California’s Department of Food and Agriculture has targeted a second goat-milk-producing herdshare for shutdown.
Green Uprising, a farm with eight milking goats and 27 shareholders, in Mendocino County, said it received a cease-and-desist order last week. Like Evergreen Acres in San Jose (discussed in my June 29 post) the operators say they are abiding by the order, and hoping to challenge the orders legally.
The CDFA is making no bones about its determination to crack down on herdshares. When I inquired into the San Jose situation, Steve Lyle, the public affairs director of the CDFA, said in a statement, “Any distribution of dairy products that is commercial in nature is subject to California licensing and inspection laws.”
What is commercial in nature? “The department considers any distribution beyond a private residence that is producing exclusively for the residents’ own use as subject to regulation.”
He noted that CDFA is “interested in working with the operators of the farm to bring them into compliance with state law.” That means making sure they have the required buildings and equipment of a commercial dairy.
All of which raises the question: should the herdshares shut down, or should they defy the unofficial orders (unofficial in that cease-and-desist orders have no judicial backing).
I think they should defy the orders. From the scant evidence we have, those who defy regulatory orders make out okay, while those who go along and shut down, well, they stay shut down. Rawesome Foods, a food club in Venice, CA, opened the day after its June 30, 2010, shutdown in a raid, and remains open today. Same with Vernon Hershberger, the Wisconsin dairy farmer, who cut the seals placed on his coolers by the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. The Minneapolis food club, Traditional Foods Minnesota, tried to work things out with regulators after its shutdown a year ago June, and remains shuttered to this day.
I know it’s easy for me to write all this defiance on a blog, while real farmers put their rear ends on the line. So I’ll add a proviso: the shareholders and food club members should agree to provide legal backing to their producers. That could mean anything from hiring top-notch local legal help to insisting their names are added as defendants in any legal action (and making that claim before a judge if the prosecutors don’t do it).
Consumers have to do more than go out and wave a few placards (not that that isn’t important). They have to put themselves on the line as well. There is strength in numbers.
Moreover, there is publicity value. The dynamics suddenly change, and the episode becomes something to be covered by the media.
It’s hard to know what the big brave enforcers directing this assault on tiny farms and their shareholders will do if they see ordinary people putting themselves in harm’s way, and making real financial commitments, but it certainly will give them pause. The bullies like to isolate their victims, make them feel as if they alone will bear all the burdens.
In this war, the enemy will continue to up the intimidation quotient. To the extend the targets go along with the bully’s demands, they lose.
This is not quibbling over semantics: Legal and lawful are not the same thing. You can send Jews to the gas chambers to your heart's content and it will all be perfectly legal as long as you dot all your i's, cross all your t's and "follow proper procedure." What is legal today may be illegal tomorrow. But that which is lawful can never be made unlawful (nor vice versa).
Note: I am not saying that by discovering some precise combination of magickal incantations and writings, you will cause your persecutors to throw up their hands and say you're right, you've won, and they're going to go harass someone else. Make all the fancy arguments you want, but if the men with the guns want to take your stuiff, kidnap you and execute you, they won't hesitate to do it, and you will be the one painted as the villain on every front page and boob tube from sea to shining sea.
What I am saying: If you know you aren't doing anything wrong, then don't behave as if you WERE doing something wrong. You lose before the first shot is fired — the moment you let someone else convince you that you are evil, merely for existing and wanting to be free.
You are only too right. the shareholders need to study their state constitutions, raise heck with their legislatures and other elected officials, and take their privately owned food HOME and force the government to put them in jail.
We will see how long it lasts when moms with 3 kids are sitting in a cell, adding to the already wasted tax money spent on all this rampant gov't stupidity.
Group's that try to "work it out," are doomed… we are not dealing with people who want to work things out. They want to take us out… they don't want any free thinkers, any non-conformists, any challenges to the industrial/pharma/ag system that is destroying our country but keeping the political croonies in office.
We need to wake people up by using the pinciples of principled, self-controlled, organized, planned obedience to freedom and the high ideals of our nation's constitution, and to the protection of our families, farmers, and small communities from the predations of the globalist/big gov/big industry agenda to bring every food, every family, every fiscal action under their control.
John
There need to be hearings about this. CDFA must be made to accommodate Grade A standards to allow for size appropriate regs for animal share programs…or even better, just leave animal shares alone like in Colorado.
All of the goat and cow share programs in CA must bind together, lest they be eaten individually and picked apart.
