Food rights proponents got another civics lesson today when Alvin Schlangens jury trial on four misdemeanor charges, due to begin next Monday, was put off indefinitely.
It is easy for food rights proponents who participated in protest activities in Minnesota in recent days to think theyre not being noticed. In point of fact, they are being noticed, big time.
The Hennepin County prosecutor in charge of the Alvin Schlangen trial succeeded in delaying the trial, using the excuse that a lab technician from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture due to testify about raw milk was unavailable next week.
Nathan Hansen, the lawyer for Schlangen, said the trial could have moved forward if Hansen had been willing to stipulate the facts, that is, accept the witness testimony unchallenged. But of course, you dont need much of an imagination to figure out what the nature of the states assessment of raw milk would be. Certainly part of the states case will be fear mongering about the dangers of raw milk.
I didnt want to stipulate the facts, Hansen told me. My job is to defend my client, not help them. ..I objected to a continuance of the case, but the judge granted it.
What if Hansen had come to the court and said one of his witnesses had been unavailable? He probably wouldnt give a continuance to the defense, said Hansen.
No new date for this, the anticipated first jury trial in a food rights case, has been set. Why would the state want to delay? A couple reasons:
First, it is afraid of a jury trial. A group of 12 ordinary citizens is much more likely than a judge to ask the simple question: What the heck has Alvin Schlangen done wrong? And a jury trial with dozens of supporters of the defendant sitting in the audience? Intolerable.
Second, getting a reprieve gives the state time to possibly pile on more charges. In addition to the four misdemeanor counts due to be tried in Hennepin County, the state already has a second case, consisting of six misdemeanor counts, pending against Schlangen in Stearns County. That case adds two charges not in the Hennepin County charges, accusing Schlangen of not having a food handlers license and of failing to keep his eggs at a maximum of 47 degrees (saying his eggs were kept at 53 degrees).
The idea behind adding charges is to scare the defendant out of having a jury trial, and becoming amenable to a settlement, potentially accepting probation as the penalty for a guilty plea, and a way to be sure of avoiding jail. According to Hansen, the state really wants Alvin on probation so they can mess with him that way. One condition of probation for Schlangen would certainly be to abstain from food club activities.
To pile on even more charges, the MDA would have to convince prosecutors in other counties where Schlangen’s club has members to file charges. Hansen says hes heard via various sources that the MDA has run into resistance in at least one other county. And the prosecutors in the two counties where charges have been filed only did so after considerable political lobbying by the MDA, he said.
The tactic of piling on ever more charges has been occurring with the Rawesome Food Club case, where Los Angeles County and Ventura County have added substantial charges to the original allegations of violations in connection with raw milk.
Make no mistake, the Schlangen case is part of a nationally directed enforcement and legal campaign against food rights. The Schlangen case, like the Rawesome case, is a political case rather than a criminal case, and as such is being monitored out of Washington, with lots of legal talent focused on bobbing and weaving.
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The week-long quarantine on Organic Pastures Dairy Co. has been lifted, and the dairys products are being shipped to retailers around the state. Mark McAfee, the owner, announced the development in a Facebook video. All the tests have revealed no pathogens he said in his statement.
I know of several people who do not keep their fridge cold either. Cold enough for them tho. Govt needs to stay back!
Tracy
What a shame that our MN government chooses to go after peaceful farmers, rather than putting those resources toward catching the real criminals. “Murderapolis’ is what needs government help to alleviate its crime rate; the traditional food industry is doing fine, as long as the government leaves it alone!
I feel your pain….America has become a fascist nation…little by little. To fight back you a criminal.
The most power resistance is the resistance created by dollar voting. Just bankrupt the establishment by denial of purchase of their products. It is cripplying and highly effective.
To resist armed idiots masquerading as badge wearing police is insane. To elect better Mayors to select better ethical and moral police chiefs is brilliant.
America is dumbed down and stupid stupid…with one in 54 autistic in the next generation what do you think is going to happen. America is a reallly stupid place. Stupid is as stupid does.
Teach Teach Teach and Build Build Build….let the cops go be fascists….do not engage or give them a target.
” We are concerned that all of your employees each lunch together… can you do something about this and develop separate break areas? At pasteurization plants the employees never see each other and eat separately.”
This is how the inspectors see the world.
