The scene outside Halcyon Grange #345 on a rural road in tiny Blue Hill, Maine, is one that has been played out countless times over the past couple centuries. As darkness set in, a couple of men, volunteers, were carving up a pig that had been roasting on a large grill for the previous day. The pig had been donated by an area farmer, who slaughtered the animal, and brought it to the Grange hall for the roasting.
Now, on this Saturday evening, the men in charge of the roasting collected meat from the animal and put it into pans for a community dinner. As they completed their carving, they picked scraps off a few bones that they tossed into their own mouths. Then, they threw the bones to a couple of eagerly waiting dogs.
As the 100-plus guests in the Grange hall enjoyed the delicious pork, along with beans baked in the ground and fresh cole slaw, topped off by home-made apple and pumpkin pies made by other volunteers, I couldnt help but marvel that that traditional scene had come off seemingly routinely, without any attention to special licenses or inspections. Just some farmers and other members of the community sharing food with friends and neighbors. (The Grange just posted a summary of Saturday’s event.)
In a talk I gave following the dinner, I pointed out that in other parts of the country, there are pressures to regulate such events as Grange dinners, church suppers, school bake sales, even lemonade stands….not to mention food clubs and herdshares that distribute raw milk. There have been some unpleasant encounters as a result, such as public health inspectors nearly wrecking an in-the-field meal at a Nevada farm in 2011.
But I was in food sovereignty territory–Blue Hill (together with nine nearby towns) has a food sovereignty ordinance that in effect legitimizes the private distribution and sale of food from local farms and other food producers directly to individuals. The ordinances shook the food-regulation establishment from Maine down to Washington when they first appeared on the scene in 2011. Eventually, the state would file suit against a one-cow Blue Hill farmer, Dan Brown, seeking to bar him from selling raw milk and other foods, and in effect invalidate the ordinances passed by all the towns. A judge ruled in favor of the state, but Brown, represented by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, has appealed.
Yet food sovereignty supporters pressed on, pushing for a state-wide food sovereignty law in the Maine legislature last spring and summer. That didnt pass, but something pretty close did pass. At the Grange dinner on Saturday evening, food sovereignty organizer Heather Retberg announced to the crowd that Maines newly reorganized agriculture department–The Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry–was mandated by the legislature to encourage food self sufficiency for its citizens.
The new department was told to Promote self-reliance and personal responsibility by ensuring the ability of individuals, families and other entities to prepare, process, advertise and sell foods directly to customers intended solely for consumption by the customers or their families.
In its use of language similar to that included in the local food-sovereignty ordinances, Maines legislature seems to have taken farmer Dan Brown off the hook, and opened the department to legal challenge should it engage in similar overreach.
The persistence of Maines food-sovereignty activists seems to have paid off, and should be instructive elsewhere. Even in Nevada, the 2011 outrage at Laura Bledsoes farm led to ongoing activism that resulted in passage of legislation sanctioning farm-to-fork events. I know, such traditional events shouldnt have to be sanctioned, but in our land of regulator overreach, local communities must, unfortunately, fight to reclaim such rights.
**
The expanding tide of food sovereignty could well run up against the brick wall of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) before too long. It was passed nearly three years ago, and so has been nearly forgotten by farmers and consumers alike.
But the bureaucrats haven’t forgotten. The FDA has been using all that time to ramp up for full enforcement, beginning next year. The FDA isnt known for its sensitivity and deference to farmer experience and knowledge, so the new enforcement may well not be pretty
Blogger Brian Snyder put together a perceptive analysis on how it all could shake out. He worries about unfettered enforcement of vague regulations based on outdated science.
I wouldnt be surprised if we see a food sovereignty ordinance tested legally against the FSMA.
That’s why this battle will be fought and won at the purely political level. We the people will organize for the whole gamut from nullification to boycotting corporate food and retailers to civil disobedience to the usual growing our own food and patronizing local farmers. We’ll do this and win, or we’ll fail to do this and lose everything because of this failure.
We can certainly start by agreeing that the vast bulk of food production and distribution are naturally local/regional and that by definition a centralized government or corporation has no competence to administer or regulate either, and therefore zero legitimacy when it claims the authority to do so. The first step to freeing our hands is to free our minds.
Also that industrial “food” and community food are two completely separate and different sectors, and that anything geared to the former will certainly be unsuitable for the latter. So there’s also this practical reason to reject the Food Control Act and FDA as having any legitimacy.
My friends call me 492227.
I can take steps to educate my precinct and from there the other precincts that comprise these three districts through which I am represented in the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California and in the House of
Representatives of the Congress of the United States.
We are not a rabble.
Have a wonderful, representative republic sort of day!
