Okay, let’s go through this one more time. The three people associated with Rawesome Food Club were arrested today “on criminal conspiracy charges stemming from the alleged illegal production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese and other products,” according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
There’s nothing that I’ve been able to find about fraud or misrepresentation in connection with selling chickens. There’s nothing about libel or defamation. If those charges do show up, then they’ll have to be dealt with.
James Stewart, manager of Rawesome Food Club, on the job in happier times. (Photo by Jennifer Sharpe)According to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, in the action today against Rawesome manager James Stewart, farmer Sharon Palmer, and Palmer associate Victoria Bloch Coulter, “The issue seems to be the club’s use of a herdshare or boarding agreement for its dairy goats.: It’s thus the latest in a string of enforcement actions against herdshare arrangements in California…except in the other cases, the herdshares were hit with non-judicial cease-and-desist orders, and in this case, those involved were arrested with bail recommended or set at between $60,000 and $123,000, according to the FTCLDF.
What I’m getting at here is that the stuff in the web site Milk Farmer linked to so far has nothing to do with this case. To get wrapped up in that stuff is to get distracted from what’s really happening here: an armada of local, state, and federal agencies, led by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, are coming after private food organizations with the intent of intimidating the members and depriving them of their food. The apparently significant amounts of food that were confiscated Wednesday belonged to the members. It’s food that can’t be replicated in any supermarket, including that of Whole Foods, which is just down the street from Rawesome.
I’ll add that I am familiar with a good deal of the circumstances surrounding the “Unhealthy” site put up by Aajonus Vonderplanitz. I have spoken with Sharon Palmer and Vonderplanitz about it, along with a number of others. And I’ll tell you, I don’t know what to make of it, which is why I haven’t written about it. It strikes me as a classic he-said-she-said situation.
What I think doesn’t matter a great deal. Much more important, the 2,000-plus members of Rawesome are familiar with the situation. Last fall, Vonderplanitz invited members to review the investigative report about Sharon Palmer that is posted on the site. From what I understand, Palmer sued Vonderplanitz for misrepresenting her on the site, and an agreement was reached out of court whereby Vonderplanitz would remove the site…which obviously hasn’t happened yet.
The larger point here is that the charges and counter-charges should generally be matters for the members to handle. People join food clubs in large measure to have some say and control over their food choices. If someone screws up in handling things, as may have happened at Rawesome, then it’s up to the members to either change the club’s approach–perhaps change suppliers–or quit the club and find another that seems better. The lesson is NOT, as Concerned Person says, to get the government involved to “protect” us poor little helpless people. We’ve had way more of their regulatory protection than we need, and look where it’s taken us–to the point where they are stealing our food. (Certainly, if there were crimes committed either involving food contamination or handling of finances, then law enforcement should investigate or become involved.) All the while, a corporation like Cargill makes dozens of people sick for months with bad ground turkey, and goes its merry way without even a recall.
Victoria Bloch Coulter selling eggs from Sharon Palmer’s farm at a Los Angeles area farmers market. (Photo by Jennifer Sharpe)From what I understand, not many members have dropped out of Rawesome, though I don’t have exact figures. The disagreements apparently drove James Stewart and Aajonus Vonderplanitz, the co-founders of Rawesome, to split up, and Vonderplanitz went off to help start a new club…which is just as it should be in a country that supposedly allow freedom of association. It should be noted that Vonderplanitz sent out an email early Thursday asking Rawesome members to appear at the arraignment and make a claim for their food. He is also organizing a rally before the arraignment, at 7:30 a.m.–all to be held at 210 West Temple, Division 30, in Los Angeles, the site of the arraigment, which is scheduled for 8:30 a.m.
The law enforcement and regulator types likely aren’t caught up in the background I just related, however. They are mainly focused on depriving us of our food choices, and thus of our food rights.
The good news out of all this is that the matter of herdshares and private food associations might well come before a California judge. It doesn’t help to let unfortunate infighting within Rawesome distract us from the issues at hand, and those are very serious. The best thing food rights supporters can do is show up tomorrow at the arraigment of Stewart, Palmer, and Coulter, and let the authorities know the people are watching.