Join forces now guys….meet with your state senators and get some hearings scheduled. This is a popular rights issue and a civil nutritional rights issue. Sue the CDFA en masse……they are a bunch of whimps when you can get your collective boots on their throat. Did you not forget…..this is a frickin war!!!. CDFA does not like to look bad and the governor is on your side. He likes raw milk. Arnold is gone off to ex bad-missbehaving governor land. CDFA does not have the support they had in 2007-2010. CDFA is naked and the executive branch is a different place now.
Soccer moms become effective soldiers when they are personally effected.
Get into the line of fire, stand in front of your farmers and get effected!!!! Some one call their state representative and get this going on. I will come stand with you.
Mark
Pete, Steve, can the FTCLDF post some information and talking points to assist California consumers in 1) expressing our support of small farms with dairy/herd share operations and 2) expressing our outrage over the behaviour of the CDFA?
I phoned the DA's office to voice my objections to the way Evergreen Acres was handled but I didn't get the impression that the DA's office was really interested in hearing from consumers on this case. It would have been helpful to have had some talking points with key concepts or phrases in "DA speak" to make my point.
Many of us are ready to take action……we're just not sure of the best action to take to help with the current situations in San Jose and Mendocino and prevent further incidences of this nature.
Joelie
Great place to start.
Here is what I would do. Poll your email list resources of all of your cow share and goat share owners and find out if anyone has a connection with a state senator or state assemblyman. There are a few that are allies of raw milk.
Look at the hearings held with Dean Flores in 2008 and see who supported raw milk. Then with your team of go-getters that you will enlist from all the share owners…go visit the senators or assemblymen. Go into their offices and meet their staff. You will need to make friends with the staffers that write policy and vet meetings for the legislators.
Unfortunately, the legislative cycle is a roller coaster and the timing of this effort is critical. You need to find someone that knows how the cycles run and get on board the train. It does not help if the legislature is out of session or the representatives are not available.
You need to have a person on your share team that knows about the legislative process and when and where to apply the heat. You need some friends in Sacramento.
The good news is that you do have friends in Sac….you just have not met them yet.
Please email me and I can connect you with a few people I know that can start this connection process going.
I strongly suggest gathering the names of 75 people that are deeply effected by the CDFA war on share programs…then get their commitment to fight.
You need a team. A team that will back you up. That is step one. Step two is a strategy and then, guiding that team to action. Visits to Sac with a unified agenda.
I can help you with this….but you need to get the 75 pissed off people lined up.
No phonies….real pissed off people that will work together and actually go to hearings and visit assemblymen in their offices. Then you really need to create heat. A cool low profile effort does not have the media heat to create a RAWMILK political Tsunami Wave….you need a crisis. You need an emminent need….real tax payers and voters that are really pissed off, yet smart and strategically focussed.
Call me at 559-846-9732 office.
By the way, Mike Hulme is a smart guy and can lead this effort. He just needs people lots of people behind him.
Mark
It would appear that the RAW MILK Genie is out of the bottle in South Dakota.
http://www.realmilk.com/milk-laws-5.html#sd You can read the SD raw milk laws at this link. On farm sales and even home delivery sales are legal.
It is my opinion that a raw milk dairy could do well in this environment. Now contact someone that lives and breaths in SD in the real world of reality and ask them this question.
Mark
I live in SD, I am a raw milk consumer. Even though the law seems pretty good, many producers would just as soon continue to fly under the radar. When the law was first introduced, the powers that be wanted lists of customer names etc. and there was a firestorm of protest and the legislators and then governor scuttled. The next year they regrouped and came up with the present law, I listened to the discussion and one of the legislators said something like, 'if this law is used to harass people, I will be back here next year to dismantle it". So far things have been pretty quiet, but I would say producers fear the long arm of the law. I have seen homemade ice cream for sale occasionally at a farmer's market, but no mlk or cheese. It is because of this law I have been interested in rawmi. As a consumer, I get nevous when folks get too interested in my food choices.
The real key to Vernon Hershberger's success in repelling DATCP last summer can be summed up in one word:
SOLIDARITY!
When they raided him, EVERYONE reacted against it. We all rallied to his cause, got tons of media attention, and had DATCP phones ringing off the hook for days with angry raw milk consumers from all over the state and the country.
The consumers really do need to stand behind their farm and fight the fight for the farmer.
Our motto must be: An injury to one is an injury to all!
The reason that I mentioned Thomas Paine was in response to Gordon Watson. In "The Age of Reason" Paine rails against the church and organized religion, belying any claims that the American revolutionaries were some kind of ultra-christians. In fact, they were left-wing radicals. The American Revolution was profoundly anti-capitalist — it was a rebellion against corporate monopoly — the British East India Tea Company.
