This companion article goes on to show the economic and societal consequences unrelated to health that have also been caused by these laws. I'll show you why laws designed to protect people in the short term often have serious unintended consequences that cause us to be less protected in the long term. Unfortunately, both legislators and consumers rarely see these problems as being caused by the laws that they created and often rail for government to create more laws to protect them from the unintended consequences in a never ending fight that would have been prevented in the first place by not creating the original law at all.
His campaign was successful and New York passed the first milk laws to 'protect' us. While these laws CERTAINLY saved a certain number of people, particularly children, from becoming sick and likely saved some from dying, the spontaneous consumer outrage had already started to get rid of the unhealthy and unclean conditions that were causing the illness to begin with. Time and consumer choice would have taken care of the problem without the need for laws or government to be involved at all. With the passing of the pure milk laws, instead of the unclean and crowded dairies being forced out of business as consumer choice would have demanded, these unclean crowded cattle stalls that were stationed behind distilleries were allowed to continue and even thrive. Not only did the milk laws allow these conditions to continue when a free market without these laws would have put them out of business, but now it actually FAVORED these unhealthy dairies over the healthy ones. The fact that it required a higher cost to produce milk under clean conditions was even an argument FOR these laws at the time which gave the unhealthy and unclean milk producers an economic advantage over those dairies who kept their cows in healthy conditions at a higher cost!
"As to pasteurization, its cost is negligible, while the cost of cleanliness is two, four, or ten cents a quart." 'The Fight For Clean Milk'
For those who are against the government favoring large corporations and the 'crony capitalism' of today, this story is an excellent example of why laws that are designed to 'protect' consumers actually quite often have the unintended consequence of favoring large corporate entities and actually discriminating against the very companies that would have or who were already providing a safe product to consumers.
Since it is now engrained in the American psyche that raw milk is dangerous and unhealthy, despite its having been consumed safely for tens of thousands of years, these laws can never be repealed and the loss of the small dairies and their knowledge of the production of safe raw milk can never be regained. Even worse, the essential freedom of choice to start a business and the freedom to choose a product that you feel is best for you and your family has been completely lost for most people. To change the system back to allow these freedoms will take much fighting, much court time and much money that could have been better spent on productive endeavors in the economy. This is money, time and freedoms that never would have been lost had the powerful lobby of consumer choice been allowed to force unfit dairies out of business, which it would have in a short period. In the end, if the government had done absolutely nothing, we would have retained our freedoms and had purer milk from healthier cows than we do today.