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)
My po-russki is a bit rusty these days.
I guess you didn't grow up on a farm in the 30's in rural Colorado. Brucellosis was common enough but kids got sick a lot back then. Much of the time they didn't know what bug was responsible for their illness but they know now that many of those infections came from consuming raw milk. Lots of people died from E. coli and salmonella. They also died from listeria. Do you have any idea how many people died from foodborne illnesses back then? Entire families would become sick from drinking the same raw milk.
Fortunately today, we have excellent microscopes and an entire community of doctors and scientists that say you are full of it. Killing germs is important because it keeps people from getting sick and it saves lives. I defy you to prove that these diseases you name can be attributed to pasteurized milk. Come up with a source that isn't a crackpot. You haven't offered one shred of evidence for your nonsense. You're the only one serving up lies on this forum and you need to be called on it.
“...Heck, paying for the stuff was usually on the honor system....”
I buy free range eggs and fruit/veg (depending on season) from a family farm out past the the suburbs. The family often isn’t in the house, so they leave their produce on the porch - you take what you want and put the money in a box on the porch also.
I love the products and love the trust they show in their fellow men.
Well the creek I swam in had dead animals in it and garbage dumped in upstream as do many rural ones. The lakes had and still have raw sewage from house boats etc dumped in. IOW Full of bacteria. You did this and worry about milk? If raw milk is handled right it’s as safe as any. Most bacterial problems come from sanitation issues. Most dairy farmers I knew took many extra precautions like washing out {with detergent} milking equipment and washing the cows utters etc before milking.
Save the dramatic buildup!
It doesn’t make your obvious lie true.
If raw milk were in any way dangerous, most of us just wouldn’t be here; it would have killed off the human race a long time ago, rather than nourishing and strengthening as it clearly has.
Yeah, it's great. Unfortunately, kids have to deal with the consequences of the degree of danger their parents are comfortable with. You gotta have a license to go fishing but any fool can have kids.
You swam in water knowing it had dead animals and raw sewage in it? I don't think my folks would have been enthusiastic about that. Of course, I'm sure we didn't intentionally drink the water in the creek.
If raw milk is handled right it’s as safe as any.
You believe what you want to believe but that just isn't true. Unless you check every batch of raw milk for pathogens it isn't as safe as pasteurized milk.
Most bacterial problems come from sanitation issues.
And many of them come from inside the cow that you have little control over.
Most dairy farmers I knew took many extra precautions like washing out {with detergent} milking equipment and washing the cows utters etc before milking.
Even so, people still get sick from raw milk and raw milk products. You cannot fully sterilize the udders. Taking proper precautions has significantly reduced the number of illnesses due to raw milk consumption. Still, why would anyone take the risk when the pasteurized product is just as nutritious without the risk?
MrEdd mentioned medicine.
I’m adding that.
And don’t forget about a year’s worth of toiletries and other supplies until you can ramp up on making your own.
See Carla Emery’s “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=6-9781570615535-0
Also “Where There Is No Doctor” http://www.amazon.com/Where-There-No-Doctor-Handbook/dp/0942364155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279166490&sr=8-1
Yeah, regular check ups probably contributed to the safety of the product. The vet must have been a regular visitor. Sounds expensive. Even so, unless you're testing every batch of milk for pathogens you're still exposing yourself to unnecessary risks when the pasteurized product would eliminate those risks. IMHO of course.
ping
ping
You're not a very intelligent person, are you? Maybe you should read more instead of spewing your bile here.
it would have killed off the human race a long time ago, rather than nourishing and strengthening as it clearly has.
Given your idiocy, you'd think influenza, small pox, TB, malaria and a whole host of other virulent diseases would have killed off the human race a long time ago too. But they didn't. Please come back when you get one iota of evidence to support any of the foolishness you've offered here today.
How do you think the human race survived for all these thousands of years without pasteurization? Pasteurized products are a recent phenomena.
Just a word to the wise.... if you come on FR as a noob and start talking like you're promoting big government control of everything, or that you're believing their propaganda, you're not going to last long around here.
Unpasteurized products, milk and eggs or not, are NOT the health issue that the government would like you to believe. There are too many other factors that play into whether the E. coli or salmonella are going to cause you problems than just whether or not it's been pasteurized.
Besides, pasteurization hasn't put a stop to those kinds of outbreaks anyway. They still happen.
We don't need government control watching out for us. all for our own good, of course, cause they know better what's good for us than us ignurint, unwashed masses could possibly know.
And yet 55 million murdered babies by abortion are protected by a flawed evil Scotus ruling and portrayed as a woman's choice. Evil is called good and good is called evil. I can't wait for gubmint bureaucrats & politicians, especially socialist demoRATs to roast & be tormented for eternity in Hell and Lake of Fire!
Yep, you just stated what i was going to write to you. the many folks that have said in this post that they were raised on raw milk, including myself....healthy. We also had goats milk, that wasn’t easy for me to drink unless really cold. it was the smell that got to me.
bttt
It’s still that way.
I’d bet that the decrease in TB has less to do with pasteurization of milk than it does of careful watching of the herd and better hygiene standards.
Pasteurization it meaningless. It does not remain sterile and even if it did, it does not stay sterile. It can have bacteria counts as high as any unpasteurized milk.
Someone can technically pasteurize milk properly, have it meet the criteria for being safe at that moment, and who knows what happens to it from then on. There are no guarantees.
What the hell?
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