Invaders and drug traffickers shoot back.
Americans don't.
Yet.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 07/14/2010 12:49:09 PM PDT by Lorianne
When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn't know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat's milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)
But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn't the least bit tongue-tied. "She started back-talking to them," recalls Palmer. "She said, 'If you take my computer again, I can't do my homework.' This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven't gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids."
As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents -- from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture -- took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.
The same day Sharon Palmer's farm was raided, there was a raid on Rawesome Foods, a Venice, Calif., private food club run by nutritionist and raw-food advocate Aajonus Vonderplanitz. For a membership fee of $25, consumers can purchase unpasteurized dairy products, eggs that are not only organic but unwashed, and a wide assortment of fermented vegetables and other products.
The main difference in the two raids seems to be that Palmer's raiding party was actually much smaller, about half the size of the Venice contingent: Vonderplanitz was also visited by the FBI and the FDA.
In the Rawesome raid, agents made off with several thousand dollars worth of raw honey and raw dairy products. They also shut Rawesome for failure to have a public health permit, though the size and scope of the raid suggests the government officials might have more in mind. Regardless, within hours the outlet reopened in defiance of the shutdown order.
Earlier in June, agents of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, escorted by police and also bearing search warrants, raided and shut down Traditional Foods Warehouse, a popular food club in Minneapolis specializing in locally-produced foods. They also raided two farms suspected of illegally selling raw milk. And in a national first among such raids, agents searched a private home and made off with computers; the family's offense appears to have been that it allowed one of the raw dairy farmers to park in its driveway to distribute raw milk to area residents who had ordered it.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has declined comment on such raids, saying they are part of an ongoing investigation into raw milk distribution in the state in lieu of eight illnesses in May linked to raw milk.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection has launched three raids over the last three months on the dairy farm and farm store of Vernon Hershberger, near Madison. The day after DATCP agents placed seals on his fridges storing raw dairy products in July, Hershberger cut the seals, and announced he was going to challenge the agency's contention he needs a dairy and retail license to sell his products. Obtaining such licenses would be problematic, though, since Wisconsin prohibits sale of raw milk, except "incidental" sales, and defining "incidental" has been a bone of contention for many years. In any event, Hershberger contends he sells only to consumers who contract privately for his food.
What's behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years -- food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public.
In late 2008 and early 2009, the representatives of state agriculture agencies in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois met via phone conferences with representatives of the FDA to map a plan for targeting raw-milk buying clubs in the Midwest. The meetings came to light after Max Kane, the owner of a Wisconsin buying club who was subpoenaed by Wisconsin authorities for the names of his customers and suppliers, obtained email accounts of the sessions via a Freedom of Information request to Wisconsin's Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection department. (Kane has since been prosecuted by Wisconsin authorities for contempt of court for failing to give up the names; his case is under appeal after he was found guilty last December.)
Now, the Midwest program seems to have gone national, and the recent spate of raids suggests a quickening pace and broadened scope. While most raids before the Midwest government meetings had been related to raw-milk distribution, some, like a December 2008 armed raid of Manna Storehouse, an Ohio food club near Cleveland, have been about licensing issues. In that raid, armed law enforcement officers held a mother and eight young children being home-schooled at gunpoint for several hours while they searched the home and food storage areas. A legal challenge to the raid by the family is still tied up in court.
The current uptick has Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund concerned, not only about the spreading of the raids, but about the seemingly easy willingness of judges to hand out search warrants. While the U.S. Constitution's fourth amendment suggests judges should exercise tight controls over search warrants ("no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..."), Kennedy observes, "I haven't seen an agency turned down yet" over the last four years in requests for search warrants connected with raw milk and other food production and distribution.
Given that the targets of search warrants don't get a say in court as to whether they should be issued, legal experts and those who have been raided say the most that food producers can do is take steps to prepare themselves to weather the raids as best they can.
Here are five suggestions they offer:
(excerpted)
you know how the redneck died drinking milk? the cow kicked him.
“It may be better tasting than pasteurized milk but it is in no way better for you.”
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If that’s not the most ignorant falsehood posted today, it’s damn close!
Only raw milk is fit for consumption. It contains all the elements necessary for digestion and disease prevention, while pasteurized milk is literally poison that slowly kills the consumer through the inflammation that it causes throughout the body.
Type II diabetes, colin cancer, and dementia are among its guaranteed results.
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“No problem, but one tubercular cow in a herd of a hundred used to infect thousands before pasteurization.”
That is another of the changes: it is ALL business and no personal care/interest anymore!
In order to make more money, many of these dairy farms started having more and more cows with less and less care for the cows, etc... It was ALL about the most amount of product which could be delivered to the market!
My uncle’s dairy had 475 cows. He had about 10 employees (not including me, my four siblings and his three kids). EVERY cow was checked about every three months. So every quarter they had all been inspected, treated and cared for. If any showed ANY signs of sickness, they were immediately moved out of production and either cared for or sold off.
Never had a single sickness that got into any of the milk. But, we cared for those cows better than we did for the dogs that helped herd them!
PAHLEEEZZZE, you know they would NEVER do a raid like this on the illegals and their food cart industry in South Central.
TB is back in vogue thanks to our importing third world carriers, both legal and illegal.
ICE no longer excludes visitors with diseases, particularly when they are politcally correct diseases such as AIDS.
But, on the bright side, we are highly successful at keeping people with more than 3 oz. of mouthwash off airlines!
“He is not a tinfoiler, either.”
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You get a pass this time, but “tinfoil” is a term mostly used by morons and useful idiots.
The food carters are under control.
Homeschooling Christian families who are growing their own food are not.
“all this over raw milk?”
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Raw milk puts doctors and governments out of business; they both require a sickly, weak population to survive.
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But, on the bright side, we are highly successful at keeping people with more than 3 oz. of mouthwash off airlines!”
Although they are now allowing G. I. Joe toy guns on again! I mean, someone can really get hurt! /s
As I said, my grandparents' cows were healthy. Healthy implies the lack of the bacteria you cited being present in these cattle.
> You get a pass this time, but “tinfoil” is a term mostly
> used by morons and useful idiots.
Uh, thanks, I think ...
Maybe I should have said, “level-headed and thoughtful,” instead.
Invaders and drug traffickers shoot back.
Americans don't.
Yet.
Specifically, what do you find in pasteurized milk -- that you don't find in raw milk -- that makes it poison? Which of these pathogens found in raw milk (but not found in pasteurized milk) makes you healthier?
“I’d substitute ‘medicine’ for ‘gold’ “
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The only “medicine” that actually makes you healthy is whole, raw foods. The others just make you sicker, and more dependent.
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You’re crazy.
You are a very sick individual, and 180 degrees out of sync with reality.
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I have a produce stand and last Saturday I had to leave for awhile and my helper was not here either. I put up a sign that said Take What You Need and Pay Me Later. Every person that took something has come back to pay me. I love the country!
Literally? LOL!
slowly kills the consumer
How slowly, 70 or 80 years?
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