Two years ago, on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, inspectors from the local and state health departments clamped cease-and-desist and quarantine orders on coolers containing raw milk intended for members of a
Raids
I've seen the video at least twice now, the one of Wisconsin food inspector Cathy Anderson throwing blue dye into a vat containing hundreds of gallons of Vernon Hershberger's raw milk that fateful second day of June, 2010.
Imagine leaving the military after a long career, enthusiastically launching a new business, and then, after much business trauma, concluding that the system you spent years defending with your life is corrupt.
A year ago I summarized the key themes for 2011 as "rising shock events" and "rising stress levels," thanks to highly public raids on food clubs and farms.
Six weeks in advance of the criminal trial of Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger, pre-trial maneuvering moved into high gear Tuesday.
You wonder what sitting in jail for four months--all for running a private food club--does to a guy. You wonder what it does to the people around him who were supposedly watching his back.
On Monday afternoon, I took a 40-minute drive to Terri Lawton's Oake Knoll Ayrshires farm in nearby Foxboro, MA, to pick up a Thanksgiving turkey.
What is the essential ingredient enabling farmers and food club operators to successfully resist the seemingly endless government assaults and incursions on private food arrangements?
When I spoke with Alvin Schlangen a few days ago, I asked him how he felt about having been in the shadows of the food rights movement the last couple of years, prior to his trial.
This site's mission is to provide news and analysis about food rights and raw milk. Increasingly, our access to privately available food is under attack by government and industry forces that seek to impose their choices on us. The Complete Patient seeks to provide up-to-date information and encourage the development of community to maintain traditional food acquisition options.