The criminal misdemeanor trial of Vernon Hershberger is a week off, and I find myself wondering…Is there any other country (aside from Canada) in todays crazy mixed-up world that would devote the resources the U.S. is devoting to punishing a farmer for selling meat, raw milk, and other fresh food to a few dozen friends and neighbors?
Among the resources being arrayed against the Wisconsin farmer: assembling 130 prospective jurors, gathering 70-plus witnesses, involving at least four highly experienced attorneys (two on each side) on something approaching a full-time basis (and numerous other attorney on each side on a consultative basis), and readying a jail cell in case theres a guilty verdict. (I say the U.S. is assembling these resources because the cooperation of the Wisconsin regulators and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been previously documented in the prosecution of food club owner Max Kane.)
Seriously, Id like to know. I doubt there are any other countries, aside from totalitarian states like North Korea and Cuba, where food has long been used to reward loyalists, and punish ordinary people as part of the regimes use of fear to maintain order. The most grotesque example of food violence in the last 100 years occurred during the 1930s, when the Soviet Unions Josef Stalin oversaw the murder and starvation of an estimated seven million Ukrainians as part of an effort to bring farms under state ownership.
Why is the U.S. virtually alone in prosecuting farmers for doing something that farmers the world over have been doing for millenia–selling or trading food privately with members of their community? And why now?
Ill offer some speculation. The most important factor fueling the food violence and repression, in my judgment, grows out of our very strange relationship with food that has developed over our history as a nation, most especially over the last 60 years.
In most of the rest of the world, there is a huge amount of respect for both food and the people who produce it, going back hundreds of years. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, there are long-standing traditions around food. Recipes, prized ingredients, seasonal favorites. If you go to Germany in June, everyone is excited about asparagus season, especially about savoring the white asparagus. The same goes for cheeses in France, where regions compete to outdo each other with delicacies. In China, regional specialty foods are celebrated, and young married couples are showered with fruits loaded with seeds, like pomegranate.
Farmers and food producers around the world have long been the objects of special respect, both from the people and their governments. And it’s not to say other countries haven’t done some crazy things to promote farming, like Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution, in which millions of Chinese professionals were forcibly moved from cities out to the country, to learn to be farmers.
In the U.S., its been practically opposite. We know how fast-buck artists produced tainted milk and meat in Americas major cities during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Over the last 60 years, we embarked on a path emphasizing the mass production of food. Corporations were encouraged (and financially incentivized) to produce food ever more cheaply. They set up CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) to raise farm animals, gave cows hormones to push up production and all animals antibiotics to ward off disease from all the crowding.
Americans were conditioned to seek out the cheapest food they could. The idea was that if people spent less of their incomes on food, theyd have more money to buy cars and furniture and televisions.
It was a marriage made in heaven. Except, of course, it hasnt been heavenly.
Theres been tremendous pollution; creation of new pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant pathogens, leading to cases of serious illness from food; and perhaps most significant, chronic illnesses have shot through the roof. Nearly 10 per cent of all children now have asthma. 8 per cent have allergies. Many schools now dont allow peanut butter to be brought into schoolsnot too long ago, we all brought peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch.
Small farms couldnt survive economically in the move to commoditize food. In the dairy industry, about 90 per cent of the dairy farms are gone from what we had 40 years ago. Yet milk production is about the same.
Now, as Americans begin to get it, that factory food may be part of the pollution-pathogen-nutrition problem , that meat and eggs from animals raised on grass are more nutritious than factory produced stuff well, we are told that things have changed. We cant just go back to the old-fashioned ways of doing things, when food was produced with care, and people obtained much of their food directly from farmers and other producers.
Regulators around the country have locked arms with judges and politicians to make sure we dont try to go back. For those who try, the regulators pick out farmers like Hershberger, Dan Brown in Maine, Dan Allgyer in Pennsylvania, and use them to send all of us a message: asserting your rights to access the foods of your choice subjects you to all the indignities and punishments Americas legal system can come up with.
What do I mean when I refer to food violence? I mean the individuals in authority taking it upon themselves to arbitrarily deprive their fellow citizens of food, especially food that people need for their good health. Hopefully the Hershberger trial will let the public know more about this new category of crime against farmers and consumers. The Farm Food Freedom Coalition has posted a schedule of events around the trial, and provides an opportunity to donate to support Hershberger’s legal defense.
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Upcoming this week, if you are in the Northeast, is the sentencing hearing of Dan Brown, the Maine farmer hit with a court injunction for violating Maines raw milk and retail food permit laws. He could well be fined for violating the laws, even though his town, Blue Hill, had an ordinance in place that allowed private sales of food.
The hearing will be held at 9 a.m. this Thursday (May 16) at the Hancock County courthouse (50 State St., Ellsworth, ME).
Brown will be filing a motion to have the injunction lifted.
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Ill be speaking Friday evening at a farm-to-table dinner fundraising event for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund in Pennsylvania, hosted by the Weston A. Price Foundation chapter in the Gettysburg area. Ill be providing background on the unusual research effort behind my new book, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights.
