The Minnesota Department of Agricultures campaign against consumers is significantly more widespread than I first reported. And it is stirring up a hornets nest of outrage, and promises of defiance.
It turns out the MDA actually sent its love letters threatening criminal charges to nine or ten consumers of farmer Michael Hartmannnine, according to a spokesman from the MDA, and ten according to consumers who have been comparing notes among themselves.
The MDAs action seems designed to intimidate customers of Hartmann from offering their homes as voluntary drop points for his milk, meat, and other farm productswith the goal to deprive the farmer of distribution assistance from his customers. But the consumers, mostly mothers, have begun organizing themselves under the auspices of the Raw Milk Freedom Riders. The organization issued a press release headlined: Mothers Threatened with Criminal Charges Openly Defy MDA.
The release includes this quote from Melinda Olson, one of those who received the warning letter described in my previous post: The MDAs harassment against mothers will not work. We plan to ignorethis warning and continue operating as we are. MDA should not waste taxpayer money investigating, prosecuting and jailing peaceful farmers and mothers for helping their communities secure fresh foods. Our time to stand up against this tyranny is now!
The organization indicated that not only wont Hartmann lose his consumer supporters, but he will gain more help. Dozens of individuals who are disgusted with what they regard as MDAs overly aggressive tactics are expected to join in the same activity as these mothers, the release states.
The MDA action is a surprising strategic departure from previous enforcement actions by agencies in other parts of the country, which have confined themselves to focusing on generally one to three targeted individuals at a timeusually farmers or food club managers– in an effort to isolate them, and discourage organized backing. By going after nine or ten individualsand consumers at that–the MDA is clearly betting that it can handle a more complex enforcement situation. Most fundamentally, it is betting that it can outmaneuver the consumers, or wear them down, in a protracted legal battle.
One MDA approach could be to focus its eventual enforcement action on just one or two of those sent warning letters, by filing criminal or civil charges, betting that the rest will be intimidated from providing support or continuing to resist the warnings. The MDA has all kinds of options at its disposal, what with an array of lawyers and endless funding.
To the extent the current enthusiasm for resistance wanes over the coming months of selective MDA enforcement, it could win its bet and demonstrate to its FDA masters and to other states that the food rights activists are a bunch of patsies.
My advice to the Minnesota food rights activiststhose planning to defy warning letters and those planning to similarly defy MDA strictures in sympathy: Plan for MDA retribution. Talk to your neighbors and let them know that MDA investigators may be interviewing them (if they havent already done so). Make sure your income taxes are paid. Talk to a lawyer and accountant about easy steps you can take to protect your home and other assets from predator tactics by prosecutors and regulators.
And always remember this: You have an ace in the hole. If you can remain united, support each other in the coming MDA testing, and gather additional community support to expand private distribution of direct-from-the-farm products, there is nothing the MDA can do. In other words, the MDA is powerless in the face of large-scale resistance and civil disobedience. It will have no choice but to allow people to access the foods of their choice.
Michael Schmidt summed up the challenge well in a comment following my previous post: You need to ask yourself if another tactic is the way to go or if the unafraid friends and shareholders and farmers are willing to go all the way.
Liz Reitzig, a leader of the Raw Milk Freedom Riders, explains the risk very well: The implications of what the Minnesota Department of Agriculture is attempting are huge. If they succeed in criminalizing mothers for such normal natural human behavior as helping provide fresh food for their friends and neighbors, the FDA will continue their aggressive rampage across the nation shutting down farmers via the mothers who depend on them to feed their families.”
“The MDA has all kinds of options at its disposal, what with an array of lawyers and endless funding.”
Are they really that well funded? That’s a good example of what a lie it always is when anyone in government (or supportive of it) claims they have to cut spending. There’s always more than enough for corporate welfare and the police state.
The Reitzig quote sums up food fascism well. Are the calls for appeasement (those who think we need to try to “work with” the likes of the MDA) ever going to stop, or is there no level of evidence which will bring about that result?
