Posted on 12/10/2008 6:33:57 AM PST by Dutchgirl
A crack SWAT team of sherrif's deputies, health inspectors, and Ohio Department of Agriculture officials busted into the Manna Storehouse food co-op in LaGrange, Ohio, in a raid last week. The co-op is also the home of the Stowers family, so Katie Stowers, her children, and her in-laws were held at gunpoint while the agents took tens of thousands of dollars worth of meat, plus computers and cell phone. Chad Stowers, Katie's husband, wasn't home because he is a U.S. Navy Seabee currently in Iraq.
Their crime? The warrant listed the reason for the raid as "beef."
Manna may, perhaps, have needed a license to run a retail food establishment. Mostly a coop, they did sell some leftover products in a small store on the property. The exact nature of the business is in dispute, which is why the Stowers' wrote letters to various agencies asking for advice on how to proceed. Obviously, the best way to reply to that request was with a SWAT team.
The folks over at Peace Chicken (yes, that's a real site, compete with chicken death doomsday clock) are seriously peeved. They offer, from the Lorain county sherrif's page, a list of the legit justifications for a SWAT raid:
* Hostage Situations: the holding of any person(s) against their will by an armed or potentially armed suspect. * Barricade Situation: the stand-off created by an armed or potentially armed suspect in any location, whether fortified or not, who is refusing to comply with law enforcement demands for surrender. * Sniper Situations: the firing upon citizens and/or law enforcement officers by an armed suspect, whether stationary or mobile. * High-Risk Apprehension: the arrest or apprehension of armed or potentially armed suspects where the likelihood of armed resistance is high. * High-Risk Warrant Service: the service of search or arrest warrants where the warrant service matrix or policy recommends or requires the use of SWAT. * Personal Protection: the security of special persons, such as VIP’s, witnesses, or suspects, based on threat or potential threat to the well being of those persons. * Special Assignments: any assignment, approved by the SWAT Operations Commander, based on a high level of threat and/or need.
Not on the list:
* Licensing Confusion: when a farm might be a retail establishment, or it might not, based on high level of threat from pitchforks and/or women and children.
Yes, but when regular depuites “dress up” in military garb they sure LOOK like a SWAT team to the average citizen.
Don’t worry, though, I and many others here stand ready to jump to YOUR defense too when/if you ever violate some un-just, un-needed, over-reaching law and find YOURSELF on the wrong end of some “Barney Fife’s” cowboy-tactics.
A “permit” to sell eggs off a farm? Who ever heard of such nonsense?
Lorain County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio arrived last Monday at the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in LaGrange with weapons drawn and trained on Katie Stowers and her children, along with her in-laws, there was one member of the family missing.
It doesn't need to be a Swat team. Drawn guns for non-government approved food is a little over the top.
They don’t have the “right”, but they THINK they have they have the POWER!
They aren’t even claiming to be looking for anything but “illegal food”. Talk about “over the top” abuse and control.......
Read the Plain Dealer story. A completely different account.
Which is not to say that the coop owners/employees weren’t scared, intimidated, and felt “abused”. That’s to be expected.
But from what I read it appears that they were told to get an operating license and refused over the course of one entire year.
I’ve never, ever heard of any kind of food outlet (resto, store, whatever) being exempt from local health, cleanliness, and business codes - including licensing - and most of us wouldn’t want that.
Case closed.
Speak for yourself, Sheep.
The case isn’t closed as a co-op doesn’t need to be licensed. Police don’t come into a home, guns drawn, over non-government approved food. Totally ridiculous.
>>>>>And there are other links on FR.<<<<<<
I looked, and it’s more of the same emotional, quasi-hysterical “reporting” that is being scooped from internet blogs and “chat rooms”.
Sorry, it’s only sharpening my opinion that a lot of folks are being conned and taken for fools.... by the alleged victims and their champions.
>>>>>>Btw, why has the government the right to approve our food?<<<<<<
Well, back in 1910 to 1920 it was discovered that meatpacking houses and meat processors were selling rotten, disgusting, contaminated and infected meat products to the American public, and from that experience whoever it was that was U.S. President at the time decided to send food inspectors to Chicago. What they found was shocking and presaged the FDA and other food inspection bodies and regimes.
So now we can eat bologna, hot dogs, Spam, and Jimmy Dean sausage and not worry that we’re eating ground rat products.
Presumably these laws will also allow us to eat inspected and disease/contaminant-free organic lamb and beef products from the Manna coop, if they will submit to the same inspections as *every other food outlet in America*.
But I’d still avoid anything from Tyson.
>>>>>First, the co-op sold legal products.<<<<<
Selling uninspected meat products from an unlicensed facility is not “legal”.
I don't know. I'm not sure I disagree either, but I'm really not accustomed to thinking something would work better if only government had a little more control over it.
>>>>>>A “permit” to sell eggs off a farm? Who ever heard of such nonsense?<<<<<<<<
Well, just for starters the 99.99 percent of American farm stores that have a permit have heard of such nonsense.
It’s a license, a permit, not a doctoral degree combined with a stint in Marine boot camp and then a $10 million bond.
You fill out the application, write a check, and send it to the county licensing board.
Simple. Easy. What is the problem.
>>>>>Drawn guns for non-government approved food is a little over the top. <<<<<<
Sorry, the tenor of all these stories is generally hysterical and wayyyyyyyy over the top, making any single alleged fact as suspect as the many other laughable assertions.
I don’t doubt that they were scared and upset, after all they’d been ignoring county regulations for a full year.
Why did they insist they were exempt? Just fill out the application and pay the license fee.
>>>>>Speak for yourself, Sheep. <<<<<
America has had food regulations in place for 100 years.
No Sheep about it yoyo.
That explains a lot.
About YOU... and, of course, about WHY our over-bearing government wants to interfere in ALL aspects of our lives.
I, for one, favor a Free Republic. Do you even know what that means?
Well, if it’s been “in place for 100 years” then it HAS to be the right thing to do.
Gosh, I don’t know WHY I didn’t see that clear logic myself.
I suspect this co-op is radically anti-processed food. For example, there are people who say that, if the cattle are raised under the right conditions and the milk is processed in a sanitary facility, the unpasteurized product is safe and is in fact better for you than the pasteurized variety. I do not believe this, as there were many instances of people being sickened by unpasteurized milk in the 19th Century. I would not drink the stuff in any case. However, if people join the co-op and want to drink it, that is their business and not yours, mine, or that of the government.
Otherwise, you're in big trouble for defunding the left!
So now we can eat bologna, hot dogs, Spam, and Jimmy Dean sausage and not worry that we’re eating ground rat products.
You're talking grocery store food. Do you know what a co-op is? Since when does the government have the right to tell us that we can't buy direct from farmers? Our food has to be from a licensed grocer?
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