Free Republic

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators 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...

MIAMI -- Jury selection began Monday in the case of two parents accused of manslaughter and neglect in the death of their 6-month-old daughter, who prosecutors say starved after being fed only wheat grass, coconut water and milk made from almonds. Defense lawyers for 36-year-old Joseph Andressohn and Lamoy Andressohn, 30, of Homestead contend that complications from a rare genetic disorder caused the death of their daughter Woyah in May 2003. The Andressohns maintain a strict raw food diet, which adherents believe is healthier and more natural. "She did not die from malnutrition," said Ellis Rubin, attorney for the Andressohns....

Some raw nuts are pulled off market, but growers still foresee high demand. Retailers and almond growers don't expect the public's appetite for the little brown nuts to be spoiled by reports that consumption of some raw almonds has been linked to 29 cases of salmonella poisoning. Almonds rank as the state's leading agricultural export. The state's growers produce virtually all the almonds consumed in the United States and roughly 80 percent of the world's demand. Last year, that amounted to 1.1 billion pounds. The salmonella poisoning has been linked to just a tiny sliver of that crop, 13 million...