You Can’t Have Your Cow And Milk It, Too

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by Smitty (via Protein Wisdom)

The bog-like decay of a legal system run amok produces another horrible result in Wisconsin:

On September 9, Judge Fiedler issued his decision on the motion, stating that the court’s August 12 denial of plaintiffs’ motion for judgment meant the following:

  1. Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;
  2. Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
  3. Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;
  4. The Zinniker Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the States’ police power;
  5. Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice;
  6. DATCP [Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection] . . . had jurisdiction to regulate the Zinniker Plaintiffs’ conduct.

With this sweeping denial of basic rights, the judge refused to recognize any distinction between public and private activity; moreover, he was holding that the government had the power to regulate people’s efforts to grow and raise their own food.

In a hypothetical case, if you took a maniac judge fifteen or twenty miles from shore and threw the judge in Lake Michigan, would the judge have standing?

37 comments

  3. Fortunately, it has been appealed.  Unfortunately, it is staying in the Kingdom of Dane as the 4th District Court of Appeals is based in Madison.

  4. As to your hypothetical, my guess is he would not. But you know how it is with these things. Seeing as how just one example wouldn’t serve as concrete evidence, we would need to repeat the experiment, maybe two or three thousand times before we could arrive at a scientifically satisfactory conclusion.

  9. I will say this, the cheese in Wisconsin is ass kicking good (so are the beer and brats).  But I think that society will survive if some people want to raise their own cows so they drink raw milk. 

    The Judge is actually not wrong in his ruling, in that is the law.  But the laws are completely utterly (sorry) wrong and in conflict with basic liberties preserved in the Constitution.  The state (federal and government) should have the ability to regulate commerce, but only to a rational point. 

    This case is a Kelo in that it clarifies the abusurdity of the law and brings the issue to a head. 

  11. Smitty, in this case it is not a legal system run amuk.  It is a state executive, legislature and judicial system run amuk.  This is not some crazy judicial decision (the Judge is correct on the law), this is the result of years of legislative, executive, and judicial shennangins.  We need to start reversing it. 

  20. One of those wahoos is my State Senator; so, naturally, I called her out on her facebook page about that crap when she cheered on the Wall Street Hippie Parade.

    Needless to say, she was not amused; I was, though, and am in the process of turning it into a web brawl….

    She doesn’t realize I am a professional in such matters. 🙂

  22. Actually, the judge is incorrect in this case. The state has the jurisdiction over commerce, but here, the milk is not commerce.  The members owned the cows and the milk–the milk was never sold.  If you lease a garden plot and grow tomatoes, you should be able to hire someone to pick the tomatoes off of your tomato plant so you can pick them up.  Some of us live in the city, and can’t keep our cow in our condo.  It should not be a requirement that the farmhand we hire to milk our cows does so on our estate or on a property other that where we reside. 

  23. Aed939, this is not a commerce clause case.  That applies to federal over reach (example:  the Wickard abomination). 

    This is over reach by a state government.  Wisconsin has some draconian dairy bill that is over reaching to its citizens.  So the Wisconsin state constitution comes into play on whether the law goes to far.  The U.S. Constitution may also be implicated, but not under the commerce clause.   

  24. And Aed939, I totally agree with your reasoning.  But when I say he is right, I am saying there is some case law that supports the over reach.  That justification is still wrong.  I agree with you, the law goes too far and should be struck down on these facts. 

  26. Trouble is it is not raining there and your milk cow will die. 

    I have drank camel’s milk.  Can’t say I recommend it. 

  28. Amazing ain’t it?  I can build my own flamethrower, but the heavens will fall if I dare expose myself to unpasteurized milk.

  29. First of all, note this was a contract specifically designed to get around the law.  In most states, such a contract is null and void automatically:  legal contracts must be for a lawful purpose. 

    There is absolutely no health or nutritional benefit to raw milk – NONE.  But it does entail risks – serious risks of infection which once wrought havoc in human population, so much so that a simple chemist became a hero of civilization 150 years ago for figuring out how to make it SAFE.

    If you went to school before the curricula transformed, the name Louis Pasteur may be familiar to you.

    Now, my libertarian friends clamor, “It’s my body, it’s my freedom!”  which sounds oddly like the line in front of an abortion clinic, but let’s address their concerns, which seem nearly identical to their insistence on the “right” to ride a motorcycle on public roads without a helmet.

    IF the rider falls and is injured, WHO pays for his long-term care when his insurance runs out?  WHO supports the family he leaves behind?  Because as long as any part of the bill falls on the taxpayer, your right to swing your fist just ended, Sparky.

    Same deal with the dirty hippies and their raw milk.  You know not only will they be unable to care for themselves and their families if they infect themselves with tainted milk, they will be presenting the bill to the state.  And the same shyster lawyer who drew up the contract to evade state law will file suit against the state for failing to protect the chiiiiiiiiiildren.

    Now, as soon as the raw-milk-drinking hippies and the macho bikers figure out a way to ensure NONE of my money will be required to pay for their stupidity, I say, “Be free, numbskulls, have at it and enjoy!”  But until that day comes, their “freedom” ain’t free when they bill me for it.

  30. I lived right across the border in Minneapolis for 35 years and got a pretty good feel for Iowa and Wisconsin. The cheeseheads are mostly cool people, but Madison is every bit as bad as Berkeley.

  31. Adjoran:

    please share with us the university from which you earned your degree in bio- science or, failing that, cite the specific study which supports your assertion that there is no health or nutritional benefit to raw milk.

    Lacking any credentials or definitive scientific trial of raw milk drinkers and pasteurized milk drinkers, your assertion is pure opinion. And, you know what they say about opinion…

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