Brittany Devenyi of Maisonneuve magazine brings us one of the most thorough and up-to-date articles on Michael Schmidt, the German immigrant fighting for raw milk legalization in Canada. Recently coming off of a hunger strike, Devenyi interviews a thinner Schmidt in hopes of uncovering why his passion for the raw milk cause is so unwavering.

For the past seventeen years, Schmidt, now fifty-seven years old, has been fighting for the legalization of raw, unpasteurized milk—a substance some claim is better for you than regular milk—which became illegal to sell in Ontario in 1938. He believes people should have the freedom to choose the foods they wish to consume, a conviction he traces back to his childhood in West Germany in the years after World War II. “There was not enough awareness to understand what was going on at the time,” he says. “That stayed with me… the whole question of, ‘What can happen when we are asleep?’”

Read the full article here.