My favorite desert as a child was rich, thick, lumpy yellow cream, on top of chocolate cake. Nothing was better. Years later, I learned that I was actually eating colostrum.

My family drank raw milk, until I went to college. We never missed school due to illness. Two of my brothers had perfect attendance records. Due to a work accident, I missed one half day. I saw, firsthand, the benefits of raw milk. I also learned that you don’t drink sour milk. That’s the only litmus I need, to determine if milk is bad.

This letter is in response to your Our View editorial published Feb. 1 indicating your displeasure with proposed legislation allowing consumers to choose if they want to drink raw milk delivered to their house. Your position is misguided, for several reasons:

1.) Selling and purchasing raw milk is and has always been legal in Minnesota. Minnesota law protects consumer access to raw milk by its exemption from pasteurization language: “…this section shall not apply to milk, cream, skim milk, goat milk, or sheep milk occasionally secured or purchased for personal use by any consumer at the place or farm where the milk is produced.” The current bill works to limit the need for thousands of moms and families to have to drive out to farms, especially in a state with such severe weather and road conditions.

2.) Minnesota has a constitutional amendment known as The Farmer’s Amendment, which states: “Any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him, without obtaining a license therefore.”

In 1906, Minnesotans passed this constitutional amendment to make sure that farmers could sell their wares, without government interference. This included the right to be able to peddle their product in town.

The new legislation, lambasted by The Free Press for wanting farmers to make a living, is designed to help this become reality.

It is good legislation. I urge our local Democratic legislators to join in this effort. We can all work together on this one.

3.) Minnesotans have a statutory right to practice colostrum therapy: Minnesota Statute 146A, Subdivision 4(12).

Odin dairy farmer Herb Saunders knew how to use raw milk to make people better. It is a freedom that we won in the courtroom, and in the Legislature.

4.) Colostrum therapy is the future of medicine. This sounds bold, until we understand the true nature of this remedy.

As an example, there is a company in Iowa that has a remedy for staph infections, made from milk. Twenty thousand people a year die from staph infections contracted at hospitals. The staph that is around now is much more potent than any that we have seen in the past.

I am comforted to know that the company in Iowa has the most effective medicine available for human beings. Problem is, human beings can’t get this medicine made from milk. Why? Because it can only be used on cows. It cannot be used by humans, because of governmental regulation. It cannot cross state lines, because of our beloved Commerce Clause.

So where do we get this remedy? The answer is simple: Our farmers. Each and every dairy farmer, right now, has the ability to make some of the most sophisticated medicines ever known to mankind. Here is why: We are mammals.

Remember what mammals do: change their genetic code to changing circumstances. How is this normally done? Ask any mom in La Leche League. Moms pass the necessary antibodies, and other immune factors to their child, in breastfeeding. Ask a La Leche League mom how she would feel about boiling her milk, before feeding it to her most precious infant. She would say, “You’re nuts.”

The Free Press, however, wants us all to live by their simplistic logic.

There is another factor of colostrum therapy that we forget: The existing pathogens that are present in a live being. When a baby gets a cold, and that baby nurses, it passes its germs back to the mom. The mom, in turn, can make more colostrum/milk, to help the baby with its malady. Cows can make the same remedy for human beings.

Think about the possibilities.

We are sitting on a gold mine, here in the state of Minnesota. If we can help with 20,000 staph infection deaths a year, what can we do for all of those who do not die? What do we do for all of those who need better care?

The Free Press wants to make sure that that farmer who makes this remedy could not deliver it to his next door neighbor. Boy, that makes sense.