Aajonus Vonderplanitz testifying before Los Angeles County Board of SupervisorsUntil now, food sovereignty has been a curious idea that has caught on in a few small towns in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and most recently, Santa Cruz, CA.
But the food sovereignty movement may be about to snag its biggest fish, in the land of tinsel and FDA food club raids.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at its regular meeting took under advisement a food sovereignty proposal put forth by long-time activist Aajonus Vonderplanitz. Los Angeles Mayor Michael Antonovich, in his role as one of five members of the Board of Supervisors, said he had already forwarded it to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, when Vonderplanitz submitted it a couple weeks ago, with instructions that it be turned into public policy.
After the formal session, the former chief operating officer of the L.A. County Department of Health Services and now a Board of Supervisors staff person, Fred Leaf, pulled Vonderplanitz aside and assured him the measure is being taken seriously.
Fred Leaf (front) of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, with Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Max Kane, and yours truly.The push before the L.A. County Board of Supervisors followed a full day of demonstrating in front of its headquarters in downtown Los Angeles by about 15 food rights activists. The food sovereignty proposal only came up at the end of the day, about 5:15 p.m. Vonderplanitz had set the stage two weeks ago when he spoke with Leaf and found him to be very receptive to the food sovereignty proposal.
As submitted to by Vonderplanitz to the Board of Supervisors, it is a “Resolution recognizing the rights of individuals to grow and consume their own food and to enter into private contracts with other individuals to board animals for food.”
The resolution concludes, “Be it resolved that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors supports, endorses, and encourages the recognition of the right and freedom of people to raise their own food, including food derived from agricultural animals, for the enjoyment of themselves and their families, either by their own investment and labor or through the assistance of others through contractual arrangements.”
If successful, the resolution would appear to legalize herdshare arrangements of the type being challenged by California agriculture authorities, and the type of leasing contracts that were part of Rawesome Food Club’s arrangements with its farmer suppliers. To Vonderplanitz, it would also enable Los Angeles County to resist actions such as the two raids in 2010 and 2011 promoted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Rawesome Food Club. In the latest raid, on August 3, “The FDA took $80,000 worth of food and dumped it.”
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Leading up to a pre-trial hearing tomorrow for the Rawesome Three, there will be a teach-in tonight and a rally beginning at 8 tomorrow morning outside the Los Angeles County courthouse. Tonight’s event begins at 6, at the Multipurpose Room, Veteran’s Memorial Complex, 4117 Overland Ave., Culver City. Tomorrow’s rally is at the L.A. County Courthouse, 210 W. Temple St.
One of those who will be at the courthouse rally Thursday is Aajonus Vonderplanitz, who initiated allegations of Sharon Palmer outsourcing food provided to Rawesome Food Club. He hasn’t changed his mind about her, but he said he plans to be at the courthouse rally. Seemingly in answer to some of the discussion following my previous post, Vonderplanitz stated: “I am supportive of the food issue, even if I am not supportive of them (the Rawesome Three)…I tell everyone I am there to support the raw milk movement.”
For an excellent look at how divergent views within a growing movement can be channeled and tolerated, try to catch the new documentary, “The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975”. It chronicles the development of the Black Power movement within the Civil Rights movement, with amazing interviews with leaders like Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and Eldridge Cleaver.
You are not to be under estimated. If passed this would signal a huge change in the political climate for raw milk in CA….a huge change…. 9.8 million people effected.
Just about now….the FDA, CDFA and every other public health agency is buying airline tickets to LA to meet with the Board of Supervisors "to stop this madness". Emails are flying faster than jet travel.
To quote a CDFA inspector that I recently talked to…when he said…
"We ( CDFA ) must be able to regulate and control raw milk".
Whoops…. perhaps not so fast. Things are changing. Never a boring day.
We never hear the cow's perspective on this. Are the cows insulted that their milk is called dirty and gets pastuerized?
Day 29 Hospital
Chris had not had a bowel movement since September 30th. The resident doctor suggested that we should try giving Chris some apple juice to see if that would stimulate a bowel movement. The only thing it stimulated was vomiting. He vomited 4 or 5 times throughout the day. It began to feel like we were moving backwards not forward.
The amount of methadone and Ativan had been cut in half. The weaning process had begun. Each day they would cut the dose a little until he was off it altogether.
The remainder of Chris bandages around the Quinton catheter was removed. Yesterday was a disaster with tape removal, so today a small amount of dilaudid was used. It was still stressful, but manageable.
