The double standard continues very much alive and well in the world of milk.
The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin organization, today announced two class action suits being filed against Aurora Dairy Corp. a $100 million outfit in Colorada, for all kinds of violations of the organic-milk standards, including adding conventional cows to its supposedly organic herd. Aurora runs a huge confinement operation (pictured above, in photo from Cornucopia), whose milk is sold under private label to Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and other such mass retailers. (Wasn’t it hamburger patties from Wal-Mart that got people sick last month?)
What is especially striking about the suits is that they are being filed by citizens as class action suits, rather than by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to the Cornucopia release, “Many industry observers feel that the USDA’s enforcement mechanism broke down in the Aurora case. After career USDA staff drafted a Letter of Proposed Revocation, seeking to prevent Aurora from engaging in organic commerce, political appointees at the agency intervened, crafting an agreement allowing Aurora to remain in business.”
Now let me tell you more about how a government agency has handled another milk case–this one involving Barbara Smith and her husband, Steve, owners of the Meadowsweet Farm near Ithaca, New York. As I wrote previously, the Smiths opted out of New York’s raw milk permit system in order to establish a herd share, and within months of launching last spring, had 130 shareholders and a waiting list.
Everyone was pretty happy…except New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets. They came with inspections, fines, search warrants. The Smiths continued serving their shareholders.
Then, last Thursday, who should show up at the Smith’s farm but Will Francis, director of the department’s Division of Milk Control and Dairy Services. “He came all the way from Albany,” says Steve Smith. “It’s a four-hour ride from Albany to our place. He came with the local inspector, Casey McHugh. They said they were here to do an inspection.”
But, of course, a department director doesn’t travel four hours to do a personal inspection unless he has more in mind than an inspection. After looking around and conferring by cell phone with a department lawyer, “They said, ‘We are quarantining your product.’” What that means in practice is the Smiths can’t distribute to shareholders any of the 130 quarts of raw-milk yogurt, 20 bottles of buttermilk, and five gallons of raw milk in their cooler.
That wasn’t the end of the matter. On Saturday evening, at 7 p.m., a local inspector stopped by the farm to deliver a “hearing notice.” Now, when was the last time you heard of an agriculture department official working on a Saturday evening? Actually, when was the last time you heard of one working any time after 5 p.m. on a weekday, forget about Saturdays or Sundays.
The hearing notice ordered the Smiths to forsake a day of work to make the four-hour trip to Albany to attend a hearing next Tuesday, Oct. 23, “to say why we think our products are not adulterated,” says Steve. He and Barbara have invited the 130 herd share owners to attend. Oh yes, and their lawyers need to be there as well (the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund is representing the Smiths and their herdshare.)
I tried to reach Will Francis, and was told he was unavailable until Friday. The public information officer of New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets didn’t return my call. I wanted to ask them if the inspector who served that warrant got double time or triple time for working a Saturday night.
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Greg Niewendorp got good news on the two calves that tested positive on the forcible skin test last week of his herd for bovine tuberculosis. Followup blood tests cleared the animals, so eight months after he launched his civil dispobedience, his run-in with the state is over…for now.
But Greg says that’s not the end of the matter.
“I’m going to take all the tags out of their ears,” he says of the RFID (radio frequency identification) tags affixed by the Michigan Department of Agriculture in their role as lackeys for the federal National Animal Identification System (NAIS).
Does this put Greg once again in violation of federal and state edicts? We’ll see.
In the meantime, there is an excellent feature article about Greg’s battle with the MDA in the current issue of Northern Express (which also quotes yours truly). Anne Stanton, the reporter, did a very nice job of capturing both sides of this complex issue.
The officials said to them, "We are quarantining your product. But it is not the Smiths’ product. It belongs to the owners of the cows, i.e. the members of the herd share. The officials’ action is tantamount to theft.
They also say that the Smiths must explain why the products are not adulterated. Leave aside for a moment the important question of why plain raw milk and related products untainted by antibiotics and hormones would be considered "adulterated." The Smiths are clearly being treated as guilty until proven innocent. Requiring that they relinquish their fifth ammendment rights to prove a negative is outrageous. That these officals are not hauled into court to explain themselves is equally outrageous.
Seeems to me that these ‘political appointees’ are the folks that should be sued…..(or drawn and quartered, or waterboarded)
Some terrorists create fear through bombs….others do it with ‘agreements’.
Exposing the irresponsibility of the governments handling of the organic program is important work. Thanks David.
Two reasons why dairy farmers are opting out:
1. The raw milk permits in NY and PA only allow for raw milk production; yogurt, butter, cheese aren’t allowed, and the farmers say demand for these raw milk products is soaring.
2. The farmers want out of the inspection process, which many feel has become increasingly arbitrary and punitive. The Smiths in NY received $1,700 in fines over the past summer, for offenses that appeared marginal at best.
To solve both these problems, the farmers set up herdshare-type agreements with consumers. Unfortunately, state bureaucrats don’t like farmers opting out. What will the bureaucrats do with themselves if there are fewer farmers to regulate?
By setting up as an LLC, and opting out of the system Meadowsweet no longer had to abide by this limitation and set up delivery locations in and near Ithaca. Their customer base shot up from 20 or 30 to over 130 in a matter of months.
Meadowsweet also didn’t object when their inspector who no longer had jurisdiction over the farm wanted to keep coming out for inspections (ostensibly on the grounds that he was uncomfortable with their raw milk being distributed without any inspections happening). It wasn’t until they began being fined for such dangerous atrocities as the overgrown weeds surrounding their barn that they put their foot down.