It happened yesterday in that parking lot in Michigans Washington Township, that a member of My Family Co-Op demanded she be allowed to take the milk she had contracted for via her herdshare agreement. An inspector with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development told her she couldnt have it, that if she climbed onto the truck to claim it, he would call the police and have her arrested.
This is a not-uncommon occurrence that has played itself out in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, California, Georgia, and, yes, Michigan, among other places. I describe a number of these cases in my books on food rights, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights and The Raw Milk Revolution. Most of the time, the individual contract owners are intimidated by the ag inspectors threats, and they back off. The backing off is understandable, because no one wants to confront police. (The photo above of Georgia raw milk owners dumping their milk under government orders is an example of how not to respond.)
But the reality is that the threats are mostly empty. They are made in loud voices by ag inspectors with little real power. The ag inspectors dont have police powers, so they must call a police officer or sheriff if they want an arrest made. At that point, they have to explain to the officer what the problem is. The contract owner can explain as well that he or she owns the food in question, and is merely taking delivery.
Now, if the ag inspectors have a search warrant and are accompanied by police of some sort to carry out the search, that puts a different spin on the situation. But if it is a situation like what occurred yesterday in Michigan, in which the agents were simply putting condemnation stickers or ribbons on food, then they cant themselves stop people from taking their food, and they may not get support from local police.
Its important for people to understand their rights, and to be aggressive in protecting their rights. Food theft is a serious matter, and it is much more serious if it is a government agency that is doing the thieving.
Here are six suggestions to anyone joining a herdshare or food club, and those running these entities, for reducing the chances of government food theft:
- Join a food club or herdshare with an activist mindset. Understand when you sign up that one of the responsibilities that comes with ownership or membership is an obligation to demand and obtain your food, even under threat of arrest.
- Likewise, herdshares and food club owners should inform prospective members that they may be called upon to claim their food, under threat of arrest.
- Herdshares and food clubs should develop a plan in the event their food is seized. This can include cutting the hazard tape, re-claiming the food, and otherwise defying orders that condemn food.
- Know that if you are arrested, the government will have much difficulty making a case against you for taking food that is yours. The charges would most likely have to do with disturbing the peace or resisting arrest or interfering with a police officercharges that would most likely be dismissed. Yes, youd have to go through a legal action, but it would be for a very important principle.
- Keep the comments and letters to ag officials and politicians coming. A few that have been sent in the My Family Co-Op matter are reprinted in the comments section following my previous post.
- Operators of herdshares and food clubs should seek out financial support from their owners/members if food is forcibly seized, to help replace the food and continue operations. They should also seek out legal help from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. That helps the operators deal with the the financial threats that hangs over their heads for resisting.
We have some successful models of resistance. We have examples from Kentucky, where John Moodys food club re-claimed their food, along with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Canada, where farmers Alvin Schlangen, Vernon Hershberger, and Michael Schmidt refused to be intimidated, and emerged with stronger farming operations than before.
The reality is that the biggest fear of the ag and public health officials who periodically decide to confiscate peoples food is that the food owners will fight back. The absolute last thing any government official wants to do is get into a fight with the people about their food. It is the worst sort of PR, since it conjures up images of masses of people rioting over food, the kind of actions that over the course of history have led to revolutions and governments collapsing.
The ag people carry out these kinds of operations for the sake of intimidation. They want to send a message to farmers that they shouldnt be selling food this way, that they are cutting into corporate profit margins. That is why the best way to put a stop to these actions is to send a message of intimidation back. If people stand up to the food police, they and their overseers will get the message.
As a community herdshare, we are also are very proactive about practicing and documenting sound food safety practices. A condition of membership and ownership is that every member review our farm’s food safety plan and share in the responsibility for producing safe and quality food. This serves multiple purposes. The first is that it assures us safe, clean, great-tasting, long lasting milk. And second, it is easier for a community to stand behind a farm that is demonstrating responsibilty than one that is a chaotic, dirty mess. Vernon Hershberger is a great example. Responsible farmer. Beautiful, clean, well-run farm share. Zero illness. And a community that stood with him.
