Over 29 years, the annual University of Guelph Organic Conference has grown and transformed. At its core, though, this just-completed event remains the main opportunity for Ontario’s organic farmers, as well as the marketers and farmer-controlled lobby groups which promote organic food, to come together as a community.
This year’s keynote speaker was Margaret Webb, a writer whose series on food production in Ontario was strategically published by the Toronto Star just before Thanksgiving, 2009. The most attention-grabbing of Webb’s articles was a decidedly opinionated examination of efforts by the Organic Council of Ontario (OCO) to convince the Turkey Farmers of Ontario (TFO) marketing board to step back from new regulations requiring all supply management-adhering turkeys to remain indoors their entire life.
Rumours swirled through the organic community following the publication of Webb’s article: the Agriculture Minister had stepped in; TFO had hired private investigators to find every backyard turkey in the province. But the bottom line was that, before the long weekend arrived, a deal had been reached with the marketing board that, pending approval from the federally-regulated agency that controls the national organic standard, will allow quota-holding turkey producers to graze their birds.
As a result, there was already a larger-than-usual appeal for non-organic farm interests at this year’s Organic Conference. The OCO took advantage of its role in the story, hosting a Thursday afternoon panel about the relationship between organic production and Ontario’s supply management boards.
Webb’s presence, however, paled in comparison to the fortuitous timing - for conference organizers, at least - of the previous week’s ruling from a Newmarket court.
Thursday, Jan. 21, Durham-area dairy farmer Michael Schmidt was found not guilty on 19 charges related to his “cow-share” program - through which about 200 people share the ownership of the cows on his farm, allow him to care for them, milk them, and process and transport their unpasteurized milk to the city for pick-up at a depot.
For years, the scheme has represented Schmidt’s attempt (along with his dedicated customers) to circumvent what he believes is an uncalled-for, decades-old ban on the distribution and sale of unpasteurized milk. On two highly-publicized occasions over the past two decades, Schmidt’s farm has been raided: on the first occasion, Health Ministry and dairy marketing board officials seemed content with scaring him into keeping his operation below the media radar; after the second raid, in 2006, those same authorities pursued a more hard-line approach, and last week’s ruling may leave them regretting that tactical change.
Schmidt is among the pioneers of this province’s organic movement, and rarely (if ever) misses a Guelph Conference. His physical stature and unique style of dress make him easy to pick out of the lunchtime crowd and, during my own several years in attendance, I have had several opportunities to chat with him about organic dairy farming.
(Note to the marketing board from which I receive my monthly cheque: I solemnly swear that I have never spoken to Michael Schmidt about raw milk.)
This past weekend, not surprisingly, it was difficult to get past the well-wishers and reporters to exchange more than congratulatory greetings. I did, however, have a lengthy chat with someone with whom he works closely. And the conversation didn’t go exactly as you might expect.
As much as it might look like Schmidt and his supporters can now put up their feet for a while and celebrate their apparent victory (there’s even strong indication, she believed, that no appeal will be launched), their workload is actually going to get even heavier.
Through word-of-mouth around the conference, Schmidt sent out invitations to a hastily-arranged meeting of all dairy producers who are currently or who are thinking about marketing raw milk. The intent was both to promote the idea of forming an association, and to warn against a rapid, random sprouting of new raw milk schemes across the province.
Over the years, Schmidt has built into his operation a protocol of quality testing and the prevention of contamination. He knows that, if somebody now begins selling raw milk from a below-the-regulatory-radar barn that doesn’t adhere to food safety standards, the risk that somebody will become ill from unpasteurized milk will rise. And if it can be proved that someone became ill, his court victory will be for naught.
There certainly is irony in his situation: for so many years, he fought against the imposition of controls over how he runs his farm, and now he’s hoping to impose controls over the way others run theirs.
But that irony mirrors the discussion that unfolded in the OCO’s Thursday afternoon session about marketing boards: people may hate the way the supply management system limits the way farmers can produce food, and limits the ability of new farmers to enter the profession. But the safeguards those marketing boards provide make it entirely impractical for Ontario’s organic producers to collectively demand they be allowed to step outside the system.