Free Republic

SILVER SPRING, Maryland, November 2, 2011 – They escaped arrest. The “raw milk freedom riders� who illegally transported raw milk from a farm in Pennsylvania to FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland and then drank it and distributed it to a crowd rallied in support of their efforts got away with their crime.As reported yesterday in this column, this group of raw milk activists planned the ride and rally to protest government restrictions on the sale of raw milk and the spending of taxpayer money to raid and bankrupt small family farms.The rally began at noon as the swelling crowd...

Those raw milk proponents advocating "teach, teach, teach" may want to enroll Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in their first class--in the kindergarten section. In response to a request from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the judge issued a clarification of his decision last week regarding his assessment of the constitutionality of food rights. The judge expanded on his original statement that such constitutional issues are "wholly without merit." He explained that the FTCLDF arguments were "extremely underdeveloped." As an example, he said the plaintiffs' use of the Roe v Wade abortion rights case as a precedent does "not explain...

Raw food enthusiasts fit right in here, in the earthy, health-conscious beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica, along with the farmers’ markets, health food stores and vegan restaurants. But this week, the police cleared the shelves of Rawesome, an establishment in Venice Beach, loading $70,000 of raw, organic produce and dairy products on the back of a flatbed truck. And then, on Thursday, James Stewart, the proprietor, was arraigned on charges of illegally making, improperly labeling and illegally selling raw milk products, as well as other charges related to Rawesome’s operations. Two farmers who work with Rawesome were also...

Multiple sources have confirmed the fact that all three individuals arrested – James Stewart, Victoria Bloch and Sharon Palmer – are being charged with ‘conspiracy’ related to the sell of unpasteurized raw milk products. This reportedly includes sections of the California Penal Code Section 182a. Additional charges may also be pending, including a charge of ‘mislabeling cheese’ for Sharon Palmer, was arrested during a raid of Healthy Family Farms. As video of the raid on Rawesome Foods (also raided in 2010) demonstrates, Feds not only seized cash and raw milk supplies (much of which was also dumped out) but also...

The owner of a Venice health food market and two other people were arrested on charges related to the allegedly unlawful production and sale of unpasteurized dairy products, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. The arrests of James Cecil Stewart, Sharon Ann Palmer and Eugenie Bloch on Wednesday marked the latest effort in a government crackdown on the sale of so-called raw dairy products.

Milk might do a body good, but if it’s unpasteurized milk sold by an Amish farmer across state lines, it’s a whole other story… or at least according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Washington Times reports: A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.The product in question: unpasteurized milk.It’s a battle that’s been going on...

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area. The product in question: unpasteurized milk. It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such...

Our government at work. A year-long sting operation came to an end this week. In that time, the government used fake names and surprise inspections all to nab the people at Rainbow Acres Farm in the D.C. area. The reason: they were selling milk. Unpasteurized milk, to be exact. Asked for comment, the government released this statement: “It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed.” Therefore, the Amish farmers at Rainbow Acres had to be brought down. Asked for comment, one Washington resident stated, “I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the...

Most people have heard of the "Got Milk?" and milk mustache advertising campaigns that are designed to promote the sale and consumption of milk and milk products in the United States.  The advertising and promotion of dairy products is overseen by the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board (National Dairy Board - NDB), an organization that is a part of the Agricultural Marketing Services (AMS); AMS is a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and administers programs that help market U.S. agricultural products.  According to AMS's website, "The Dairy Production Stabilization Act of 1983" (Dairy Act) authorized...

Investigators recently entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. "I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us...

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...

Feds tell court they can decide what you eat 'Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish' Attorneys for the federal government have argued in a lawsuit pending in federal court in Iowa that individuals have no "fundamental right" to obtain what food they choose. The brief was filed April 26 in support of a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ban on the interstate sale of raw milk....

Kinzers, PA-At 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday April 20, Amish farmer Dan Allgyer went outside to begin milking his small herd of dairy cows. On the normally quiet Kinzer Road in front of his farm, just a few miles from the Nickel Mines Amish massacre of 2006, several unfamiliar vehicles drove slowly past. Two months prior, on February 4, FDA agents had trespassed on Allgyer's farm, claiming to be conducting an "investigation." Allgyer had suspected they would be back at some point, because many other small dairy farms around the country have been similarly treated by the FDA. Following is Dan's...

Eau Claire (WQOW) - From the cow, to the processor, the store and then your refrigerator, milk makes a number of stops before you can pour a glass. But some wonder how necessary those steps are. Selling unpasteurized milk in Wisconsin has been illegal since 1957. A bill being worked on in the Madison could change that. The bill, as it currently stands, would allow farmers who meet certain requirements to sell raw milk on their farms. Raw milk drinkers say unpasteurized milk tastes better and is healthier. "A lot of them that come here and have been drinking the...

We all know the story of the shepherd boy who found entertainment in telling villagers his flock of sheep was being attacked by a wolf. The first time the boy sought help, the villagers came running, only to find the boy was joking. The same thing happened a second time. Then, when a wolf finally did attack, the villagers ignored the shepherd, and he lost his entire flock to the wolf. Is a modern-day version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” unfolding in New York? You decide.