While I do not disagree that this might be a good idea if you worked in a hospital with an epidemic of the plague happening…but this is not OPDC and it is not my vision of the world. OPDC has Sea Gulls, Ducks that land, chickens, cows, calves, goats, rats, dogs, kids, people, gophers, coyotes….
Our USDA organic plan describes this living vibrant refuge and how it is different from the sterilized world of monocultures and chemical agriculture.
This is the clash of paradigms….the definition of what SAFE FOOD IS….and what CLEAN IS.
One of the moms emailed me and said she had one of the 10 kids listed by DPH as sick from OPDC in January…now the real story comes out. Her kid had 2 days of diarrhea and recovered at home…never stopped drinking OPDC. This child also does not have asthma or allergies and is a picture perfect example of health and cries without his OPDC raw milk!!
So we have a real problem here. The state wants OPDC to be stuffed into a pasteurization box complete with segregation of all employees so they no longer know or see one another and raw milk so clean that pathogens start showing up in it….remember the raw cream samples…they had less than 1 coliforms and lower than lab limits on SPC.
Enough of the mental push ups….we have lots of work to do to fix America and its broken immune and food system.
We will wash our hands, we will be very clean….but we will eat together at OPDC. We are a family team.
Mark
Of course you do.
Heres how, from the Mitchell & Webb Situation
http://youtube/_pDTiFkXgEE
(Its 1:39 long and the milk is at the end.)
Farming made simpleton.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Something registered out of the norm for the parent to be concerned enough to take their child to the doctor and for the doctor to run a fecal test. Youre famous for downplaying foodborne illnesses and it is difficult for anyone to really know what is fact or fiction when you write about illnesses from any of the 3 outbreaks that have occurred from your milk. You always have to spin ithalf-truths and lies.
Do you remember all the things you said to the media during the 2006 outbreak?
This is what you said on September 25th to the Raw Milk Yahoo group:
The four children that the state claims were sickened by raw milk are doing as follows: two are at home and were never significantly ill or hospitalized and are now home (more of a scare than an illness). The news say that one drank OPDC raw milk and one drank another brand of raw milk??. . Two remain in the hospital at Loma Linda, one of the parents deny their childs illness was caused by raw milk but say that vegetables eaten at a sushi bar caused the illness, she is recovering and doing much better and making urine (recovering well). The last child is very sick and is officially on the spinach list (according to close sources that have knowledge of the hospital and treatment).
Notice how you frame the illness of the two children that werent hospitalizedmore of a scare than an illness. And of course you have the famous veggie and spinach spin. So Chris was on the official spinach list? Someone forgot to notifiy me of this fact.
Heres another quote from your interview with Acres USA (January 2007):
I found out that the truth was completely different from the claims of the authorities. In fact, there werent four children, there were only two children who were sick, and of those two children, one was officially on the spinach list and admitted to having spinach from Watsonville; the other came out on national TV and said it had nothing to do with the milk.
So again, I admitted Chris ate spinach from Watsonville? Fascinating! When you visited, the public nurse still hadnt called back about the results from testing the spinach (which was purchased from an open bin at the health food store), but you claim I admitted he had eaten spinach from Watsonville.
And lets not forget what you said on the Kojo Nnamdi show in August of 2007:
There were not four children that were sickened, there were only 2 children that were sickened. Two of these children were never treated with any antibiotics, were never treated with any medications, recovered at home, without therapy, without being in the hospital and their parents denied that they were very ill or they were ill at all .the other two children were very, very sick .
Once again you downplay the illnesses of the two children that did not get HUS. Did you speak to these families? NO! You only had intimate information about Chris and Lauren because of your contact with the woman who gave Lauren the milk (Laurens fathers girlfriend). She is the one who led you to childrens hospital.
The tragedy of it all is this when I asked the parents and asked the doctors and looked at the records at Loma Linda, they did not have pathogens in their stools that matched each other. In other words, it was a different bacteria that made the 2 children sick. One had e-coli 0157:H7 and the parent/caretaker of the child said it had nothing to do with raw milk. It was a spinach salad and they never assumed it was raw milk.
This is the most laughable quote of them all. We were in a locked unit, but somehow all HIPPA laws were broken and the doctors let you look at the medical records.
So Mark, you have taught me that anything that comes out of your mouth regarding the facts surrounding outbreaks and illnesses connected to your products is mostly B.S.
