Legal Pluralism and the Regulation of Raw Milk Sales in Canada: Creating Space for Multiple Normative Orders at the Food Policy Table

Abstract

In Canada, the sale and distribution of raw milk is prohibited. Public health officials warn that it exposes consumers to unacceptable food safety risks. Raw milk advocates counter that pasteurization reduces milk’s nutritional properties and that individuals should have the right to consume foods of their choice. Existing legal scholarship on raw milk focuses on two main lines of reasoning: a personal autonomy argument that individuals have (or should have) a right to food choice and a division of powers argument about the rights of regional authorities to regulate local food systems. Missing from the debate is a serious engagement with the fact that food law and policy is about more than consumer safety. The raw milk movement is doing more than demanding a right to a particular product, it is creating an alternative normative order for food systems that challenges the dominant model of industrial agriculture. This paper suggests that the preferences of raw milk advocates should not be so quickly dismissed by regulatory officials. The failure to take seriously the movement’s dissenting opinions means that critical perspectives on social, ecological, and economic aspects of agriculture are not being heard at the food policy table. This chapter explores how the principles of legal pluralism can assist legal orders to better deal with fundamental disagreement. Applying these principles to the raw milk debate, it argues that Canada’s regulatory authorities should engage with the perspectives of multiple normative orders to design more sustainable and democratic food systems.