The movement to convince President-elect Barack Obama to name a reformer as secretary of agriculture (or a re-named “secretary of food”) just got some clout, with a New York Times columnist now pushing it. It could be he will—-he seems very much the pragmatist. At the same time, though, many raw milk consumers and producers alike have been wondering how the President-elect feels about raw milk, one of the more contentious food/agriculture issues around. And in this arena, I’m afraid I have bad news.

The undercover agent takes two guises in our national consciousness. At one extreme is the highly trained professional who risks his or her life to go after the worst drug dealers and mobsters. At the other extreme is the apolitical and poorly trained apparatchik, designated by a bureaucratic superior to infiltrate a group deemed subversive or otherwise troublesome to authorities. The infiltrator may even become a provocateur as a way to give the authorities an excuse to crack down. Government agents did a lot of this during the 1960s, while monitoring civil rights and far-left organizations. At this end of...

The big surprise today wasn't that Mark Nolt was found guilty on four citations of selling raw milk without a permit, and fined $1,051 on each citation. That was nearly a foregone conclusion, since Mark refused to engage a lawyer. No, the big surprise was the seriousness with which the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture took the case against Mark, and the resulting show of force it put together.

Feta Cheese Made From Raw Milk Has Natural Anti-food-poisoning Properties ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2008) — Eating Feta cheese made from raw milk in small seaside tavernas when you are on holiday in Greece could be a good way to combat food poisoning, according to researchers speaking April 3, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting being held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. "We were able to isolate lactic acid bacteria found in raw sheep milk from small farms in Macedonia, northern Greece. Several of these friendly bacteria naturally produce antibiotics that killed off dangerous food-poisoning bacteria like...

Mark McAfee had just a few hours to celebrate yesterday’s issuance of a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of AB 1735--what he called “a big win for California raw milk and producers”—before he learned about the next phase of the government’s campaign against Organic Pastures Dairy Co.

Like a fighter down for the count who gets back on his feet at the last moment, and then stuns spectators by knocking the opponent back on his heels, the team of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. and Claravale Farm scored a big win in a California courtroom today. Superior Court Judge Harry J. Tobias rejected the state’s heavy hitters from office of the Attorney General and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and granted OPDC and Claravale a temporary restraining order prohibiting enforcement of AB 1735 and its ten-coliform-per-milliliter standard that had threatened to shut the dairies down.

The California raw milk situation is on the verge of becoming as dire as the state’s two producers predicted it would since they learned about AB1735 at the end of last year. Now the stage is set—Monday afternoon in California’s San Benito County Superior Court in Hollister—for a judge to hear a request from Organic Pastures Dairy Co. and Claravale Farms to issue a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of AB1735 and its coliform standard.

The one bit of encouraging news for small dairies has been the growing market among health-conscious consumers for unpasteurized milk and dairy products like yogurt, butter and cream... Small dairies have rushed to meet this need via a completely new business model. Instead of selling milk in bulk to processors who offer take-it-or-leave-it prices of $1.50 to $2 a gallon, some small dairies sell directly to consumers at whatever price the market will bear, typically from $5 a gallon to as much as $10 a gallon. At those prices, dairy farmers actually begin thinking in terms of a long-forgotten word:...

The "safety" argument can be extended so that pretty much anything is justified. The New York Department of Agriculture and Markets has in the last few weeks helped demonstrate the problem more vividly than any of us ever could imagine, though. While the agency has been preparing its legal arguments over the last few weeks in preparation for trying to throw Barb and Steve Smith into jail for insisting on proper search warrant protection, Ag and Markets has quietly been playing another game with two other New York raw milk farmers, Jerry Snyder and Chuck Phippen—depriving them of their right...

The search warrant used by NY's Department of Agriculture and Markets to go after raw-milk producers Barb and Steve Smith in December had more holes than Swiss cheese. Gary Cox of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund has put together a motion that might best be termed “Search Warrants 101.” He argues that the December search warrant the Smiths supposedly defied in December “is facially defective…and must be quashed.”

New York state continues to tighten the screws on Barb and Steve Smith, the operators of Meadowsweet Dairy in Lodi. Over what? Over their decision to establish a herd share organized as a limited liability company, and make raw milk dairy products available exclusively to the LLC’s 120-plus shareholders. The immediate issue concerns a search warrant issued to the NY Department of Agriculture and Markets in December...Now Ag and Markets has returned to the state judge who issued the warrant, and obtained a “show cause” order as to why the Smiths shouldn’t be held in contempt of court...

No one can accuse the fine public servants of California’s Department of Food and Agriculture of sitting on their hands, and letting raw milk coliforms threaten the health and safety of California consumers. No, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. The junior he-men, working on behalf of the senior he-man-terminator, are out there…fighting the common enemy, raw milk coliforms.

