Raw milk hopes soured

A challenge to the province’s raw milk rules has been creamed by a BC Supreme Court decision delivered September 11 and published this week.

The matter traces its roots to 2005, and Gordon Watson’s challenge of BC’s policy against raw milk sales. The policy is common across Canada, the only G7 nation that prohibits the sale of raw milk to consumers.

“There may be jurisdictions that permit the sale or supply of unpasteurized raw milk to people who do not directly care for or control the cow or cows that produced it, that is not the policy in British Columbia,” Watson was told by the province in 2005.

Watson became involved in Home on the Range, which established a cow-share that established a fractional ownership scheme in order to allow consumers to access raw milk.

But the arrangement was ultimately deemed illegal under provincial rules, and Watson’s challenges were rejected by the courts in 2011 and 2013.

September’s decision rejects Watson’s latest bid to challenge the rules on the grounds that no new claim has been advanced other than those previously addressed in the 2011 and 2013 decisions.

“Both of those judgments are final judgments in proceedings in which Mr. Watson participated,” Justice Bill Veenstra states in his decision. “The public interest in finality which underlies the doctrine of res judicata militates against allowing this proceeding to continue so as to relitigate those same issues.”

However, the decision stopped short of barring Watson from continuing his fight, so long as he takes a different tack.

While the province’s attorney general sought an order barring Watson from filing further challenges of the rules around raw milk, Veenstra said he was not provided with evidence pointing to Watson’s “persistent re‑litigation of previously decided points” and declined to make such an order.

Watson was, however, ordered to pay $500 in costs. This was half what the province wanted, with the lower amount occasioned by Watson’s limited financial resources.

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