Names in the news

[Allan Balliett]

ran across this in an article in the Washington Post while looking for cow-share information:


On the trail of an anonymous complaint, two investigators from the Maryland Division of Milk Control entered a garage attached to the School of Life, a yoga ashram on East West Highway in Bethes da. They purchased a one-gallon container of milk for $4.80.

According to Ted Elkin, chief of the division, the label on the milk container identified the contents as: "raw milk" from "Camphill Village Farm in Kimberton, Pa." Subsequently, a State of Maryland laboratory performed tests that confirmed the product had not been pasteurized.

In early January, Victor Landa, the spiritual leader and owner of the School of Life, received a certified letter from milk control chief Elkin.

"Raw milk is unfit as food for humans because of the abundance of health hazards associated with the ingestion of raw milk," Elkin wrote.

"We put him on notice," Elkin says. "We have no choice but to enforce the law with so many food-borne illnesses linked to raw milk."

On a recent afternoon, there was raw honey and raw tahini for sale in the student store at the School of Life. There were free-range eggs from a farm in Pennsylvania. There was no raw milk.

"Everybody has been scared to death by horror stories," says guru Landa, a native of Peru. He opened his yoga school 15 years ago. For four years, he says, he sold 70 gallons of raw milk per week.

"This [raw milk] is an important, living food in the yoga diet, full of natural antibodies and beneficial vitamins. It's our main source of protein," says Landa. "It's ridiculous that we have to go to these lengths to get it."

Still, Landa has a plan to put raw milk back on his dining table. He plans to purchase his own cow, or at least, part of one, he says. Cow owners are free to drink raw milk from their own herd.