Two hundred supporters traveled from great distances to discuss something of crucial importance to them: milk.
The Multipurpose Room of the Cook Campus Center played host to a series of lectures given by leaders of a campaign to legalize the sale of "raw," or unpasteurized, milk in New Jersey.
Peter Southway has dedicated the last four years of his life to dairy farming and to Springhouse Dairy in Newton, N.J.
"I've often thought that America was the land of the free, yet we don't have the choice to buy raw milk - and yet the Food and Drug Administration has not approved any other forms of pasteurization," he said.
Southway and other raw milk advocates want to be able to choose to buy milk as it grows naturally, even containing bacteria that they contend is beneficial for human beings.
Joseph Heckman, a scientist at Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, is a recent supporter of their plight and gave credence to alternative forms of health.
"In Jersey, raw milk is not an illegal substance," Heckman said. "Its sale and distribution is, and if you want to consume raw milk, it almost means you have to be a dairy farmer yourself."
Mark McAfee is the founder of Organic Pastures Dairy Company in Fresno, Calif., which has standards under which natural unpasteurized milk can be sold.
"It is a tragedy that the idea that germs make you sick took off, and to this day, it's all about killing bacteria and there is little cause to promote good bacteria," McAfee said. "We are symbiotically living with bacteria. We are literally bacterio-sapiens."
He noted that the human environment and the environment in which milk is grown that often causes the presence of sickness causing pathogens. His dairy company has open, grassy fields where dairy cows can roam freely and be bathed in sunlight, all while retaining their health.
"Raw milk has the things we crave," McAfee said, adding that it is enzyme rich and has a diversity of beneficial bacteria, as well as good raw saturated animal fats from grass grazing cows.
"Two hundred and forty seven people a day are being killed by antibiotic resistant superbugs," McAfee said. "That's like a jumbo jet crashing daily. Nobody wants to prevent disease, because disease makes money. You are saturated everyday by television advertisements that tell you if you have a problem, see a doctor because we have a cure. In western medicine, you turn off the symptoms while the underlying disease is killing you."
He reinforced his belief of raw milk and its ability to build the immune system, which can help fight off and prevent disease.
"You have a living immune system in raw milk, yet we can't speak of this because we are undoing what is settled science," he said. "Mother nature got it right, and it's been right for a long time."