Since we had arrived at LLUCH, we had been applying the topical Ambrotose daily to Chris body. We had a surprise visit from the pathologist that had done research on using Ambrotose for treating HUS. He worked down the street at the veterans hospital. He had heard about Chris, so he came for a visit. It was so very thoughtful of him.
It felt great not to be in crisis mode and we were sharing a room with a very nice family. Chris was still very cooperative, except for the tape removal. We waited patiently every day for his pancreas to begin working.
amusing that the Black Power experience is folded-in to the mix about REAL MILK … When I explained that the engine of the Campaign for REAL MILK is white people awakening to our racial heritage = the Bible = starting with its food and agricultural laws, I was booted off the RawDairy forum on Yahoo … well, the ones out there milking cows at 4 am are rednecks, not illegal immigrants etc
…. of course the same kneejerk reaction from the Canadians who're so politically -correct, after a generation of conditioning by the multi-cult-ists, is to be expected
what if it's so?? What if the communitarians are doing to us in Ham-merica, what they did to the Kulaks in Russia / Ukraine .. .only this time, here, by regulation, rather than at gunpoint, as in the 30s?
There are a number of reasons why 99% of American and Canadian farmers are white; but probably the primary one is that whites have always been the ones with money to buy farmland… or better yet, get it deeded to you through governmental grants for free, as frequently was done in our early history; or–in the South–to use slaves to accrue enough land mass, equipment and money to pass down to your descendants.
Kinda hard to buy farms and pass them down when you're a slave; and of course, once freed your main emphasis would have been for your kids to get an education to become lawyers, doctors or other professionals. Even if they didn't become professionals, it's kinda hard to go back to farming when your whole history hated it from the moment you landed on these shores and discovered why you were brought here all those years ago. It surely wasn't to give you a land grant to become a farmer.
And don't forget, even when freed blacks tried to farm through the Homestead Act after the Civil War, many if not most were hung, burned out or otherwise strongly encouraged to leave their land by their white neighbors, who then usurped the now-vacant land. Kinda hard to pass on land and farming traditions when you no longer have land.
Be that as it may, more blacks (and others of "color") are turning back to farming, although actually it's rather hard to buy farmland and farm it when you don't know much about what you're doing. In fact, it's very difficult even when you're blonde and blue-eyed for all your generations, as I can attest.
But I do agree with you about the running description of Chris's bowel habits in EVERY blog post as being inappropriate.
I suggest you just skip those posts….I really haven't read any of them. Worrying about occurrences that happen on the order of thousandths or more really is a waste of energy.
Gordon,
While I agree with you that the engine of the Movement is white people…the notion that they are 'awakening to our racial heritage" is arrogant racist bullshit….throw in the Bible reference and you can say that it's arrogant self righteous religious bullshit. While many in the movement are good, God fearing Believers, they are hardly (from my experience) an overwhelming majority. Raw milk reaching across all lines, and most that are turning to it aren't doing it because of their Christian culture….they are doing because the conventional food system is making it sick.
I think it good that we have the radical, off the wall, and might I say sometimes bizarre perspectives like yours on this blog. It makes many of the rest of look reasonable. The Raw Dairy list is definitely missing something in your absence….but in my estimation, you were booted because they took you too seriously. The 'red under my bed', "White Christian America has been chosen by God" viewpoint can only illicit a visceral guffaw from those with a broad clear view. So 20th century.
Mark, the raw milk you feed your calves…does it come from your bulk tank?….or are you outsourcing that….. And while I know you like to portray your farm as a lovely, quaint family farm, the reality is it is a factory, mass producing a product. If your herd was half the size, each cow would be getting twice the 'love'. (and please please don't try and tell us that your love is infinite…especially when on most days those cows are being 'loved' by a $7/hr mexican…[or redneck…lol]….while you're in your office, down at the courthouse, or on a 'business' trip)
Or Native American off the Rez… You didn't tell people you were of mixed blood, it was taboo. Many (of all colors) were poor sharecroppers, similar to the coal miners-you never got ahead. In my family tree some of my dads side did this. Many were lousy farmers. (Just think, if they hadn't taken up with that Native Indian woman they wouldn't have been booted from the Quakers….) Before WWII, my dad had said when they moved to Ca (from OKLA dust bowel) during the Depression looking for work, they picked produce along side of blacks, he didn't see many mexicans in the fields they worked as migrant workers.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/wahl.slavery.us
http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm
There were black slave and land owners just as there was with the Native Indians.