The rally tomorrow is about the use of government power to reduce food choices for a free people. People that seek out raw whole food choices.
Our government spent a year to investigate, reduce, eliminate and destroy these choices. if someone goes to Rawesome and pays money to get special access to special fermented raw milk or other criminally illegal food. That is the issue.
Rawesome has never had a food illness outbreak ever…never. The charges are baseless. I am surprized that bioterrorism was not listed!!
It is time for us all to use this FDA tirany event and rally our educational outcry. I will be at the rally tommorrow and I intend on speaking with every news media spokesperson possible. A movement needs an incident and this is it!!
Plus I am just sick and tired of CDFA's Scarlett Traveso. She rides a broom arround CA shutting down cow and goat shares that have lower bacteria and coliform counts than OPDC and she needs her witchy wings clipped and her broom broken in half.
This is war….and we are going into education battle in 11 hours. You teach You teach You teach.
I feel particularly good tonight. The RAWMI directors held their first conference call today and RAWMI is official. We are on the way to a very very different future for raw milk here and everywhere. Step by step. It appears that the September 1st grand opening deadline for RAWMI is going to be solid.
I am bringing Raw Milk to the Rally….not sure what we are going to do with it…drink it or pour it on each other or over our heads or over the FDA officials we have hanging in effigy …but we will do something. Our families health and our food freedom is on the line.
Remember this, FTCLDF is suing the FDA in federal court on the interstate commerce issue right now. The FDA is not doing well. This is grand theater for that legal issue as well.
Remember this three years ago,I submitted an official Citizens Petition to amend the FDA ban on interstate commerce of legally produced raw milk. They have yet to respond.
Who are the criminals here?????
They can only do what they do because they have the judges and the guns.
We have something far more important. We have the dollar voting moms and we have the truth. It is time to stand together and educate the media and show the rest of the world that America knows how to get pissed off. We know that food matters and it is directly related to the health of our children. We know that the FDA is poisoning and killing tens of thousands of people each year with toxic drugs. They are the biggest criminal drug cartel….
If this matters to you….come tommorrow if you can. If you can not come….dollar vote.
Mark
It is Oprah Time!!!!
Mark
I fear people might be rushing ahead a bit too quickly here. Sharon said in Farmageddon, presumably filmed subsequent to the first raid at Rawsome last year, that she got rid of all her goats and shipped them somewhere in the northern part of the state. I also know for a fact that people in So. California have inquired about joining her CSA and purchasing raw goat's milk and the official answer given was that they no longer offered it. The media is running with Sharon's past and criminal record. Is this really what we want to rally around??
Let's make sure this really is a fight against raw milk and food freedom. Let's see what the case actually is before making this event a national issue that may come back and hurt the overall movement because of potential mistakes and fraud that might have actually been committed in this case. Caution, caution, caution! The government took a whole year to build their case – are we going to jump to conclusions and make such definite statements in less than 24 hours after the incident? This case might be completely different than the Dan Allgyers case of interstate commerce. Let's be patient and see what is really going on here, and not just be reactionary.
And what happens if you are next? Those unpaid speeding tickets? That fudging on your 1040? The child support payment you missed? Those pencils you took home from the office? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!"
None of us are safe if we allow trial in the court of public opinion. Let Sharon Palmer answer the charges against her, and not the seemingly libellous information alleged by a well-funded adversary.
This is not the best situation to stress the rights issue….and will blow up in our face once 60 minutes or some other investigative tv show gets a hold of it. If those really are pictures of HFF something is wrong here.
Rallying for the right to be duped seems self defeating.
I agree the Rawesome situation isn't the ideal one to want to go out and rally for. But when you are on the defensive, as consumers of nutrient-dense foods are right now, you have to make quick judgments in response to police actions. The focus of the raid is on eradicating raw milk, one in a long series of actions, except in this case the authorities threw people in jail. To stand back and wait for….truth to emerge about the personalities involved?….is to bless what is happening, and lose any chance at all of forestalling the clampdown.