O.M. is correct. The one leads to the other.
Thus either of these URLs directly entered should bring it to you:
http://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE
The google search term (web): “the mitchell and webb situation farming”
should lead to it.
A fortune, a fortune! awaits us savvy, in-the-know, city-dwellers! Who knew?
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Tracy
http://www.campylobacterblog.com/campylobacter-outbreak/cdph-isolated-campylobacter-jejuni-from-six-samples-of-organic-pasturess-raw-cream-one-sample-of-raw-butter-and-four-samples-of-cow-manure-from-cows/
Mark has a campy problem. He’s had it before… as well as e.coli problems. Who cares?
Reality bites. Everyday, gazillions of people get sick. The real question remains, why are some disproportianetly dispositioned to rail against raw milk? i woke up this morning, I breathed and felt somewhat sick, but I didn’t set out to blame the atmosphere, or the neighbors cows. YMMV.
So, because YOU feel that way about things, the rest of us should too??? I’m sorry but I like to taste my food, not the box it came in. Actually, the boxes probably have more nutrition than the food inside.
I’ll stick with my raw milk and all the other real foods vs the gun-toting fools at Monsanto and Dean Foods and Tyson Chicken, etc., etc., for which the list is endless and the arguments mindless. Go to http://www.cornucopia.org and scroll down to about the middle of the page to see a chart showing which BIGPHOOD company owns which smaller food company and which BIGPHOOD company owns which *organic* company. That’s where YOUR money goes, no doubt because you and Mary and a few others here don’t trust humankind. I trust my local farmers market, CSA, raw milk producer and whoever else MUCH more than I trust BIGPHOOD doods. If you have no one in your area in whom you place your trust with real foods, perhaps you need to keep searching.
Also, I’ve seen in the comments on past articles here and elsewhere, that you have a problem with WAPF and in particular with Sally Fallon Morell. Again, it’s a choice issue. You have your choice, others have theirs. Live with it.
You should read the book “Screwed” by Dick Morris. Very eye-opening. Or read almost anything by Paul Craig Roberts concerning freedom. That should keep you busy long enough to keep you from pestering others just because they have different views than you. Ditto, Mary McG.
Happy trails.
And I agree with you that discussing everything about raw milk is not hate, it’s reality. It only becomes hate when Mary McG posts that same hateful message about her own child, and then assumes to know why some other child had diarrhea for two days before the parents went to a doctor, when in reality she likely has no clue about that situation. Neither do I because I don’t know those people but I’m not making any assumptions either.
Mary continually posts her story here because she wants to catch new readers with her message. She probably has influenced a number of people against raw milk but it would only be people who haven’t looked at all the facts. Which is why people like Sally Fallon Morell and a host of others are telling the other side – about the dangers of pasteurized milk and the real danger of ultrapasteurized *organic* milk. Ewwww.
Again, happy trails.
Such a strong statement. Is it possible that they have no respect for this movement because, while statistically your chances of getting sick from raw milk are low but if you do get sick, and especially if you’re a child, you can become deathly ill with lifelong health consequences? Coupled with the fact that there is a national organization with local chapters and a national conference extolling the virtues of raw milk while chronically ignoring the potential harm? Is it possible that the public health workers on the front lines are not bought-and-paid for like you claim (undoubtedly the higher ups are), but are genuinely alarmed that people continue to rush to the defense of illness-causing farmers which is NEVER seen in any other food industry?
In regards to raw milk:
“No other product that is so potentially harmful is given a pass by zealous consumers. When ground beef or cantaloupe causes an outbreak, no one is rushing to the defense of beef processors or cantaloupe packers.”
No, the black-and-white answer of bought-and-paid for is much easier, isn’t it.
I am constantly amazed that it’s the same people who tolerate and defend the racist rants of Watson and the political derailment of Anderson who are completely intolerant of Mary’s presence, especially when preaching freedom.
I’d love to meet you and your husband someday. I think you would both be surprised how much we have in common.
We’d be better off with this position:
1. Relocalized (and democratized) food production and distribution are far safer than the corporate system, which is actually radically unsafe in many ways, including its high incidence of outbreaks.
2. In particular raw milk as part of economic relocalization is part of rendering the food supply more safe.
3. Nevertheless, like with any food, there will always be a slight risk with it.
4. The movement needs to do its best to monitor itself, maintain safety standards for itself, educate the public about itself, and about their own need to become more active citizens of food, and organize in whatever way is best to further these goals.
