.
There isn't one." He said the enforcement officers "find themselves in
a dilemma."
MNR enforcement officers, some wearing service pistols, raided Mr.
Schmidt's dairy farm in south Grey in November 2006, seized milk
processing equipment, and charged him with selling raw milk.
He had been similarly charged and convicted in the mid-1990s, but had
continued distributing the milk nonetheless, relying on the fact that
his "customers" had become part owners (shareholders) of the herd, and
it's legal in Ontario for cattle owners and their families to consume
raw milk from the cattle they own.
It has, however, been illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption by
others in Ontario since 1938, but Mr. Schmidt says there's no law
against distributing unpasteurized milk to families that are entitled
under the statute to consume it.
That is likely to be his defense when he appears in a Walkerton
Provincial Offences Act court, possibly on Feb. 20. In the meantime, he
has written to MNR chief investigator Brett Campbell accusing him of
"wasting taxpayer dollars tracking me down," and demanding that he
cease his "undercover operation" until such time as his charges have
been dealt with in the court.
In an interview at Orangeville's Second Cup Tuesday morning, Mr.
Schmidt said he started his dairy operation in the 1980s, and made raw
milk available, because "so many people had approached me and I knew
how difficult it was for them."
He had emigrated from Germany, and said Tuesday he had been using raw
milk all his life. "In Europe you could get it anywhere. It's not such
a big deal (over there)."
At the outset, he said, he was leasing the cows to the consumers of his
product. Following his 1990s conviction, he said, he changed from
leasing to shares. Thus, he believes, the shareholders are in fact
cattle owners who are entitled to consume the milk.
Since then, he has continued to operate openly, delivering the milk in a converted school bus that he's painted blue.
He follows the identical routine every Tuesday, stopping at Second Cup
for a coffee at 9:30 a.m. and parking the truck in plain view. He says
unmarked police cruisers sometimes follow him. "All I want is to be
left alone."
In his letter to Mr. Campbell, Mr. Schmidt challenged the ministry to:
"Obtain a court order to stop us from producing milk for our cowshare
holders; (and) Be there when I ignore that court order and then arrest
me. That's the only way I can be stopped."
Mr. Campbell, reached on his cell phone outside a Barrie courtroom
Tuesday afternoon, wouldn't comment on accusations of virtual
harassment. He said he was not at liberty to discuss the case while it
is before the courts.
Although authorities at the time of last November's raid admitted there
had been no known cases of illness from Mr. Schmidt's milk, the raid
had followed closely on the heels of other incidents of E.coli
infection from contaminated milk.
At the time Dr. Murray McQuigge, who had blown the whistle on the
Walkerton tragedy, was speaking out about the dangers of E. coli 157:H7
in raw milk which, he said, made three Barrie residents and a
Toronto-area child sick in 2005.
Last November's raid on the Schmidt farm might have been a minor
embarrassment for the provincial government. Following the raid, it was
reliably reported that Provincial Treasurer Greg Sorbara is one of the
shareholders.
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