Posted on 12/07/2008 3:48:32 PM PST by TenthAmendmentChampion
On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse
http://www.mannastorehouse.com
on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.
There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly supicious-looking .
Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.
Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3^rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.
This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported by those innocents who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s. The present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there some rabid new interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food a controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is there a previously unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the Homeland Security measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an out-of-control, hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat unregulated and unmonitored. food http://www.westonaprice.org/.
One blogger
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/oda-swats-manna-storehouse-co-op/
familiar with the Ohio situation has reported that:
“Interestingly, I believe they [Manna Storehouse] said a month or so ago, an undercover ODA official came to their little store and claimed to have a sick father wanting to join the co-op. Both the owner and her daughter-in- law had a horrible feeling about the man, and decided not to allow him into the co-op and notified him by certified mail. He came back to the co-op demanding to be part of it. They refused and gave him names of other businesses and health food stores closer to his home. Not coincidentally, this man was there yesterday as part of the raid.”
The same blog
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/oda-swats-manna-storehouse-co-op/
also noted that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been chastised by the courts in several previous instances for its aggression, including trying to entrap an Amish man in a raw milk “sale,”
http://familycow.proboards32.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=12013
which backfired when it became known that the Amish believe in a literal interpretation of “give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matthew 5:42)
The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of non-institutional beef in an Oberlin College food service freezer a year ago that was tracked down by a county sanitation official to Manna Storehouse. Oberlin College’s student food coop is widely known for its strident ideological stance about eating organic foods. It seems that the Oberlin student food cooperative had joined the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to buy organic foods in bulk from the national organic food distributor United http://www.unitedbu yingclubs. com/
, which services buying clubs across the nation. The sanitation official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture. After the first contact by state ODA officials, Manna Storehouse reportedly wrote them a letter requesting assistance and guidelines for complying with the law. This letter was never answered. Rather, the ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the coop, as described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team showed up!
Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an active part of the American landscape for over a generation. In the 1970s, with the rise of the organic food industry (a direct outgrowth of the hippie back-to-nature movement) food coops started up all over the country. These were groups of people who freely associated for the purpose of combining their buying power so that they could order organic food items in bulk and case lots. Anyone who was part of these coops in the early era will remember the messy breakdown of 35 pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!
These buying clubs have persisted and flourished over the years due to their ability to purchase high quality organic foods at reduced prices in bulk quantities. Most cooperatives have participated greatly in the local agrarian economies, supporting neighborhood organic farmers with purchases of produce, eggs, chickens, etc. The groups also purchase food from a number of different local, regional and national distributors, many of them family-based businesses who truck the food themselves. Some of these food cooperatives have become large enough to set up mini-storefront operations where members can drop in and purchase items leftover from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had established itself in such a manner, using a small enclosed breezeway attached to their home. It was a folksy place with old wooden floors where coop members stopped by to chat and snack on bags of organic corn chips.
The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish population in the country. Many of the Amish live on acreages where they raise their own food, not unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the extras to neighbors and church members. There is a sense of foreboding that this state crackdown on a longstanding, reputable food cooperative operation could adversely impact the peaceful agrarian way of life not only for the Amish, but homeschoolers and those families living off the land on rural acreages. It raises the disturbing possibility that it could become a crime to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the road, or butcher your own chickens for family and friends – bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater America.