David
The Vonderplanitz report has some very specific information that could be examined to discredit or lend credence to the report. They follow an outsource trail in the report, for instance, and those sources could be contacted to confirm their statements.
All of this could have been done six months ago by the WAPF leadership (since it is the only apparent leader besides Vonderplanitz), but in my experience with outsourcing in California, I haven't gotten the sense that WAPF is concerned. WAPF should be and should have cleaned this up long ago and it needs to be the #1 priority today — get specific information on that report that disproves it or confirms it and make a statement. If this causes a rift, it is because the leadership isn't leading.
Amanda
I agree that rallying is appropriate…especially if done with raw milk on the fore. I just suggest that this incidence isn't one that we ned to keep harping on for months to come…rally…get the good guys out of jail…and move on. It's obvious that Rawesome has some 'cleaning up' to do.
Amanda,
The investigation and exposing of what really is going on at HFF is not the responsibility of WAPF….no way can you try and associate them with the coop. It's up to the individual members to make sure that the management of the coop have competent and thorough scrutiny of the suppliers. When you join a coop you entrust the people running it. when that trust is questioned you have to make more effort to find out what the truth is. A simple showing of invoices for organic feed would suffice…but having a 'organic' farmer being a known customer of a conventional mass food producer doesn't add up to me.
Fair enough, but it is WAPF basically rallying now, putting its own credibility on the line if those reports are true. Rather than knee-jerk support of anyone who sells raw milk, the leaders in the movement should support those who are actually selling product that fits the values of the movement. The only real way WAPF could do that is by investigating. Of course, that should not trump the members of the co-op from making their own decisions.
I do agree there is a lot in these allegations that could have easily been addressed by Palmer and that is the specific information I am not seeing. Why she does not come forward with feed records is beyond me (unless she doesn't have them and I agree if I buy premium feed I'm framing it on a wall). But some of those outsourcing tidbits could be confirmed without involving Palmer.
Outsourcing is really complicated to investigate. Even seeing bulk tank trucks is not definitive evidence when no one in the movement wants to shine a light.
As an aside, Vonderplanitz is really getting hammered out there. Do people really think he put himself out there on a little bitty branch just for a personal vendetta? Speaking from experience…
Amanda
David, that was NOT what I was advocating. I was advocating waiting to find out what the actual charges are in this current situation. Otherwise if you act too quickly, you might be defending people who quite possibly are guilty of fraud, and that can make the movement look bad. Stand up for freedom and the right to enter into private contracts to produce and purchase healthy food. But if people are using the popularity of raw milk for financial gain unethically, then would it not be prudent to draw those distinctions and keep our distance from such people? I would still like to know why Sharon said in her interview in the film Farmageddon that she no longer had goats, and why her people in So. California are telling people that they no longer have raw milk available through their CSA, when it appears from the events yesterday that she was still supplying raw milk to Rawsome.
Sharon Palmer epitomizes, imo, why people who are committed to buying wholesome food should meet their farmers. I guess Sharon held open farm tours 4 times a year, but someone was quoted as saying her farm was more like a petting zoo. If Sharon Palmer indeed operated in the way it is claimed she has, and if her 'rap' sheet (according to unhealthyfamilyfarm.com) is even half true, I'd say she deserves to be put in jail. And if James Stewart knew about it, then he is as guilty as she is.
None the less, to have Rawesome boot jacked like that it totally wrong and it makes me very worried. Get your underground food systems together now, if you haven't already, but 'they' are coming for all of our wholesome food.
http://nourishedkitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/filed-HFF-Complaint.pdf
Thanks, David for this post. We need more level headed people like you in the world!
It also states that egg cartons were to be returned to "Sharon at the ranch." So improperly labeled food outside of raw milk IS part of the complaint.
Ron Garthwaite,
Owner, Claravale Dairy