The Country That Banned Milk Summary

What would we think about a government that has banned milk? Is it oppressive or is it cautious? Is it overkill or is it necessary in order to prohibit and contain disease? Skyler Reidy, the author of “The Country that Banned Milk”, has the belief that raw milk is better than pasteurized milk for the consumer and the producer, yet the government says otherwise. In this situation, the government wins. According to laws in twenty different states, “Sale of raw milk for human consumption is prohibited” (Procon). Raw milk, while it has some good qualities, also comes with some bad ones. Sometimes, unpasteurized milk contains a lot of very harmful bacteria including, but not limited to, Salmonella, E. Coli and Listeria. The US Government has

given this law to the individual states to decide but Reidy has a different opinion about what should happen. He attempts to convince his audience of twenty year old to sixty year old Christians to make the switch to raw milk by appealing to their ethical, logical and emotional centers.
Reidy appeals to his audiences’ logicality by stating and explaining his credibility. He has a less than substantial amount of credit, but he tries to enhance what he does have by repeating his standing throughout the article. He speaks very confidently and that puts his readers under the illusion that he is knowledgeable enough to be writing this article. Reidy says he “works at a small raw milk dairy located on a Christian community in Texas” (Reidy, “The Country that Banned Milk”). His statement on his background alone gives him credibility to be talking about the benefits of raw milk and how it relates to Christianity. As Reidy states that he lives and works in a Christian Community, that will allow readers to see that he is a very religious man, therefore giving him the authority to speak about God and its relation to the subject matter. He also seems to be very knowledgeable about what he talks about within the article. When he says “The Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (or CAFO) dairies can house as many as 50,000 cows. ” he backs it up by speaking more about how “evil” CAFO is and how milk sales should have nothing to do with the government. He speaks very confidently and in a matter-of-fact manner. His attitude and tone also adds the illusion that he is credible and trustworthy enough to be speaking on the topic of raw milk versus pasteurized milk. His audience would be shown that his knowledge is proven by his tone and the data he uses to back it up.

Reidy had to do a lot of research in order to have people believe him in this article. He uses a lot of scientific language along with facts and data to make his claims sound more credible. He also uses words like “enzyme lactase”, “lacto-bacilli”, and “microbiome” in order to enhance his level of diction. Without these things, nobody would believe him. He knew that his audience would not dive further into this topic by doing more research, so he did it for them. He uses scientific data in order to back up his claims. Reidy defines pasteurized milk, and then compares it to raw milk, giving his audience an immediate difference. Reidy provides quotes from various different departments and articles, all stating the same thing; raw milk is good. By bringing the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) into his argument, he provided a valid source of negativity towards the traditional dairy industry. Riedy also gives many alternative options to pasteurization, like drinking unpasteurized milk. Instead of just having people think that pasteurization is bad, he gives more ways that raw milk is good. For example, Reidy says “Pasteurization, however, is not the only way to prevent deadly diseases from entering milk. There is one other alternative: care. Careful milking and storage practices can prevent any dangerous bacteria from ever entering milk, thus negating the need for pasteurization.” This gives the readers a sense of hope, not just disgust for pasteurization. It gives them of just the right amount of information; if he gave too much, they would get bored and if he gave too little, they would be left without knowledge. Also, it will make his audience feel more inclined to drink unpasteurized milk because of the information he gives. Logically, if when growing up you constantly hear that you can't drink raw milk, it would be very hard to convince a person otherwise but Reidy was very successful in creating a sense of safety and rationality for his readers.

According to Reidy, there is absolutely nothing wrong with drinking raw milk if it has the right care and he wants to make sure his readers know it by appealing to their emotions.

However, instead of making raw milk sound good, he tries to make pasteurized milk sound bad. Americans always have some kind of “fad” diet and the majority of them desire to better health so Reidy plays at that to interject his opinion. He also mentions religion multiple times throughout the article and says “Real milk comes to us exactly as God designed it” (Reidy, “The Country that Banned Milk”). Religious people wouldn't want to change the ways of God, so Reidy words it so bluntly, almost saying “You are going against God if you drink pasteurized milk”; no Christian wants to go against their God. Religion plays one of the biggest roles in this article and Reidy visits it often. Reidy also uses bible quotes and relates them back to what is going on in the milk industry, making it seem like a much bigger deal than it is. According to him, the government is playing a much too large role in Americans milk purchases. He says “a government that would interfere with this right stepping beyond its natural limits” . He wants his readers to be able to see that a government that is oppressive to the extent that they would regulate perfectly good milk, should be stopped. He also asks his audience questions like “Doesn’t a man have a God-given right to the milk his herd produces?” in order to get a structured response from his audience. Reidy also offers the sentiment of the “Right to Milk” which gives off the impression that our rights are being infringed upon, which relates to every American. When somebody tries to take their rights away, Americans riot. They fight for what they believe in and Reidy hoped that if he got the entirety of America on his side, maybe they would fight for the legality of raw milk. However, he knew he had some convincing to do even

still.

Reidy was relentless in trying to convince his readers that unpasteurized milk is better than its counterpart. He was effective in getting his point across but only in a way that was hypercritical of pasteurized milk. He had more negative things to say about pasteurization than about drinking raw milk. Reidy also appealed logically by adding a multitude of specific facts and data on how raw milk is better and pasteurized milk is worse for you and your health. He added specific laws and the inhumanity behind the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) as evidence as to how Americans are fueling cruelty within the dairy industry. According to Reidy, they are spending all of their money supporting barbaric things and they don’t even know it. He appealed to their ethics and emotion by describing the cruelty behind the closed doors of the dairy industry. He described in depth the atrocity about what happens when cows are over-milked and how they are treated by dairy farmers. He made sure to let the audience know what they were supporting. He called for change and he made his point to be one step closer.