I'd personally rather go to a farmers market or local store and buy food that was all grown and produced locally.

Where the US really got off the rails, in my opinion, was holding onto our distaste for regulation while simultaneously providing legal cover for corporstions to become massive and centralize industry so massively.

The FDA shouldn't be necessary at all. I don't need an organization to tell me raw milk from a local dairy is safe. The FDA is only needed for milk because we have a handful of massive, industrial dairies raising animals in terrible conditions and selling their product to everyone through national infrastructure balanced like a house of cards.

Eh, I wish that was always the case but it really depends on the individual farmer: I know many small and medium-scale farmers which use pesticides and chemicals. Even many people in their own small allotment don't shy away from using them willy nilly.

And raw milk is one of those things that it's all good and dandy until it's not. I still prefer buying raw milk and doing a LTLT pasteurisation to have the best of both worlds.

Totally agree on both counts. The benefit of local is that you can know the farmer at all. You'll just never get that with industrial ag. You'll never know how the animals were raised, how they were processed, or who all was involved as the animal likely was shipped all over the country or even overseas before you ate it.

I definitely get people's apprehension with raw milk. I very much need to know where it came from, and have a good idea for the health of the animal. We hand milk when our cows are lactating, and occasionallu buy from a local family dairy that we've worked with for years.