What we DON’T need is appeasement propaganda (like the 100% safe/zero-outbreak party line some want to propagate) which can never work anyway since we cannot achieve this sterility, or a collaborationist organization which will really just seek to legalize raw milk within the corporatist framework.
Indeed, expressed by everyone, right?
More reason to question studies.
http://www.annarbor.com/pets/fda-pet-food-recall-diamond-investigation-report-salmonella-infantis/
“According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 15 people in nine states and one person in Canada had been confirmed infected with Salmonella from contact with the contaminated dry dog food or from contact with a pet that had eaten the tainted product as of May 11.”
http://www.annarbor.com/pets/nestle-cat-food-recall-veterinary-diet-om-overweight-management/
http://www.petmd.com/news/alerts-recalls/nws_diamond_pet_foods_natural_balance_dog_food_recall_050512#.T7pCL8WwWNU
“CDPH also isolated Campylobacter jejuni from six samples of the dairys raw cream, one sample of raw butter and four samples of cow manure from the milking herd.”
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/egov/Press_Releases/Press_Release.asp?PRnum=12-019
As Mary pointed out a short while back that it is on video that people still think raw milk kills e.coli *to the point it is safe to consume and won’t get you sick.* WAPF promoted the crap out of that notion and Sally Fallon-Morell may still believe it for all I know. She hasn’t said she doesn’t believe it and, yes, she has been recorded saying raw milk is a “magic food.”
Here is a pro-raw milk writer, who disguises himself as an unbiased researcher who advocates for properly informed consumers (sound familiar?) but who also happens to have a raw milk consumption problem (sound familiar?), (http://chriskresser.com/raw-milk-reality-is-raw-milk-dangerous) who has changed the course to the tune of essentially “you’re more likely to kill your child by strapping it into its car seat than you are by giving it raw milk” which is funny to me because cars are pretty much necessary in our modern world and child car safety is highly regulated and legislated. Where are the child car safety denialists? “ITS MY RIGHT to put my child in a car without it’s car seat!” they yell. You see? Car seat safety is not the same as raw milk at all, is it?
I wrote a blog post a week ago (http://farmmuckraker.blogspot.com/2012/05/ecoli-0157h7-survives-in-raw-milk-no.html) about people still believing raw milk kills of pathogens rendering it a completely safe food because it still pizzes the crap out of me *because I was one of the unfortunate moms who blindly believed Sally Fallon-Morell* Maybe that’s the same boss Amanda and I work for? I don’t know, I haven’t asked her. Surprise, there is no puppet master yanking our strings. But she did write the white paper on raw milk competitive exclusion. If you want to say she cherry picked data, D. Smith, then you sound like a WAPF/Beals supporter and see my rant against WAPF/Fallon above. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Feel free to drink your raw milk but just don’t tell me that it is safe for me to drink when I was pregnant (hello, miscarriage anyone), when my baby was an infant and when my baby was a toddler, and even now when I still cleaning up leaking gut syndrome and not so hot immunity…so on and so forth. Here is a sobering report from a physician on the front lines:
“I have seen 3 children ages 17 months to 10 years old in the last 2 months with E. Coli 0157-H7 gastroenteritis all of whom drank raw milk. The two youngest had the complication of HUS which is Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. This causes renal failure and other life threatening complications. One child is still in the hospital going on 2 months now. I would not recommend drinking unpasteurized milk for anyone under the age of 3 or 4 years old. It is simply not worth the risk regardless of statistics as mentioned previously. If it is your child the incidence is 100%!”
Rant over. I need to go get some beauty rest.
This same trite fable – toddler lying in hospital after drinking raw milk – plays so well in the media to demonize REAL MILK, because, ‘who’d be so flinty-hearty as to doubt one of the demi-gods in a White Robe?’
Produce the name / phone # of the one you refer to, so I can verify and talk to him myself ; shouldn’t be all that difficult, n’est ce que pas?
And are you saying in this comment that you feel BigDairy lobbying isn’t one of the major factors behind the bad press concerning raw dairy?
Unarming the FDA; stopping the FDA from raiding Amish farms and raw milk producers.
Only about 7 min. Don’t miss it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT8waPM9yYw&feature=youtu.be