Where the Co-op Falls In The Political Spectrum

Short answer... everywhere. Long answer: On Monday, Philly.com's "UnRetiring" blog profiled David Gumpert, former "reporter for publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and Inc. magazine... owner of a publishing company specializing in business content." Gumpert's new passion: advocacy for on food issues. The "hook" issue brought up in this post is about the battle between government regulators and groups of consumers over raw (unpasteurized) milk. Gumpert has also written about "confrontations involving custom slaughtered meat, pastured eggs that don’t necessarily meet all the regulations about refrigeration." For those who are interested, Gumpert's blog is The Complete Patient. He's very much an advocate for the free market and against regulations (sugary drink bans among those that he also opposes) so you may not agree with him about everything. But part of what makes this Co-op effort so interesting is its potential to appeal to people from all across the political spectrum. A free market cheerleader like Gumpert and a raging liberal like me could probably find a lot of common ground over the role individuals should and can play in making decisions about where their food comes from and how it gets to them. In fact, when explaining the Co-op to a friend of mine from Houston (who is about as far to the right as I am to the left) said, "what's not for me to like? It's a group of free citizens coming together to establish an enterprise that will fulfill a perceived need in their community without going to the government for help." (Note to "the government" we'd gladly take your help in the form of a grant here or there.) When he put it that way, I realized something that I sometimes forget... ultimately this Co-op isn't about being "against" anything (corporate food system, conventional agriculture, big agribusiness). It's much more about being FOR community, choice, economic empowerment, and basically having fun with a bunch of really great people (okay, maybe that's "community"). So... liberal, conservative, moderate, or none-of-the-above... join the Co-op. If you're not ready to join right now, come to our fall General Membership meeting to find out what I was talking about when I said "really great people." (And for the record... Pennsylvania law allows for the retail and other sale of raw milk as long as the cows are "certified by department as in good physical health and disease free... and tested for brucellosis and tuberculosis at least once a year." So who knows, maybe a future item at the Co-op?)