By Caroline McColloch | November 9, 2011

The entrance to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration headquarters faces six lanes of traffic on New Hampshire Avenue, just north of the Capitol Beltway in Silver Spring Maryland. Montgomery County Police and FDA security staff looked on last Tuesday as upwards of a hundred fifty people from eight states were led by a group of Maryland mothers to very publicly violate the FDA ban on interstate transport of raw milk.

Judging from the modest space available to us, I surmised that demonstrations at FDA headquarters are rare or perhaps non-existent prior to last Tuesday's exercise of our First Amendment right to free speech. Though few of us have schedules flexible enough to accommodate such civic activities, the demonstrators represent a much greater number people actively supporting with their time and money, the right to choose the kind of carefully produced foods consumed by our forbearers. The local foods movement sweeping the country is a wholesale rejection of factory food: devoid of living nutrients replaced by biologically alien ingredients invented in a chemistry laboratory. Such is the basis of epidemic levels of chronic illnesses evident in recent decades. Several mothers testified of their children being cured of allergies or asthma in an astounding and immediate response to raw milk consumption.

As the pioneering biodynamic farmer Joel Salatin pointed out in his speech to the crowd, FDA policies in general and local health officials' practice in particular are founded in the principle of sterility, completely ignoring "the three billion citizens of our gut" that need replenishment from the beneficial bacteria in living foods such as raw milk.    

Mark McAfee of the California raw milk dairy Organic Pastures led the group in several chants ("Hey hey, FDA - raw milk is here to stay!!") and generally performed as emcee. In one particularly humorous moment, he approached Montgomery County Police officers to offer them some fresh raw milk. Smiling, they politely declined, mentioning something about being on duty. . .

Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, pleaded the importance of healthy diets for children, and how many suffer because of processed foods. Other speakers included Kristen Canty, producer of the film Farmageddon, and David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution. John Moody, a farmer from Louisville KY who runs a food-buying club recently raided by local health authorities, spoke passionately about the civil rights being undermined by such actions. He decided to inform his club members about portions of the Kentucky State Constitution (pertaining to private property). The members subsequently disregarded the imposed quarantine to retrieve their food.

Canadian Raw Milk farmer Michael Schmidt spoke about the importance of civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. He has been in legal proceedings for seventeen years since his farm was initially raided in 1994, and again in 2006 with an armed raid. Acquitted of 19 charges in 2010, a higher court last month overruled the acquittal.  Now in the 34th day of a hunger strike, Michael awaits a meeting with the Premier of Ontario to open dialogue about raw milk production. To those who opine that dying for raw milk rights is unwise and inconsiderate of loved ones, the larger issues for which he is willing to sacrifice his life are not easily apparent:

"We are at war and to those who don't get that - we are at war over food rights. To some this may seem like a silly thing but to others there is a growing concern. We have a new form of dictatorship of regulations and laws intended to limit our individual liberties. To be silent means to be consenting. To be silent means to accept the consequences of our consent. To be silent makes a mockery of those who fought on our behalf for freedom and justice. And to remain silent cannot be an option for you, for me, and for all of us."

I was amazed at the sheer physical stamina exhibited by a starving man—to travel so far, to summon such resounding speech with clarity and conviction. The power of his appeal was in regard to leadership: that each of us must summon the courage leading into action that embodies our beliefs—this is the true meaning of integrity.

After the rally I visited the National Archives in Washington, feeling privileged to gaze on the original parchment documents that founded the United States, "conceived in freedom"; to behold those signatures of men who saw so far beyond their own time. They knew first hand how the relations between a government and its people could go astray. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights embody the framework that ensures continuing debate between a people and their elected government. Thomas Jefferson in his wisdom put it thus: "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Likewise, Benjamin Franklin warns, "It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins." These are the lights shining the way for those of us willing to fight for the right to choose our food.