Despite my disparaging view of the prosecution in the Alvin Schlangen case, the six-person jury had its own view, and it wasn’t the same as mine or others on this blog. After nearly four hours of deliberation on Thursday, it convicted the Minnesota farmer of five criminal misdemeanors.
The counts:
1. Operating without a food handler’s license;
2. Storing eggs at temperatures above the mandated 45 degrees;
3. Distributing adulterated or misbranded food;
4. Violating a food embargo;
5. Selling custom processed meat.
Schlangen was immediately fined $300 and sentenced to 90 days of jail, with the jail sentence stayed. (I erroneously tweeted and put on Facebook the sentencing info without noting the stay of the sentence.)
Most problematic may turn out to be the one year of probation, during which time Schlangen is expected “to comply with all Minnesota food laws, including raw milk laws,” according to his lawyer, Nathan Hansen. “It was interesting that raw milk wasn’t mentioned in any of the charges, and at the end of the day, it was about raw milk.”
“Some of the charges were real hard to counter,” Hansen told me. “And the prosecutor worked very hard to get a conviction.” For example, the prosecution presented evidence Schlangen re-sold food to a food cooperative. Moreover, the prosecution brought in as witnesses the owners or managers of half a dozen other food producers to try to convince the jury that Schlangen was running a commercial operation involving meat, eggs, and other foods.
Hansen is also a member of Schlangen’s food club, and worries most about the strange after-the-trial effort by the judge to include raw milk in the prohibited areas for Schlangen while on probation. “Our supply of raw milk is in jeopardy,” he said.
He feels Schlangen’s food club will need to “narrow its focus” and not make available “foods people can get elsewhere,” like organic frozen veggies. He’s not certain at this point exactly what a new focus and organization might look like.
Why did one jury acquit Schlangen last September on many of the same charges, and this one, in a different county, convict him? We’ll never know for sure, but certainly the prosecution learned from the first Schlangen trial and the Vernon Hershberger trial (and acquittal on similar licensing charges). In addition to the factors Hansen mentioned, I suspect its seemingly random mention of an illness of a food club member–even though it wasn’t connected to Schlangen–had its effect on the “adulterated” charge and on the egg-temperature charge. It may also have colored the jury’s view of Schlangen in general.
So the food police finally got a hit, on an 0-and-2 count. Will they use their new-found lessons of how to persuade a jury to go after additional farmers in other states? Or, to put it another way, now that they at long last tasted blood provided by a jury of a farmer’s peers, will they want more?
Criminalization of food sale is thin and scary ice. We now have the first criminal conviction for sale of food with jail time that I am aware of ever seeing here at this blog. The Minnesota Food Police must be very proud. They are also extremely short sighted. They just created a “media nightmare and a martyr” for the cause of food freedom and nutritional rights. I am sickened and saddened by this turn of events.
Stay the course and keep the faith…..appeal this travesty!!
This result just strengthens my resolve to continue exercising my natural right to obtain the food of my choice and to support, financially and otherwise, those who do the direct raising of that food. One head of the hydra may be cut off, but two more will grow in its place.
This jury decided what, exactly?
Hey Hennepin County, Minnesota! Is this what you stand for?
For that matter: Minnesotans! Is this what YOU stand for?
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Prior to entering onto this field of battle, as a producer it is critical to develop your battle gear..that includes the huge list of consumers to be able to PUSH SEND to. That is your rescue team. No consumers no rescue. Raw milk is a team sport.
Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid
My jail time is suspended while I am on probation but there are 5 more charges pending which may revoke the stay. Charges such as having a butterfly garden, growing a straw bale garden, peeling/fading paint on my garage and other spurious BS charges aimed at driving me out of my home.
After my case, another resident was also convicted of criminally keeping chickens by the same judge. He also is being forced to move from his home.
For more about criminal chickens in Garden City, Michigan please see http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/convicted-criminal-chickenkeeper
Is some innocent organic farmer going to get shot for holding a shovel in his hand in order for this SWAT mentality to stop!!
Watch out. America will start attacking itself when it has killed all the terrorists. When you fund the “killing machine” and that machine gets hungry it does not care what it eats. Kind of like the suicidal human autoimmune response when the bacteria are all gone.
Remember Lon Horiuchi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lon_Horiuchi
He was charged with murder by the state prosecutor in Idaho when he killed an unarmed mother holding her baby in her arms at Ruby Ridge. Then he was cleared of charges by federal preemption. He killed at Ruby Ridge and WACO as a Hostage Rescue Sniper from the FBI. He as a graduate of West Point.
When the police allow the military to run the show and the military turns on the civilians….that means civil war. The Military is not trained to create peace….they are trained killers. Police are supposed bring peace. SWAT and FBI special teams….are killers. People get dead arround them. We need the sherrifs to stay in control and not allow the FBI or feds to run our country.