Then on Saturday, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. will be leading an educational program on producing safe raw milk, also sponsored by the Gettysburg area WAPF.
It is my opinion that the future of food choice rests squarely in the states where the regulations allow legal raw milk sales. In those states that allow retail or even legal cow share sales, markets are being built. These markets are growing fast and they are becoming the obvious and clear vision for the future. Big Ag and the FDA hates these popular growing thriving examples. They hate even more the Internet and how it spreads the good news all over America. Unlike commerce of raw milk…news and jealousy crosses state lines.
It will be the political and nutritional choice gradient formed by states that abutt each other yet denying equality of access, One state allowing ease of access and the sister state criminalizing a food choice, that is the kindling fuel of change and upheaval. Vernon and all those like him must speak of the injustice of this Un United America. An America that puts greed and politics above children’s health. An America that refuses to place nutrition and health on its list of imporatant issues, or rights!! This is a nutrition civil rights revolution. A revolution that demands a resorting of priorities…..a reassessment of humanity.
In the EU medical care is not a profit based industry. Instead it is a burden shared by all because it is part of the shared cost of citizenship. In America, our medical system is a cancer that is not sucking the life from our country. It is costing more and proving worse and worse outcomes. In EU it has been recognized for a long time that alternative, complimentary and innovative preventative care is a far better and more cost effective approach. This means FDA like institutions are not allowed. The FDA type agency is the cancer that would protect a non sustainable medical industry. A country that provides for the common medical care would never tolerate an American type sickness industry and an agency that would protect it with badges and guns.
We as Americans are so freaked out by labels like socialized medicine….like sustainable medicine or genomic medicine…
We deserve what we get…because we are so stupid. We the people are at fault. We vote our dollars. We serve on juries and create laws. We the people will prove Darwin so right if we fail to learn and change.
I am dedicated to teaching and market building. The gastronomic educational experience of clean delicious raw milk is a lesson that is undeniable. It is also an Internet nightmare for the FDA.
Unfortunately even great studies and examples in other countries do not matter in America. We are Amero-centric even as we print our dollars into penny’s and jam our ERs with the sick and poor.
These are defining times….showing up, standing up and speaking up never meant more for our next generations.
To be fair; Gilroy,Ca has a yearly garlic festival, Stockton has or had the annual asparagus festival, numerous small towns have strawberry festivals. Unfortunately, I don’t think they are any where as big as the asparagus festival in Germany. My appreciation for foods came from living in Germany.
“about 90 per cent of the dairy farms are gone from what we had 40 years ago. Yet milk production is about the same.”
For some reason, that statement is not comforting.
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend in St Louis, she had mentioned that the tomatoes from the store were tasteless. She said they were red so they must be ripe… She said she knows they are picked green then ripened. I told her they gas them to make them red, being red doesn’t make it ripe. She really did know about it and she’s in her 60s. Going back to the old fashioned way of doing things is the only way to survive.
“Why is the U.S. virtually alone in prosecuting farmers for doing something that farmers the world over have been doing for millenia–selling or trading food privately with members of their community? And why now?
is ; the trouble the dairy industry is in, signals the death of the Federal Reserve Note. Here in Canada, apologists for the supply management system point to how well farmers are doing financially. Yeah, until you subtract from such equation the contrived “value” of the permit – quota – in the govt.- run cartel. Then, nearly every farm in this Dominion is “under water”, ie., carrying more debt than it can service. When = not ‘if” = the interest rate goes back up, they’re out of business. Which of course will the excuse for nationalizing the whole shebang. Sort of too bad that unreconstructed Stalin-ist isn’t around on the forum any more, to explain how that worked out in his Utopia of the USSR
Politics is all local. Showing up, standing up and most of all speaking up means more than anything. The system is our own….we must own it and change it. If it is corrupt expose the corruption and remove it. We still have our freedom of speech….use it. We can vote our dollars…vote them!!! We have Internet access…blog and teach!!! The next public meeting you attend take the opportunity to seize the day and teach…..somehow bring some bright light to the darkness of ignorance and immune depression.
This is our country teach it back to health. The government, the FDA, Monsanto none of these entities have taken our spirit or first amendment rights. To change our system….be the change.
Just last week regulators at a food safety meeting in New Mexico said that if raw milk starts to be produced this summer in new mexico….they better be working with RAWMI and doing it right ( this is not the exact quote but very close to it ). When I got the call today….I was so very happy to see that regulators see the change….they seep that RAWMI has LISTED three farmers and t
He food safety plans work and the results are fantastic. Little by little hard work is reaching across the great divide.
This Summer a start up producer in NewMexico will be LISTED by RAWMI and his raw dairy will be sold in stores!!! We are working with him right now.
Today RAWMI became international. “Our Cows” Cow Share in British Columbia became LISTED by RAWMI. That makes 4 producers to go through the process and become completely transparent and post their RAMP plan and their test data.