"lthough actually it's rather hard to buy farmland and farm it when you don't know much about what you're doing."
It's a learning curve for sure.
PS Gordon, I don't think Jesus was a white guy.
Good grief, can we keep our comments related to the particular blog post?
Pettiness does no good.
nancy
This is great news! Also, CA has a proposition upcoming to label GMO foods. Whoopee!
Maybe tight budgets are helping gov't see the futility of fighting raw milk?
I see the tipping point just on the horizon.
-Blair
Gordon, I hope discussing vomit doesnt bother you.
October 6, 2006
Day 30 Hospital
The main goal of the day was to get Chris out of bed and walking. The physical therapist came and showed us how to unplug Chris from the monitor and how to reset it when we came back. His first stroll was not far. The physical therapist had one arm for support (as well as the IV pole) and Tony had the other. Chris was very slow and weak but made it to the door and back. We cheered him on as he had just finished a marathon. He felt a bit embarrassed as to how weak he was, but we told him not to worry about it. He would gain his strength back quickly. We had him do this activity 5 times that day.
He tried a sip of water and a sip of apple juice. He vomited it within 30 seconds. I began to wonder if it was partly psychological; now he was expecting to vomit. Today when he vomited, a lot more green bile was there. Throughout the day, he vomited about every 5 hours. Each time, move bile was there.
At about 5:00 p.m., I asked for the resident doctor to be paged. I wanted to discuss stopping juice and water for a while and also ask them how many hours they were running his TPN. The doctor agreed that it was probably wise to give his body a rest from fluids and so we were back to using the pink sponge to moisten his mouth.
[Note: if you are ever in the hospital and are unable to drink fluids, make sure they have the pink sponges, not the green ones. The green ones are absolutely horrible tasting. I cant believe they shove these in the mouths of children that cant have water. This was my only big beef with this childrens hospital. They did not have the pink sponges. I had a few friends who are nurses and they brought me a supply from their hospitals for Chris to use.]
Discussions were beginning to take place about the possibility of reducing Chris TPN. Right now he was running 20 hours a day and never felt hunger pains. They thought if he body received hunger messages, it might kick his pancreas into working.
We had now made the switch from focusing at daily BUN and creatinine levels (kidneys) to amylase and lipase levels.
your last bit just shows you don't understand the term "discussion" … people here long ago gave up caring about your pity-party … you are not receptive to any new information, let along dialogue
you're stuck at a counter-productive stage where 'every body's got to feel your pain' one foot nailed to the floor for the rest of your life – your choice, lady
the day you start thanking God for having a healthy child, is the day you'll start recovering. You think there aren't others who haven't gone through much worse than you? You ain't the centre of the universe
quit loading this website is with your overflowing bedpans and filthy bandages … jamming it in our faces will only get you negative reaction
go get your own website where you can dump your vomitus from the past.
I've learned a lot from Mary Martin's posts, and they fit the theme epitomized by the name of this blog: "The Complete Patient."
MW
"Gordon, I don't think Jesus was a white guy."
"Jesus was jewish."
I think Milk Farmer was trying to say discreetly that Jesus was 99.9% likely to be a Sephardic Jew–that is, of Arabic descent, with black hair, brown eyes, a heavy arching nose and dark to black skin–rather than being a blond, blue-eyed Ashkenazic Jew from Europe. Ashkenazim are relatively recent newcomers in Jewish history, arriving on the scene long after Jesus…and most don't look like the classic Western Jesus anyway..
For the last year I've been trying to figure out what Gordon means by "Ham-merica" unless he means America is run by a bunch of hams, which I can't deny. LOL
During these hard times, wasting $80000 worth of food is criminal and those responsible should re-reimburse those who lost $$ after all, it was a private entity, not a public store.
Hopefully, we'll know about the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors within the next few weeks–I'm sure Aajonus Vonderplanitz will be checking in. The policy would just apply to Los Angeles County.
The destruction of $80,000 worth of food is criminal…and unfortunately, it gets much worse than that, as you'll see in my next post.
David
The law should not be the tool of that entity.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Hanson Farms had 3 locations that were in violation. One of them was in Lamar, and a river runs between Lamar and Holley, not far from Jenson canteloupe farm.
Rocky Ford Canteloupe is a traditional summer delight in CO. We had to harvest our canteloupe early because it's going to freeze tonight.
When is the gov't going to wise up and admit that CAFOs are a tragic mistake based on greed and bad global economic policy?
I hope I live to see the day.
-Blair
-Blair