The freedom to purchase food directly form the source is increasingly under attack. For those who have food allergies and chemical intolerances, or who are on special medical diets, this is becoming a serious health issue. Will Americans retain the right to purchase food that is uncontaminated by pesticides, herbicides, allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, radiation, etc.? The melamine scare from China underscores the increasingly inferior and suspect quality of modern processed institutional foods. One blog, commenting on the bizarre and troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed that:
“No one is saying exactly why. At the same time the FDA says it it safe to eat the 40% of tainted beef found in Costco's and Sam's all over the nation. These farm raids are very common now. Every farmer needs to fully eqiped [sic] for the possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer To Consumer Legal Defense Fund
http://www.ftcldf. org/
was created just for this purpose. The USDA just released their plans to put a law into action that will put all small farmers out of business. Animals for the sale of meat or milk will only be allowed in commercial farms, even the organic ones.” December 3, 2008 7:09 PM file://localhost/ comment.g
John Loeffler
Western Bureau Chief
Steel on Steel Radio Program
IRN/USA Radio News
P.O. Box 3358
Hayden Id 83835-3358
Tel: 208-765-8337
Fax: 208-765-2033
Email: john@steelonsteel.com
Web: www.steelonsteel. com
Distributed by: www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com
Well, when whole segments of our Republican base see if fine for LE agents to discharge their weapons and lie about, not file proper-required-full-AARs (because the perp wasn't a legal citizen ...after-the-fact) likely not too much longer (think Ramos and Compean)
This case above, appears to be on the surface, another great leap of our out of control LE agencies / Gov't on all levels.
Though rationally I understand its been a long process, but for the first time I viscerally see America descending from the exceptional place I was brought up believing it was into cold socialism.
What’s the point of this? They were selling food without a license? Or they were storing food which would make them self-reliant and not dependent on government handouts. Or both?
These “pure foods” laws are some of the oldest laws from the “Progressive Era” and have only become more and more entrenched legal tradition. It's going to be very difficult to fight back against the juggernaut of precedent originally established to “save us from impure foods.”
A poster on the anothread said that there are still laws on the books (executive orders) against “hoarding.” We have no idea what can be used against us. The mind boggles at what this country has become.
It raises the disturbing possibility that it could become a crime to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the road, or butcher your own chickens for family and friends – bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater America.
ESPEICALLY BECAUSE this is a last vestage against becoming a socialist slave (feudal) state!
W is still the Prez , in case you haven’t noticed. It would be nice to blame B.O. for this , but a bit of honesty is due here .
B.O. has nothing to do with this , as he hasn’t even been sworn in yet .....
SWAT Twam conducts food raid in rural Ohio
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2144492/posts
Local food cooperative searched by state
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2144300/posts
While Navy Seabee Is Fighting in Iraq, His Family Under Attack by Food Regulators in U.S.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2143838/posts
B.O. has nothing to do with this , as he hasn’t even been sworn in yet .....
You might ask Joe the Plumber that same question.
Your attempt at moral equivalence between this story and the Ramos and Campeon situation is ridiculous. You need to think more.
Seen this one?
I did not know those laws existed.
Is you screen name a reference to the Rush song The Working Man?
No, I’ve used this handle since IRC days. I work for a living and therefore I am The Working Man.
Kinda corny in a way but I’ve used it since the 80’s.
Apples and Oranges . Joe the Plumber became a focal point of the election. These other folks were not and are not on B.O.’s radar . This is bureaucracy run amok plain and simple . Like it or not , it’s happening under W’s watch .
I’m a bit skeptical of this story. I’m familiar with LaGrange PD, they are a samll dept. and they don’t have a SWAT team, they’d have to use the County team.
Also, I searched the local newspaper and couldn’t find anything on this story.
Anybody got any more info or links?
http://www.break.com/index/sheriff-allows-illegal-trespass2b.html
This is an even worse abuse of government officials of a private citizen...
Get ready for a police state unless we stand up to the bastards...
This is an awesome video
besides the liberals, don't believe in facts, truth &/ honesty.. 
Yup.......
Too many of these weird threads to keep up with today.
I still can’t get this out of my head, and I read it here an article from the Jerusalem times, Jo biden addressing top political democratic donors said Obama will be faced with a “generated crisis” and will need the support of community leaders to “control the population” because thier will be unpopular decisions that will have to be made. We have all read articles on abolishing guns, water shortages, free speech issues and now foodhording and possible shortages. Is this for real????? Hope for the best but we better be ready for the worst I dread.
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