You are correct about Jefferson and Paine being opposed to the central bank. Jefferson was also very concerned about corporate power:
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -T. Jefferson
We can see here the roots of modern-day liberalism in the classical liberals — the use of government power as a counter-balance to corporate power.
I do not share this view with Jefferson and other modern liberals, though. I think the most effective check on both state and corporate power is an organized independent working class — that is to say, a LABOR movement (which should most certainly include farmers).
I happen to agree with you that more bureaucracy will not solve the many social problems we face as a society. That willl take a dedicated independent grassroots social movement. However, I believe that this extreme individualism and belief in the infalliability of the free-market is an incredible ideological stumbling block which Americans need to overcome. I support having a free market economy, but I can seperate this concept from capitalism which is a system of class domination through corporations.
Legal raw milk will not happen by fiat recognition of individual rights. It will happen by an organized social movement that employs collective action (see my above post about Vernon Hershberger…)
As for federal spending, I don't have the time to look up the numbers you ask about regarding federal poverty reduction programs, but I will say this: the U.S. spends more on the military than every other nation on the planet combined and less on social welfare than any other first world nation. I believe we can draw a very direct line between the imperialist wars abroad and the wars against farmers and workers at home.
I also agree with you that federal education policy, standardized testing, and NCLB are total failures. Here is a great little video clip about educational policy. Very interesting:
Does this answer your question sufficiently, or is it too "Zinn speak" for you?
This kind of effort takes a couple of spark-plugs, people willing to suggest text for emails, faxes and letters, and scripts for phone calls. I don't worry too much about this, though, since people who feel they have been violated will find the words and the means to express themselves. It's difficult for the lawyer on the case to do this kind of coordinating, for possible ethical and other reasons, but mostly it's better for people to speak their own minds without scripting by lawyers, because it becomes obvious too quickly and gets discounted. If the objects of protest see the protest as essentially one (mastermind) voice, they can rationalize that they just have to ignore one person, who may not even be a constituent or reside in the state. It is much harder for multiple objects of protest each have to get their arms around the idea that scores, or hundreds, of people are on their cases. Mainly, pissed-off people will get their word across. It takes energy and tenacity, but it works. If you're too comfortable and not concerned enough (or, let's face it, not threatened enough – the FDA is being VERY careful not to step directly on consumer toes, preferring to pick off farmers when they can), all of this has much less chance of working.
This is not rocket science. This is about being hot enough to stand up for your rights.
The 75 people I mentioned are not the leaders. They are the supporters and followers that come in later. It just takes a few " spark plugs " ( thx steve ) to organize and start this fire. During the SB201 battle in 2008, there was only team of three people that organized the entire uprising. The passion and energy from these three energized more than 1400 raw milk consumers,scientists,doctors,teachers,farmers, store owners, from all around the world to descend on Sacramento and testify at several hearings
Mark Leno was very supportive of our bill. Dean Flores is now gone. You need to stir it up and make some noise. This is not about being pleasant. It is about focussed passion and education of your state legislator.
One thing for sure….as you go in the front door, the dairy and processors lobbyists will be sneaking out the back door. They hate any form of raw milk.
As far a talking points are concerned. Keep it simple and understandable
CDFA has no business going around…. playing fast and making brand new very self serving interpretations of our constitutional rights to own a goat or contract with a farmer not to mention drinking raw milk. CDFA needs another public spanking on raw milk…I guess hearings in 2008 were not enough.
In my opinion CDFA has no basis for it's interpretation of law or our constitution. Other states have found cow shares legal. Is this one country ??
Enforcers at CDFA are dairy control freaks…..the are literally an arm of the CMAB. The "got milk?" people. There is no distance between the two organizations. The courts even found this to be true in the PETA lawsuits years ago.
Gather your spark plugs and go see Leno. Make this a wide issue not just about one cow share, but rather 100 of them being brutally oppressed by CDFA. Have Mike Hulme lead your meeting.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/06/BUDD1K5DTF.DTL
David
The cowshare/herdshare/farmshare concept is an actual legal document of shared responsibility, ownership in animals and or property and agreement to particpate in the care for that shared property.
Getting product or benefit back is just an exercise in the rights of ownership.
When faced with a cease and desist of our own at Clearview Acres, it was a simple reply throughout the 5 years of State adminintrative hearings of we cannot stop, we entered into a legal binding contract and so did our partners represented in the shares sold.