Some body is going to start shooting back. It is not going to be me….I want to change the whole damn system and fire them all. I am convinced that the FBI and feds have the smallest penises and brains….they have the most need for guns and have the biggest and most insecure excuses for using them. How can aiming a machine at the chest of an unarmed organic farmer be some thing that enhances officer safety. It does not. It just increases officer hatred and gives the officer a sick adrenalin rush. I have seen it time and time again as a paramedic in the streets of Fresno.
Come on now…pointing guns at organic farmers and their families…killing organic tomatoe plants!!?? Were they just warming up with Rawesome? We need juries with balls to start charging these criminals and throwing these insecure little brained robots in jail. I thought that Nuremberg trials taught us all a lesson. http://www.alternet.org/activism/police-destroy-organic-farm-massive-swat-team-raid?akid=10816.174761.qnhPhe&rd=1&src=newsletter883812&t=2
What is America coming to??
Obama…I am sadly completely disapointed by you and your culture of drones and killing. It would appear that you encourage and fund this not just interationally…but now domestically and against our organic farmers. I beg you to come out in condemnation of this act. Stop funding SWAT against American food!!
I don’t mean me and you individuals, but our entire society is seriously misguided when government entities attack, prosecute and prevent healthy food availability while allowing corporate modified food that we can’t even label lest you avoid it! Never mind the drone wars on dandruff…
Two words: color me Costa Rica within 5 years. America sucks now and there’s just no denying it or fighting it for betterment. If you don’t like it and can’t put up with it just move on, and I will.
Victoria, I wasn’t at Alvin’s second trial, so I can only infer certain things. But certainly the prosecutor in this latest case seemed very savvy about ingratiating himself to the jury. The prosecutor was also very clever about fear-mongering by introducing the possibility, far-fetched as it might have been, that Alvin’s milk perhaps made someone sick. Given the prosecutor’s connection to the jury, the fear-mongering became more believable.
In areas of the US that find themselves in the raw milk dark ages, there must be clear strategies to avoid litigation. If litigation does happen, the tactics employed must include preparation for litigation and clear defenses against the zealous attacks that will come. That includes education of local communities and jury education, local sheriff education, DA education, as much effort to comply with laws as possible. When you get to trial this pre-efforts will save the day hopefully. This is essential but hard and dangerous work. It takes strategy and can not be approached carelessly
Ed has been hard at work building relationships with the highest levels with in the state regulators, University researchers, PhD’s and other interested and engaged experts in the search for the elusive campylobacter source. Test after test both negatives and positives come back from the same exact raw milk samples and batches…but why?? That is the ever more compelling question.
The entire milking system has been torn apart and assessed and thoroughly cleaned. Now 100 cows are being tested for the possibility of an internal campylobacter mastitis. Something I had never heard of…that is right, Ed is pioneering research that we will all enjoy the benefits of when it is done. PhD’s from all across America from UCDavis to Penn State are pulling for Ed and investigating the elusive source of the random campylobacter that torments his raw milk.
This is the research that we all need as an emerging industry….it is what we all need as producers and consumers and Ed is proudly leading this investigation. His reward will be the deeper understanding of campylobacter and its sources….and perhaps the end of the ghost of campy at the family cow. Ed I am so very proud of you!! It appears that the meetings he has had has created deeper respect for raw milk. All of the paths lead to great things!
Perhaps…not so fast. It is all about the systems you know and what you are familiar with. All Machine milked cows are milked by hand first to check for milk quality and udder health. Then the machines go on.
I do agree that a hand milked cow can have its own advantages, but there are also big advantages to machine milked cows as well. At RAWMI we have learned that there is little to be gained by assuming that one process is better than another. Every process has its benefits and its challenges.
What we do not know yet is how a cow that has campy mastitis presents??? Huge question?? Does she also have a higher SCC….we certainly hope so. That would help us all find and identify a potential campy cow….but what is she has low SCC.
Just askin??
Mark, are these dual tests being taken on true split samples, or just on milk of the same date code?
A machine milk bucket does not have a ” milk line” if do not consider the 3 foot hose to be a line. I do not consider it to be a true milk line because you can throw it away and get another one as a matter of routine and they are easily cleaned and dismantled.
Hand milking is subject to all sorts of random acts of god….flies, misc dust, dirt, cows feet, milkers hands, invisible stuff, all dropping into the open bucket. Machine bucket milking closes the system and also assures that milker behavior is consistent. When you get tired of hand milking….things can get sloppy. It is hard work!!!
Sometimes the case is already pre-determined.
Sometimes the case is already pre-determined.
Glenn Reynolds has written this book-
An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595550542
All the best to everybody,
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
As amended through April 2011
Article IV.
Legislative
Enactment of laws. Section 17. [As amended April 1977] (1) The style of all laws of the state shall be The people of the state of Wisconsin, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:.