Shawna, as I read your comment, I realized that not once in the My Family Co-Op affair–either from the regulators or from the farmer– have I heard anyone allude to food safety. Rather, the affair seems to stem from a desire somewhere in Michigan’s bureaucracy to come down hard on a co-op that has organized a herdshare.
Your allusion to your farm “operating in a rather un-defined area of the law” may have relevance in Michigan as well. I have this uneasy feeling that at least part of the current problem may stem from the fact that Michigan’s bureaucrats–its attorney general and its Department of Agriculture and Rural Development–implemented herdshare rules as a matter of policy rather than passing particular laws. Whenever bureaucrats establish the policy, it is open to interpretation by whomever is running key parts of the bureaucracy at particular points in time. A new person somewhere in the bureaucracy who doesn’t approve of raw milk can suddenly interpret the existing policy more stringently than his or her predecessor. We have seen Illinois public health regulators try to clamp down on raw dairy producers as a matter of policy…and in the absence of a specific safety problem.
Sometimes, if existing law is vague, bureaucrats can similarly re-interpret according to their own biases; we have seen crackdowns on raw milk in Minnesota and Wisconsin based on tough new interpretations of existing law open to multiple interpretations.
I’m afraid in all these places–Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota–food safety practices count not a whit to the regulators. Or, let me put it this way–the regulators are going to denounce raw milk as unsafe in the absence of any safety problems, and denounce it even more rabidly if per chance there are safety issues (like the discovery of pathogens in milk, or an outbreak of illness). I sometimes have this vision (maybe it’s a nightmare) of RAWMI members being hauled off to court or jail because of an arbitrary change in rules like that just occurring in Michigan, waving their milk test results and protesting, “But we have the safest raw milk anywhere, you can’t do this to us.”
Despite the regulators’ often cynical approach to raw milk safety (you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t), I do think you are wise to be proactive in involving herdshare members in safety practices. Everyone should want the safest possible milk, as a matter of dealing with regulation, and ensuring members’ good health.
Ken
First…turn on the iPhone cameras and start cresting some news. You are on stage when raw milk seizures go down. Video and a call to the local news station creates buzz and empathy, especially if moms can tell their story and expose the truth of it all. The regulators most often come off like stooges….and moms the victims. That’s #1.
Number #2…be the first to call the police and have the police or sheriff respond to a theft of private food. The empathy goes to the first caller. Do not let the regulators call first…you call first and you be the first to explain the situation and file a claim. The police generally feel compassion for the first to call for help. They are the presumed innocent.
Lastly…in areas of America that must operate in this strange and backward raw milk environment, farmers and their consumers must practice for this civil unrest and get ready to act. Seriously, remember this is war and strategic tactics must be in place for these idiots. They are unprepared to deal with 50 or 100 moms or families that have thought this through….and then act.
John Moody responded with cool tactics when this happened in Kentucky and that cow share raw milk coop prevailed beautifully. This happened because of unified, legal, smart and ballsy action. Americans must start thinking and acting differently when it comes to rogue gustopo regulators that refuse to act rationally, responsivily and or professionally.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/07/17/painkiller-addiction-overdose.aspx?e_cid=20140717Z1_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20140717Z1&et_cid=DM52794&et_rid=589041882
Ken
Thank heaven for guys like Jonathan Emord and also, of course, Baylen Linnekin, for their efforts to help us obtain our food freedoms.
http://emord.com/blawg/emord-interview-in-freedom-from-choice-to-appear-on-the-stossel-show/
Ora, you’ll like this one – – today I broke down and watched dr oz (not a fan of tv much less tv doctors) and his guest was mikey adams (also not a fan of his, but nevertheless. . .). Mikey was talking about how even organic foods contain toxic metals in nearly lethal proportions sometimes. I was willing to hear what mikey had to say because not everything he does is sensationalized, but about 90% of it is. But that’s just my opinion so whatever. Right in the middle of the show, however, ABC cut in with some “breaking news” about another malaysan airliner going down – this time over the ukraine somewhere. So the segment never did get to finish. I’m sure it will probably be available on youtube or oz’s web site at some point – you might wanna check that out. :>
Shawna, I think the food safety issue is a two-edged sword when it comes to herdshares, at least from a regulatory viewpoint. I know that when they were discussed in Groton, MA, it was from the vantage point of taking the town off the hook in terms of having responsibility for overseeing food safety. Herdshares would have to be self regulating, from that perspective. I suspect the rationale was much the same when other states, like Michigan and Colorado, sanctioned them. Yet in California, food safety concerns were ostensibly the reason herdshares weren’t sanctioned by the legislature (though certainly you could make the argument that safety concerns were a convenient excuse for legislators to serve the interests of Big Dairy). The implication in California was that, once safety concerns are explicitly provided for in herdshare legislation, they can be approved.