When a partner shareholder came to the farm to get there product under the cease and desist order(s) they were never stopped from receiving what was rightfully theirs.
Ownership has responsibility, and even though Wisconsin has yet to recognize these owners, and California is following suit, the owners of these animals in the share operations in question need to continue to pay the boarding fees and demand that there ownership rights be recognized, even if it means you are named in a suit or State action.
To do any less is to facilitate the false nature of these agreements claimed by the States, and participate in the role of consumer and its severly lessoned aspect of responsibility.
And unfortunately progress the practice of placing all blame, liability and responsibility on a producer, or worse yet, play a role in the fear being leveled against us as a measure of control to limit our options and express our freedom to health and vitality opposite the decay in our health and of our society.
Tim Wightman
Ok, Do we have a legal definition of "commercial in nature"??
A herd share contract is obviously a legal contract in which goods and services are exchanged between legal entities.
What would be an example of a distribution of food that is not commercial in nature?When a family sits down to eat together and the food is passed around,is this commercial in nature?I doubt that the CDFA would try to regulate that.What really makes herd shares commercial in nature is the contract between two legal entities.Without that contract there is no legal person for the state to act on.The solution then is to abandon any legal structure for the food distribution.If we act like a big family sharing food at the breakfast table then there is nothing commercial in nature about that food distribution.
On a small scale,it is certainly possible to distribute food without involving legal names and contracts.Even if they wish to harass someone they need a legal name to bring charges against .Don't give them one.An informal economy is outside the jurisdiction of the state.
Who has the numbers for all the Cow Shares in CA. When I presented in Chico two months ago, there were at least 65 share programs counted at that meeting ( or programs that people knew about ).
The time for action is right now!!! Who is the leader of the CA Cow or Goat Share fight???
The first thing to happen is…. someone must stand up and take the leadership role. It sure is not me. I am a compliant CDFA inspected Grade A Raw Milk program.
Mark
Consumers need to take ownership of the cow/goat-share, if it is to be successful. Consumers are who de-facto won the fight in Wisconsin, forcing DATCP to lay off. They will have to fight to win in California too.
Miguel is right on about the definition of commerce. An informal economy is always preferable to a formal one. But, that being said, I don't expect commerce and formal economic agreements to go away anytime in my life, so we just have to learn to adapt to them and make the best of them.
For those of us who don't have the ability to subsist outside of the formal economy, a structure for encouraging sustainable dairy farming and direct farm-to-consumer (and cheesemaker-to-consumer) needs to be developped.
Before someone takes the lead,shouldn't we be asking where we are going?Do we want to try to make milking 10 goats legal? Does that mean the state is now going to have to inspect and test milk from more than 65 or so small farms?I can tell you that is not the direction the state wants to go.It means added expense at a time when they have to make cuts in the budget .From the state's point of view,small farms are inefficient .What they mean is that it costs the state a lot to regulate them.Forget being legal!That doesn't mean they are illegal any more than sharing a bottle of home brew with a friend is illegal.Small farms don't need to be businesses.They don't need to be commercial.They should just be communities that together produce food for themselves.The state wants them out of business.Why not just comply?
"be afraid to know your neighbors and to die"
"So,friends,every day do something that won't compute"
http://www.triplicate.com/20091103107383/Online-Extras/Community/MARIS-CLIMB-3-Part-Series
This is what can happen if pathogenic shit gets in the milk. Knowing your farmer and looking him/her in the eye can't be the safety foundation for raw milk production.
I feel truly horrible for this poor person, Mari Tardiff. What a horrible situation to have to endure.
On the other hand, I accept the risk of drinking raw milk and for feeding it to my family. There is no doubt in my mind that we are healthier because of this choice I have made and the choice I have made to eat real, down-to-earth food.
I refuse to accept the risk of feeding my family the food our government deems acceptable — a diet of Twinkies, Fruit Loops, Oreo Cookies and Coca Cola. Just ask my lovely 23-year-old pre-diabetic niece with Krohn's Disease. I refuse to allow my children to eat that pseudo food. I truly believe that those fake food like substances are 1000x more dangerous than raw milk.
I accept the risk of living also. I do not blame others for the consequences of the choices I make. If I get sick, then so be it. I acknowledge that drinking raw milk could make me sick just like eating sushi or being sneezed upon by a sick friend. Am I going to sue my friend for the days I miss work? Hell no! I accept the risk of living!
