Despite being found guilty of contempt of court for ignoring an order not to sell raw milk from his farm, an Ontario farmer says he'll continue the illegal sale.

Michael Schmidt asked for the maximum sentence possible after he was found guilty of contempt on Monday, but he said he won't stop his sales.

"Yes, we will continue with what we're doing," he said after the ruling. He and his supporters then gulped down glasses of milk, although it was unclear if the milk was pasteurized or not. Schmidt then compared his effort to sell raw milk to Mahatma Gandhi's fight against British imperialism and Martin Luther King's civil rights struggle.

"When Gandhi picked up the salt, he kept marching, and when Martin Luther started the Montgomery bus strike, he kept going until the law was changed," Schmidt said, according to The Canadian Press.

Selling unpasteurized milk is illegal in Canada and a judge had found that Schmidt circumvented the laws by selling "shares" in his dairy cows to consumers.

In finding him guilty of contempt, the judge called Schmidt's actions "not only illegal, but completely self-defeating." Justice Cary Boswell added that Schmidt has every right to try to make the sale of raw milk legal, but he must do so in a manner that's within the law. The judge also said Monday's ruling had nothing to do with the sale of milk, but instead focused on whether or not Schmidt knew he was defying a court order by continuing the raw milk sales.

Schmidt and his devoted consumers claim raw milk tastes better and say they have never suffered adverse health effects from drinking it.

Health officials say raw milk can carry bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and Listeria monocytogenes, which carry serious, and sometimes deadly, health consequences.

Schmidt has operated his co-operative organic dairy farm near Owen Sound, Ont., for more than 20 years.

The judge did not sentence Schmidt on Monday and did not indicate when such a decision would be made. The Crown is not asking that Schmidt serve jail time, but Schmidt himself asked the judge to impose "the highest penalty you can find."

Schmidt also faces other legal troubles. He is set to go to trial in 2009 on 20 charges laid by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Grey-Bruce Health Unit.

In November 2006, Ministry of Natural Resources officials raided Schmidt's farm and seized farming equipment and computers. He was subsequently charged with failure to obey a written order barring him from making and storing raw milk products.

Schmidt lost 50 pounds after embarking on a hunger strike in 2006 to protest the charges.

He ended the protest by bringing a cow to the steps of the Ontario legislature. He drank a glass of milk immediately after milking the cow.

With files from The Canadian Press