When unrest occurs, it must trigger even greater unrest and it must wrestle the micro phone and the media’s attention.
One of the things that has disapointed me nationally with some of the raw milk dairymen’s responses to unrest and oppression…is the lack of strategic capitalization of the opportunity to teach and move people.
When an event strikes…it must sting the oppressor more than the oppressed. How??? Well, when you get hit or shut down…call a damn press conference and get your families to speak out in screaming anger. Add fuel to it…fan its embers. Make a revolution out of it. Fight like mad….declare an educational war.
The responses I have seen are timid and lack the passion to drive the oppressors crazy. You must retrain the oppressors. They must come to appreciate that when the dairyman or his consumer is harrassed or oppressed this oppression will be returned immediately to bite the oppressors squarely on the ASS.
Were is the strategic thinking here???
The first thing that happens at OPDC when we are harrassed….we call a press conference and go to FB and pour gas on the fire. The other side has learned…if they do not want fires ( and massive positive attention brought to raw milk with its associated educational opportunity ), stop harrassing raw milk.
Use some ART of WAR here.
Mark
I spent a couple of hours in a UC CA lab this week learning about new technologies that could very well be a game changer for raw milk safety. Instead of testing for pathogens and waiting for three days for the results…how about this instead. How about a complete map of all the bacteria found in a sample. How about just a couple of dollars per test and how about the results in less than 8 hours and sometimes as few as 4 or 5. We have all paid for this technology through our tax dollars Bioterrorism Funding and Home Land Security grants and technical advances. This technology was developed to analize Dirty Bomb explosion aftermath pathogen data. It checks for thousands of pathogens that are included in its data bases and it learns as more bacteria are fed into it.
Enjoy the tour. We are sending our raw milk into this test right now. Instead of testing for the three pathogens that are in regs…we are testing for the presence of all bacteria….and we will get a report stating exactly what is found. That means all strains of pathogens, STEC and all of its brothers and ugly step sisters.
With this technology, a very high level of confidence can be confirmed and a surveilance of the normal can be tracked and established..the computer will determine if a non standard set of conditions is being found. This is on top of finding pathogens by name. This is tracking the TERRAIN and giving us the whole picture. Say goodbye to pasteurization….see yah!!….but only for those that have the right conditions. Bechamp and Claud Bernard were were right. Too bad it took 120 years to figuer it out and prove it.
It is the immune system and the terrain…not the bugs. They are everywhere. It is the HOST!!! Immunity.
http://www.cfse.purdue.edu/media/annualmeeting/bhunia-light-scattering.pdf
http://www.samanthaflower.co.uk/phdi/p1.nsf/pages/1080:PDF_Bechamp_Pasteur.pdf/$file/PDF_Bechamp_Pasteur.pdf
We will be at the rally on Mothers Day but won’t be able to make it to the court appearances and such during the week.
One of the things that has happened since you were in MN last to rally up the raw milk people and educate us on this issue, is that one of our Trad Foods leaders has been pushing “lightly pasteurized non homogenized” milk. And this from an OUT OF STATE FARM! Many of the raw milk people are now drinking this due to its being “just as good as raw”. Which I think is a bunch of bull.
Anyway, the reason I am letting you know this–if you get to read it, is that it came from an interview you gave with Dr. Mercola last year. I have not seen the interview, I do not have cable nor do I have volume on my computer. Yep, in the dark a bit. MANY of the raw supporters are no longer here. I am not sure what the turn out will be, last reported there were only 30 people signed up for the first day of court.
This “leader” of sorts has put a negative/scary spin on the raw milk issue. There is a large dose of “don’t tell anyone who your farmer is” as well as “you can’t get raw milk legally in this state”.
There are now many drop sites at homes for this pasteurized crap (dead is dead, right???) and the drop site hosts get a kick back depending on how many sales they get. So the pasteurized crap is basically winning.
I know of 3 farmers this year that this pasteurized crap put under. They had not gotten started other than animals, education, and equipment but it is 3 less there.