Next up are Sally Fallon’s cheese making dairy farm and Ed Shanks Family Cow dairy in Pennsylvania. We will have seven operations LISTED by July. These operations have stepped up to be pioneers and provide data to be reviewed and studied. These operations will provide the undeniable track record that the FDA, the courts, the legislatures, the public and universities can not at deny. Add some cost effective emerging technologies and America will welcome the birth of respected, demanded, FDA acknowledged delicious very low risk raw milk for all people that desire that choice.
Raw milk is a low risk food. RAWMI producers are proving it. The consumers are loving it!!!
Am I excited….insure am, our team work is paying off.
Later this summer, I have bets on Gary Cox convincing a federal judge to tear down at least some of wall that divides farmers from consumers and raw milk will begin to flow over state lines.
This one about fda and European Food Safety Authority:
http://emord.com/blawg/how-fda-and-efsa-prior-restraints-defeat-government-objectives-and-foster-fraud-and-deception/
[quote from article at above link]: “FDA and EFSA censorship regimes are based on an anti-fraud or anti-deception rationale. In short, FDA presumes that deprivation of all information not officially sanctioned that expressly or impliedly links a nutrient with a disease helps prevent consumers from being misled. Likewise, EFSA presumes that deprivation of all information not officially sanctioned that expressly or impliedly links a nutrient with any health benefit, including but not limited to an effect on disease, helps prevent consumers from being misled. As I explain below, FDA and EFSA prior restraints on speech fail to advance in any direct or material way the stated objective. Moreover, that censorship actually creates an environment conducive to fraud and deception in the market, an ironic twist that the regulators in the U.S. and Europe utterly fail to take into account.”
[end quote]
And this one about the abuse of our First Amendment:
http://emord.com/blawg/ftc-burden-of-proof-offends-the-first-amendment/
[quote from article at above link]: ” . . . the Federal Trade Commissions staff expects advertisers of health benefits to possess competent and reliable scientific evidence in advance of advertising a health benefit claim. In particular, that means an advertiser must have written evidence on hand before advertising. The absence of the written evidence is automatically deemed deceptive advertising by the FTC. That advance written proof requirement, including its imposition of a burden as a condition precedent to the lawful right to communicate, offends core principles of the First Amendment.”
[end quote]
= = = = = = = =
In other words, if you don’t have “scientific proof” of health claims you simply cannot say certain things. On the other side of the coin, if you do have some sort of “scientific proof” the *authorities* ignore it or discredit it ab initio.
Lovely.
A dizzying array of lies we the people are subjected to, all over the world, not just in the good ol’ usa. I do believe they compare notes . . .
We have dreams of providing safe, high quality raw milk to our immediate community one day soon. And we are beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to be supported, educated, and held accountable by others who share the vision. So if there is an upside to “Food Violence” certainly this is it.
Shawna,
Irony of ironies. I once thought there would be some meeting of the minds, compromise, between regulators and raw milk producers. Instead, the regulators sit back, hoping for more illnesses from raw milk, as ammo for their agenda, and in the process motivate the producers to organize and unite in an effort to reduce illnesses. A testimony of sorts to the power of the marketplace. Demand for raw milk is so strong, and the financial incentives of selling directly to consumer so great, that producers have seen the light. One bonus of this new reality is that both producers and consumers are gaining political clout as well. Another is that consumers gain access to a safer product.
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May 15, 2013
Hello Everyone,
Tomorrow a researcher in British Columbia is presenting to the Center for Disease Control. This presentation is something that we think all people interested in raw milk, both for and against, should be
listening to. Here is the announcement that Ms. Ijaz posted on the Bovine and that we have put on our website as well.
I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to present a special scientific Grand Rounds presentation entitled Unpasteurized milk: myths and evidence to provincial public health staff at the
BC Centre for Disease Control on Thursday May 16 from 12 noon to 1 pm. This invitation came in light of my recent research presentation at the Fresh Milk Food Politics event in Vancouver.
I have significantly revised the presentation to gear it to the important factors public health staff must consider in reviewing high-quality scientific evidence regarding raw milk safety and possible health benefits. This event represents a vital step in the long-sought pursuit of meaningful dialogue between advocates, producers, scientists, and government officials in Canada.
I warmly invite you to show your support for this event by tuning into the live webcast at 12 noon, Pacific Standard Time (3 pm Eastern Standard Time for folks in Ontario), this coming Thursday May 16, 2013. The link requires no pre-registration, and may be found at
*http://phsa.mediasite.com/mediasite/Play/b54b4be24bab4f4581ef0fdd8023d38d1d*
<http://phsa.mediasite.com/mediasite/Play/b54b4be24bab4f4581ef0fdd8023d38d1d>
For those unable to view the webcast live, the presentation will be archived at
http://www.bccdc.ca/util/about/UBCCDC/GrandRounds/default.htm
/ Nadine Ijaz/
Here is the link to our website where this is posted.
http://rawmilkconsumer.ca/scientist-nadine-ijaz-speaking-at-the-bc-cdc/
Margo McIntosh, RHN, RNCP
On Behalf of the Canadian Consumer Raw Milk Advocacy Group
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