Canadian Food Law: The Bizarre War Against Raw Milk

Ashaz Syed Hussaini
17 hours ago
4 min read

Written By: Ashaz Syed Hussaini - LSOU Publications

Legal Terms

1. Civil Contempt of Court: Disobedience/disregard against a court order/authority.

2. Injunction: A court order that compels a party to do or refrain from doing specific acts.

3. Quasi-Criminal: A civil proceeding procedurally and penally similar to criminal law.

4. Standard of Proof (BARD): Certainty needed to convict someone; prosecution’s burden.

5. Chilling Effect: When a regulatory thing discourages/limits freedoms and discussion.

Context

Among G8 countries, Canada is the only one to have a general prohibition of production for sale, transport, and consumption of raw, unpasteurized milk. Whilst other nations like Italy have raw milk vending machines and even most American states have made its being available in some form legal, Canadian federal law and provincial legislatures join in opposition. The official rationale is: raw milk may have hazardous, occasionally fatal, bacteria, and pasteurization is a public health protection that is needed. This position is the legal stronghold that dairy farmer Michael Schmidt devoted almost three decades attempting to dismantle, somehow converting his individual goal into a landmark legal struggle between food liberty and government authority.

Background

Cow-Share Loophole

Glencolton Farms’ Michael Schmidt became the public face of Canada's raw milk controversy with a simple—albeit legally provocative—scheme: the cow-share or farm-share program. Since farmers can drink their own raw milk, Schmidt allowed consumers to buy a “share” in a cow, legally classifying them as co-owners of the source and skirting around the sale ban. For over 100 customers, it was a strong compromise to get a product that they believed was healthier and natural. For the authorities, though, it was an obvious circumvention of the law’s intent.

Escalation & Ruses

Schmidt’s farm was raided three times in 22 years by a group of ministries and police, a number that would later climb to four. The conflict got worse since it went beyond Ontario. In a 2015 British Columbia Court of Appeal case, Schmidt was found in civil contempt of court for defying an injunction that prohibited distributing raw milk for human consumption. His defense—that the milk was labeled and sold as “Cleopatra’s Enzymatic Yogurt Mask” for cosmetic use—was dismissed by the court as a “patent lip service and ruse.” The court stated that the quasi-criminal nature of contempt required proof beyond a reasonable doubt (BARD), a standard it found was met, showing how creative legal defiance was being systematically shut down.

Fines to Handcuffs

In 2018, an Ontario court ruling turned raw milk sale from a provincial regulatory offence into a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. Schmidt’s own former lawyer stated the absurdity of Canada potentially emptying its prisons of marijuana offenders, only to then fill them with raw milk providers. This was the peak of the state’s coercive power against Schmidt, including his 37-day hunger strike and the loss of over $100,000 in arts funding for his “Symphony in the Barn.”

Tainted Victory

Charges were dismissed in 2023 against Schmidt and his wife. The grounds were not remorse, but actually alleged misconduct by lead investigator Glenn Jarvie. Schmidt’s legal team showed evidence suggesting Jarvie himself filed the “anonymous” complaints that sparked the final investigation, which involved 68 people and nearly 800 hours of surveillance. Something really remarkable to me though, was that throughout almost all 30 years of this case, there was never a single report of illness or a government finding of pathogens in Schmidt’s milk.

SIGNIFICANCE

Disproportionate Power

The wasting of resources for pursuing a single dairy farmer—multiple raids, years of surveillance, and a multi-agency task force—is something done for a major criminal investigation, not a regulatory offence. When this immense power is apparently tainted by misconduct, like in the 2023 case, it invalidates the entire legal process. It warps our perception from principled enforcement of public health law to a vendetta or harassment.

Paternalism Over Pragmatism

The state’s position insists that it knows better than us, even though there are many willing and informed communities of adults. Professor Art Hill from the University of Guelph says that drinking raw milk in Ontario is a “calculated risk,” but the law leaves no room for us to calculate that risk for ourselves. I would say this is hypocritical with the legal treatment of riskier and far more harmful products like alcohol, tobacco, and hard candies, which are legally consumed even though we know the documented fatalities. The law, in this specific raw milk case, does not treat citizens as autonomous actors but as wards under our state.

Chilling Effect

The judicial response to Schmidt’s “cosmetic milk” defense is also really important to look at. While the court was legally sound in rejecting an obvious attempt to circumvent its order, it shows a system with little tolerance for civil disobedience or creative legal challenges. The message sent to other farmers and food activists is that the law is rigid, and that attempts to find loopholes or go against the status quo through direct action will be met with the full force of contempt proceedings, which then carry the looming threat of imprisonment. This can have a chilling effect on legal innovation and the ability to challenge outdated law.

PREDICTIONS

Looking at Schmidt’s story and the facts, I would say that our immediate future for raw milk in Canada looks bleak. The state has shown it is willing to invest an oddly, extremely large amount of resources to uphold the ban, and courts have consistently backed the government’s position. The withdrawal of the charges against Schmidt is a procedural victory for him, not a legal one for the cause; it does not really change the law.

However, the same cultural shifts that supported Schmidt like distrust of industrial food systems and the “food freedom” movement are only getting stronger. The sheer length and cost of the Schmidt case may also make regulators hesitate and think before launching another similarly aggressive campaign, unless the state is willing to waste regulatory funding again, which I think it would, provided it could recover easily.

The most likely path forward is not a sudden federal legalization, but a gradual battle done for each province—maybe even municipalities. A future government, swayed by public pressure and the evident failure of prohibition to stamp out demand, could choose to regulate rather than eradicate. They could try to use things like strict testing, labeling, direct sales to actually honor the public’s right to choose and make decisions while still managing the “calculated risk.”

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