In either situation, though, I agree with you that if a dairy with a herdshare is called on the carpet for tainted milk or suspected illnesses, being able to document safety procedures is extremely important, not only for PR, for for being able to isolate any problem.
But government “food safety” office workers creating and dictating rules for farms when they’ve never been within spitting distance of a herdshare farm and have NO idea what one is like or how they operate – that’s ridiculous.
Ads that target teenagers/children…does that mean that teenagers have no common sense? Joe camel never encouraged me to smoke, the Marlborough man was nice eye candy, I miss the Budweiser frogs.
Maybe I shouldn’t have quit smoking…..then I could live in a McMansion ranch house and pay a foreman to run the place and have all the raw dairy I want and fresh produce, etc. (I just up and quit, didn’t need any drugs)
http://news.yahoo.com/fla-jury-slams-rj-reynolds-23-6b-damages-194846478.html
Lots of spices and actually good sounding stuff in a cigarette, actually. No wonder people get hooked!
http://archive.tobacco.org/Resources/599ingredients.html
In May of this year it’s been 17 years since I quit and I simply drank lots of water and flushed myself out. That was before drinking water was “fashionable”. 😉 I’ve never missed it for a minute. I still love the smell of a good cigar or a pipe.
If you have a co-op, good to notice the top honchos at the FDA, USDA, Police, etc in writing …that if they and their agents violate the people’s inherent rights, there will be a price to pay, that they will be personally sued in a common law court; that they’d better be on the oaths of office and be bonded; that a commercial lien may be filed against them.
Statutes and codes do NOT apply to people…unless we consent to them. They were meant for govt employees. Crucial for all sovereigns (free people) to learn about common law, true law of the land. This is how we free ourselves. Remember that the people are masters and govt is our servant. If we give our power over to them by consent, then that is our own fault. Under common law, there is no crime if not injury/damage. Corporate fictions like the State or the Feds cannot be the injured party since they are not live/real.
This is a must watch intro about jurisdiction and the scam on the people: Consent of the Governed
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SelfSufficientandSovereign/conversations/messages/329
Everyone is encouraged to sign up to be common law grand jurists to put an end to the corrupt statutory court system: http://nationallibertyalliance.org/ You need to register first, to get access to jury info. Search out your state coordinators and get involved. NLA is sending notices to all courts in the country to let them know common law prevails. If you’d like to help, go here: http://nationallibertyalliance.org/indiegogo
Some info. that may help to sort out the confusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50cB5yhKR98 The Big Plantation – Full – The UNITED STATES is a Corporation PROOF
http://www.usavsus.info/
http://dirtyunclesam.com/category/documents/ supporting docs- black/white
http://1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/grandjuryrules.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Ku17CqdZg Learn to stop consenting to statutes/codes. They DON”T apply to us!
Common law, by constitution, is law of state. Beech Grove Inv. Co. v. Civil Rights Com’n (1968) 157 N.W.2d 213, 380 Mich. 405
Code is “not the law” (In Re Self v Rhay, 61 Wn (2d) 261) defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as prima facie, which is color of law. Color is “counterfeit or feigned”.
The real law is the common law as described in the above case and the code itself. The People are not “subject to law” generally (Yick Wo v Hopkins, 118 US 356, 370) except for the criminal codes that are codified common law. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable on any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself. See: Yick Wo v. Hopkins
, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
“. . . The Congress cannot revoke the Sovereign power of the people to override itself as thus declared.” See: Perry v. United States , 294 U.S. 330, 353 (1935).