When Georgia’s Department of Agriculture held its hearing a couple weeks ago on a proposal to require that all raw milk be dyed charcoal, raw-goat-milk producer Bob Hayles was the first to stand up and speak out against the regulation. Dozens of others followed him, and the agriculture agency decided shortly after the session not to implement the regulation. While many farmers and consumers feel they scored a major victory, Bob doesn’t agree. “Everyone thinks we won something important. But all we won was a battle, and it was a small battle.” The event convinced him that a much more...

It’s not been an easy year for Ronald Garthwaite, the owner of Claravale Farm, California’s “other” producer of raw milk, with about 50 cows and five per cent of the market after Organic Pastures. Last June, he had to sell his Santa Cruz County farm because he was unable to get local officials to approve the permits he needed to continue in operation. He moved to San Benito County and quickly obtained all the permits and seemed to finally have found a new and welcoming home, with his partner, Collette Cassidy. As part of the move, he built a new...

You have to assume that California authorities did advance planning about their decision to go after the largest seller of raw milk, in the largest consuming state, with the most liberal distribution rules. In warfare, it might be said they decided to “cut off the head” of the enemy. But Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures definitely won’t go quietly.

Californians’ easy access to raw milk—it’s available in 350 health food stores and 40 Whole Foods grocery stores around the state—has been placed in serious jeopardy by a few words about a bacteria standard included in Assembly Bill 1735, a piece of agriculture legislation signed into law a couple weeks ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneger, and due to take effect January 1. Also in jeopardy is the mini-empire built up by Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., the dairy that supplies about 95% of the state’s unpasteurized milk, consumed by more than 100,000 Californians each week. Mark has...

For nearly ten years, Barbara Smith held a New York state permit to sell raw milk. But because her Meadowsweet Farm is located a half hour drive from the nearest substantial town, Ithaca, and New York regulations require each customer to come to the farm for milk, she never could get more than 20 or 30 customers. So last spring, she decided that a better way to reach the many consumers she knew wanted regular access to raw milk was to give up her raw milk permit, and distribute via a cowshare arrangement. Consumers could buy in for $50 a...

The latest battle in the raw milk wars broke out today in south-central Pennsylvania. A group of ten state police and agents from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) descended on the 100-acre Nature’s Sunlight Farm in Newville, and confiscated about $25,000 worth of raw milk products, along with packaging and equipment. Though Pennsylvania is supposedly one of the more liberal states with regard to raw milk distribution, allowing farmers with permits to sell it not only from their farms and in farmers markets, but also in retail establishments, farmers say the...

New York agriculture authorities have come down hard on yet another local dairy farmer for supposedly selling milk with a pathogen. But this farmer claims it's part of a state-sponsored fear campaign, and vows to fight the state by refusing to pay the expected $300 fine.

Traditionally in this country, the states resist intrusion of Washington’s authority into their locally-oriented turf, which has long been part of the beauty of our federal system (though at times a problem, particularly in the area of civil rights). But we may now be seeing widespread coordination to stamp out the scourge of raw milk. Ohio agriculture officials previewed the trend for me last November when the head of the state’s dairy division declared, "When I go to (national) meetings of my cohorts, (raw milk) is the No. 1 issue that comes up.” The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...

The parents of a young boy hospitalized by illness they think was caused by raw milk experience provide a diary-like account of their experience with the healthcare system. This is Part 1 of a two-part item.

The story of how Gelhaus and her family came to spend this holiday working and frolicking on a farm isn't about charity, but rather about how a seemingly straightforward business investment turned into a legal crisis—and then evolved into something much bigger, something involving community and caring. Because the legal part wasn't resolved until earlier this month, Gelhaus and others involved in the story didn't want to talk about it until now.

The Raw Milk Wars Heat Up in Ohio The state is aggressively pursuing farmers who make unpasteurized milk available to consumers. Will a Democratic governor declare a cease-fire? Going Underground So intense is ODA's campaign against raw milk, the agency earlier this year even sent a written warning to Organic Pastures Dairy, the Fresno, Calif., dairy that tangled with California agriculture officials?against selling raw milk via mail order to Ohio residents. ODA's spokesperson readily acknowledges that it has no jurisdiction in California. Mark McAfee, president of Organic Pastures, replied to the agency that the FDA doesn't prohibit interstate sales of...

Raw Milk and Spinach: The Double Standard California agriculture and public health officials took completely different approaches to concerns about health problems at a California raw milk dairy and farms producing contaminated spinach.

Press Conference: Organic Pastures Dairy Company - Fresno, California, Friday, September 29 at 2 pm ALERT: RAW MILK NEEDS YOU NOW Our access to raw milk is at stake! Please join fellow raw milk drinkers for a press conference at Organic Pastures Dairy in Fresno, California, Friday, September 29 at 2 pm. On Sept 21st Organic Pastures Dairy (OPDC) received notice from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) of a "possible" link to bacterial contamination of OP milk and milk products. As of 9/22 all pathogen tests by state investigators, outside labs and OPDC have proven negative for...