Milk raids? Seriously?

[Jagos]

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I refuse to believe this is real. People want to spend money on unpasteurized milk the state government of California actually has rules against it? How does this make sense?

California apparently does allow the sale of raw milk but requires a permit to do so. I’m not sure why James Stewart did not have a permit. It’s possible the milk in question didn’t qualify, or that he simply didn’t believe the regulations applied to his store since it is essentially a private “drop-off-point” rather than an actual grocery store. Private individuals pick up privately distributed food from local farmers. If that’s the case, apparently regulators disagreed.

Obviously spending this much time and this many resources to bust people selling dairy products is silly. Making arrests, rather than simply issuing a fine for non-compliance, is silly. And yes, the fundamental issue here is the silliness of requiring permits – or making outright bans – to sell raw milk in the first place. Permits typically don’t make us any safer, and can serve crowd out competition. In this case, big dairy farms are crowding out smaller competitors.

So... Someone decides to go under the radar for milk, it's used to crowd out bigger businesses, and that's somehow not fair... Does anyone else begin to see a pattern with regulation becoming silly?