Many on the waiting list have gone pasteurized now since it is just as good. Their “rights” are not being infringed upon and they are rather complacent about these issues.
There are still others who wont stop helping their farmers out and stand up for the right to access the food of their choice.
And Alvin is hard at work getting food to those who need it. I wish more would step up and support him–especially those who were part of his buying club who are now getting pasteurized crap milk because it is less stress on them.
Tracy
Mark,
Is the test identifying all bacteria and giving their relative numbers or is it just identifying “pathogens”? I hope it does give a profile of the whole community of bacteria present, that would indicate if the terrain was healthy or not. Just having a list of each “pathogen” found wouldn’t tell us much about the terrain(the milk).
It reports a list of all bacteria present. It does not say how many of which. It just reports all the bacteria that have grown on the agar plate. By tracking the norms over time….the producer can map out what normal bacteria should be present in a normal test or sample. This is all in addition to identifying pathogens by name. We all know that pathogens like to exist in certain environments. These environments generally grow pathogen associated bacteria like psuedamonas etc. So if you are getting bacteria that are associated with pathogens…that is important information as well. We will learn more as this goes forward.
I was blown away to see that this machine sorts pathogens like a wiz. It identifies Listeria Monocytogenes and lists them differentiated from Listeria Innocua or Ivanovii. This thing is brilliant. It Better be….it cost millions of our tax dollars to create.
Tracy
The photos from the Purdue link are fascinating, in fact they remind me of stars. Have you ever looked up into the night sky and wondered just how many stars there are in space?
There is a parallel that can be drawn with respect to the vastness of stars in space verses the vastness of microbes here on earth, on our bodies and in our food (the terrain). The greater and more sophisticated the magnification the more stars we see, so it is with microorganism (bacteria being only one of many). Just like stars we can see them however we have not yet been able identified them if it is indeed possible and practical to do so, let alone understand their purpose.
Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone, an impossible number to comprehend. How many do you think they have been able to identify and label?
In 1998, an American microbiologist worked out that the number of bacteria on Earth at that time was five million trillion trillion, an equally impossible number to comprehend.
I believe that honest scientists have a pretty good idea of what theyre dealing with when it comes to the microbial world and clearly understand the importance of establishing a working symbiotic relationship between them and us. Identifying microorganisms is all for not if we continue with our current destructive, antagonistic approach.
Rather then merely focus our attention on an incomprehensible number of microorganisms here is a bit of research which I believe provides a more balanced approach with respect to acquiring a better understanding of the terrain and how it affects the multitude of microorganisms that reside in, on and around us.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/2/459.full
Although interest in the role of the commensal microflora has been renewed by the development and refinement of molecular analysis tools our understanding of the dynamics and physiologic functions of the microflora is still in its infancy. In this paper we review recent advances in understanding the associations between diet, microflora, and health, in the context of the increasing availability of molecular tools.
Ken
Ken
The comment by Russ, about how government claims to need to lower spending but has enough money to harass hard-working, freedom-loving citizens, is apt as well.
Keep up the good work, everyone!
Wow. that is NOT raw milk, it is pasteurized. Duh! You’re right it is bull.
Perhaps MW can comment of these sorts of things and where these screening technologies stand. I try not to get distracted by novel technologies since I feel the primary focus must be on getting it right-from soil biology to bottled product. And I too think that all of us need to understand why things do go wrong.
This boils down to semantic battle.
If your car gets hit by a light rail engine (you know-
light rail think puffy clouds, gentle, friendly,
aesthetically pleasing), your car will be crushed same
as if any ordinary railroad engine kissed it.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
So much for federal inspectors doing anything….. I didn’t know tyson also processed pork.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBP,_Inc.
Surprise surprise….
http://charlottesville.injuryboard.com/defective-and-dangerous-products/dmaawhat-is-it-and-why-hasnt-it-been-banned-in-the-us.aspx?googleid=300874
Seems Ca has nothing better to do than harass and waste tax-payer money in senseless raids and apparently stealing without a warrant.