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
It is interesting to note that some of the key agenda’s that are being promoted for next years NEHA convention is the question of “why consumers are not following the raw milk warnings and rock solid scientific anti-raw milk advice being offered by the FDA, CDC and others in Government and buying raw milk anyway??!!”
I would suggest that “consumers are now trusting their farmers and are no longer trusting their government” and or anything that smells like, seems like, reads like or looks like government.
Perhaps we should all become Raw Milk teachers and teach consumers about the incredible healing qualities of fresh raw milk. The FDA says….one drop and you are dead. Consumers like Tara, if they had taken that advice, would now be missing 30 feet of her intestines and colon and forever be connected to a plastic bag on her belly. When our goverment can say this with a straight face….the revolution has already been won. This is an outrage and they are not to be believed at all for anything. The more they talk….or attempt to even speak, the more people simply turn them off. They have cried wolf too many times and the farmer is now the one that can be trusted.
Perhaps the only way that the FDA and associated agencies will ever win back any trust is to help raw milk and win back some credibility. Until then….invite the Local Sherriff and the local SWAT to team to become members of your local cow share and also do not forget to invite them to the next buried pig feed and raw milk chugging contest. In most communities, the local Sheriff, knows the local judge and they all know the local district attorney. They all have kids and grand kids and some of them have asthma and I am sure one of them has Crohns. Nothing like raw milk Kefir to heal some of that.
Anyone comes calling wanting to shut down your raw milk or stop your pig feed….good luck to them. I do not know of any SWAT team guy that would take lightly to being denied his choice of a plastic bag hanging off his body verses some delicous raw milk Kefir.
Enough said…. Who is the bioterrorist now?? I know that the FDA reads this stuff….please do not spill that hot coffee on your pretty nice military uniform now that you are back in your offices. All the studies in the world do not add up to one huge study that you can never do….the testimonials of real people that have done their own open eyed gut study and know what raw milk does for them and their families.
As one researcher told me….there is nothing more blind than the double blind. If the FDA was smart they would get behind efforts like RAWMI, RMAC and Farm to Consumer Foundation and make raw milk a very safe choice for all of America.
One can dream. Until then…invite the Sherrif to the next pig feed and raw milk educational get together.
When can I meet you? I do not have fangs and I am not corporate greed driven. In fact I am traveling to Vermont to teach raw milk and there is no speakers free. I teach and build community because we must create a new track record and break from the past history of raw milk.
On Wednesday I will be supporting micro dairies in CA…..yah those dairies that feed their local communities with raw milk. The ignorant would logically think that those producers would my competition…..not so fast, I have learned that good raw milk producers are also great raw milk teachers and create more consumers than they can supply.
This entire movement will succeed when we stand together and build community….it will succeed when we see the greater picture and become a little more humanitarian as we practice local capitalism. It will succeed when we get it into our brains that we are our own worst enemies when we fail to produce low risk raw milk and people get sick. We will succeed when our consumers incessantly blog about he healing qualities of our wonderful raw milk. When can I meet you…..we are better when we join forces.
Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases
Here is an outstanding website, if you are interested in eating real local/wild foods for certain needs…
http://sun.ars-grin.gov:8080/npgspub/xsql/duke/listsp.xsql
For example, we have wild roses that grow nearby that we harvest for ourselves and our animals.
This database tells you what is inside of the rose hips..
http://sun.ars-grin.gov:8080/npgspub/xsql/duke/plantdisp.xsql?taxon=872
–bill
For the rest of this week, I am in a mega GMO corn growing area (Aurora, IL)…so sad & what a waste of land that could be used in a much better & viable way!
Mark, I always wonder when I see such sessions as at the NEHA convention (which you link to at the top of your comment) what the real purpose is. To broaden perspectives of the participants? Or to help them come up with new tactics to block availability of raw milk?
1. The focus and tone are elitist throughout. (By comparison even the Monsanto-front CSPI sounds populist.)
2. The focus is on ad hoc outbreaks rather than systemic corporate poisoning. Thus not a peep about CAFOs, subtheraeutic antibiotic use, GMOs, glyphosate, etc. They mention the surge in gastrointestinal maladies and innocently wonder, “What could be causing this?” You can bet they won’t look to structural causes like Bt and Roundup.
3. There’s a pronounced tendency to kick down, for example against those raw milk hippies. There’s also a pronounced implict aversion to hitting up. In general, the goal is to corral concern about disease and food safety and channel it in system-safe directions. There’s lots of outfits like that.
So in this case the goal certainly isn’t to broaden anyone’s perspective, but at best to laugh at the weirdos, and perhaps to figure out how to assist with the corporate propaganda against them. The reiterated Orwellism, “science has to conquer”, coming from such anti-science ideologues, signals a malign intent.