Sooo much info. out there to set us free. Knowledge is key.
the posting by ‘gypsieme’, is = word-for-word = the same crap~ola we encounterd in the DeTax movment, and will only lead someone who practices it, down the same dead-end. More than onc’t I’ve had to use the punchline from that Depression-era vaudeville routine : “don’t eat that stuff, Elmer”
I strongly recommend people to go back through the audio archives of George Gordon, to find the segments “Destroyed Arguments”, wherein he explains what happens to poor saps who go in to Court, mouthing this stuff. The Quatloos website, has hundreds of examples of how it plays out, ie. tragically
Day by day we are prevailing … first and last, by putting the good stuff in the hands of those who appreciate it.
any part of that “freeman on the land / De Tax / sovereignty” palaver which does make some sense, at all, is only in context of a society which existed 250 years ago = White Christian people who knew who they were and lived according to the Bible. Our God blessed this nation, then. But no more : in 2014, the unified Soviet States of Ham-merica is a non-white, non-christian country ruled by people who hate us.
The controversy about REAL MILK, being just one small ( but very important) battlefront as we God punishes us for rejecting our heritage …. suffering one of the penalty clauses of Deuteronomy 28, wherein our very food supply will be “diminished”. We live in one grandiose Potemkin village = the appearance of plenty of food, from which the nutritional value has been stolen – and that, not by accident.
the way we prevail over the race traitors in high places, is = by asserting our right to use and enjoy our private property … simply doing the milking then putting REAL MILK in the hands of people who appreciate it
my role is to do the first-hand investigation of such urban myths : which, in the DeTax thing, led me to come within an ace of being sent to gaol for simply demanding the govt. address my demand to ‘show me the law’, ie authorized form for filing a return of income. Even though a Supreme Court of BC judge admitted my position was correct ab initio, he then ordered me to comply with whatever the RevScam aparatchik told me. After they turned off the official recorder, I told Mister Justice Silverman “John Locke said ‘where the law ends, tyranny begins’.
That applies to this milk thing, in that the officials are the lawless ones, but you’re not going to put them back in their proper place as our servants, by thrashing-around in verbiage centuries out of date
A handy example being ; the first trial of Michael Schmidt before the Justice of the Peace. Schmidt’s acquaintance stood up first, and presented himself as a paralegal, mouthing the same kind of clap-trap as your original post = ‘statutes don’t apply to natural Person’. whereupon the JP told him to get lost.
19 years later from when I stumbled into the income tax rage minefield, it’s beyond argument that the Powers-that-Be, laugh up their sleeves at how the idiocy they insinuate into political movements, gets taken seriously. For instance, their poster-boy in Canada Robert Menard, either a paid agent provocateur, or a simpleton who really believes his own stuff …. I have yet to figure out which
The so-called Montana Freemen don’t find the ending of their journey, all that funny. That same result = armed standoff of ” the compound” = is what the tyrants are aching to do to the Campaign for REAL MILK.
Life and death are in the power of the tongue
George Gordon’s trade-mark line, is : “you can avoid a lot more trouble than you can get yourself out of”
You want to see the meaning of “gibberish” ? Do your own homework: for instance = find out what madman David Wynne -Miller was publishing back circa 2000, when I called his bluff
A word to the wise is sufficient, but the backs of fools are made for stripes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/754540/posts
a newbie who comes along to this topic, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, proffering his silver bullet re: the Freeman on the land’ stuff, gets his feelings hurt when I weigh-in, brutally- honest, spotlighting his new toy as utter balderdash. Too bad. People on the front lines of the REAL MILK issue, call it war, because they’ve seen the naked face of evil. In this battle, I dont have time to waste, holding someones hand while they get up to speed. I’m not here to win friends and influence people by simpering. my style is to use short, sharp strokes to get the message across :
“We must now face the harsh truth that the objectives of communism are being steadily advanced because many of us do not recognize the means used to advance them. … The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a Conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst.” J. Edgar Hoover (Elks Magazine, August 1956.)