Mark mentioned a week ago or so that agents were at his place testing implied it was really cow shares. Maybe at the OPDC “Campying with the Cows” event they can burn some cow share symbols in protest.
Amanda
OPDC was just hit with another recall this afternoon at 1700 hours. This one pisses me off….the good news is that it should be very short.
No illnesses ….all tests negative except for one sample of cream which was detected to have Campylobacter. There are no DNA consumer connections to the raw cream sample. There are no patients connected to the sample. The CDFA press release missleads the reader to think that ten people are sickened. This is totally missleading….totally missleading. Did I say I was pissed.
On May 1st OPDC was inspected by both CDFA and DPH. The inspector gave a OPDC a summary statement which said in part that 13 people in CA had reported drinking OPDC and or Claravale or other raw milk ( a mix of raw milk sources ) and had been sickened briefly by Campylobacter since Christmas, a four month period. The last case was very early April. None of these consumers required treatment or hospitalization. All recovered at home.
With 7000 cases of campylobacter reported every day in the US and 80% of all poultry when tested having campylobacter….this is crazy. All the raw milk that was tested ( at the same time of the cream campy test ) was negative for campylobacter or other pathogens and have very low bacteria counts.
The clearing tests will be submitted to CDFA by Friday afternoon. Then it will be the long 5 day wait for pathogen test results.
OPDC will begin to gather all of its products back from all of the stores everywhere in the State tommorrow. All of the test results taken since May 1st have been negative. That was 10 days ago.
I have demanded a hearing tommorrow morning at 1100 with CDFA. It is scheduled. This the greatest Kangeroo Court in the World. They are judge and jury. Summary judgement is rendered seconds after the arguments are made. Take raw milk outback and hang them high.
What I also found really interesting was that DPH took 14 cream samples on May 1st as part of a routine visit to OPDC. When I asked PDH where those results were…they reported that they were still waiting to be submitted to the lab….after ten days!!! They have not tested them yet. Ten days waiting….that is horrible for a raw milk test. Those tests should be done immediately. If those tests had been done….they may have shown a total conflict between CDFA and DPH test results.
All this recall does is push up the tenor of this battle against bacteria and the demand for raw milk will rise. We are being ordered to recall perfectly good raw milk that has been tested and shown to be perfectly fine and there have been no illnesses connected by DNA or test or even generic sample to OPDC.
Outrageous….when consumers ask why raw milk is so expensive now you know why.
Consumers are really going to start getting pissed off and now we have the numbers to do something about it. There is a growing list of Medical Needs Patients that suffer when they are taken off organic raw milk. True injury is happening. Perhaps CDFA and can answer to the good Senators why pastuerized milk is an not alternative food for raw milk consumers. recalls of OPDC raw milk cause illness to consumers. Not because of pathogens in raw milk….but becuase of the lack of availability of raw milk as a healing food.
Mark
And yet somehow your perfectly healthy customers had the need to have a stool test and their poop had campy in it.
Thank goodness there are no hospitalizations.
http://www.opb.org/audio/download/?f=tol/segments/2012/050702.mp3
MWs comment to Mark regarding RAMP is appropriateand again a core issue of why things go wrong gets derailed by flip commentary-further diluted by irrelevant self serving ranting.
There is a lot at stake in the fundamental questions surrounding food rights. Unless this movement addresses in a systematic and responsible manner how to provide a clean and safe product, educate consumers and helps those affected by regulatory over reach or contaminated products—– there is no hope.
[quote from article]:
” The Carpenters shared stories about how their farm is an integral part of their community, and how federal programs have helped them expand their business and grow a diverse array of crops that they sell across the region.
Thats democracy in action engaged citizens who care about their communities and their family-owned farm businesses speaking up for what matters in the 2012 Farm Bill.”
[end of quote]
Do you suppose “federal” intervention is really making a huge difference? To me it’s just another way of regulating and keeping tabs on people who actually voluntarily submit! Unbelievable.