I also believe I am smart enough to make my own choices and it is in no way, shape, or form our government's responsibility to "save me from myself". Feeding my family is the single most important job I have as a mother and I take it very seriously, with much forethought and preparation — I do this at the expense of watching television or even relaxing sometimes. My choices are right for my family and for me.
I am not diminishing the plight of those who get sick, but just because they get sick should not mean that I or my farmers should be criminalized for doing what we know in our hearts is the right thing for our families. And just because you believe differently than I do does not make you right and me wrong.
Alice
MW
Did anyone suggest that herd shares are not commercial operations?
Your logic is a little backwards. Just because the government or product liability lawyers have avoided suing shareholders of herdshares doesn't make them commercial operations. The reality is that the government and product liability lawyers are afraid to sue the shareholders because that would recognize herdshares as the private non-commercial organizations they are, and give lie to the contention that herdshares are gimmicks, designed to avoid licensing.
There have been few legal actions against herdshare operations per se. I don't believe Alexandre's has been sued. In the case of Dee Creek, there was an out-of-court settlement,involving those who became ill, and then the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against the farm owners (in a case a U.S. District Court judge essentially threw out after a plea deal was negotiated). However, the decision to not name the shareholders as defendants was the government's decision, not the farm owner's decision.
I suggested that shareholders challenge the government entities to include them in the cease-and-desist orders, knowing full well the regulators almost certainly won't take that tack because they don't want to recognize herdshares for what they truly are, and don't want to take on large groups of committed goat and cow owners.
Be aware as well that herdshares have been legally sanctioned in Ohio, Michigan, and Colorado, among other places.
David
I believe the term "commercial operation" is used by the regulators as a legal term, to lump herdshares together with dairies that sell milk via processors, distributors, and retail outlets. In that sense, herdshares aren't commercial–they are private organizations designed to serve only their owners.
David
When it comes to herd or cow goat share contract systems, the revolution and revolt against their oppression is different.
It must come from the owners of the animals themselves. David you are right.
Where are the pissed off goat owners?????
They need to go to CDFA and show a copy of their receipt for the purchase of their goat or cow. No where in America is it illegal for a person to buy a cow or goat and milk it and drink its raw milk. No where….
Share uprisings must be from the consumers that own the shares and the animals.
Again…where are the pissed off animal owners??? Is it that they have so little flesh in the game that they do not care….do not have the time??? Are they truly the owners. Did they lose something? anything???
Where is the fight???
When CDFA shut me down in 2006 for less than a week, I went supersonic!! I contemplated strategy, sought counsel, communicated with the consumers, collected the facts and then "in-their-face-I-attacked"….I called press conferences and threatened $100 million dollar personal lawsuits ( at CDFA adminstrators that did not have any hard facts to back up their actions ).
I did not give CDFA a quarter of an inch to breathe. Where is the fight now???? Where are the share owners?
Is their dog so small, that they have left it to die in the fight?
Mark
I also know that campylobacter can be contracted from pasteurized milk.
My mother lived in southern Oregon during the time of the campy outbreaks in Californias Del Norte county. Oregon doesn't allow raw milk so my mom drank the pasteurized conventional product sold by her local DariMart.
That pasteurized conventional milk gave my 83 year old mom a bad case of campylobacter and nearly killed her.
My sister and I were on round the clock nursing duty for over a week until she was strong enough to be on her feet again. Mom's physician reported the incident to the county health department. The milk was tested. Nothing was ever done about it. No health department official ever came to talk to us about it or check on how my mom was doing.
No media frenzy took place to slander the Lochmead Farms Dairy.
My mom never got sick from the raw milk she drank when she would visit me here in California.
Pasteurization doesn't guarantee a pathogen free or healthy milk.
I can't drink the conventional processed milk that is sold in North America. Its too contaminated and makes me ill. I can't breathe after consuming the stuff.
Farm fresh whole milk from a healthy cow that has been fed its natural diet will always be healthier than milk from a miserable cow eating an unnatural diet.
Milk and dairy are a very important part of my diet. I am a very well educated consumer with post graduate degrees, working in healthcare. I am fully qualified to determine the best foods to feed myself and my family.
Life happens. We take calculated risks. Most of the time those risks work to our benefit. Sometimes they dont.
No one is forcing anyone to drink raw milk against their will.
"No health department official ever came to talk to us about it or check on how my mom was doing.No media frenzy took place to slander the Lochmead Farms Dairy. "
That is not surprising. Glad your mom recovered.
But when it comes to domestic justice, health, death, illness, our children, honor, our constitution and our rights right here at home where it really matters, our citizens have lost the true bravery that built this country and evicted the British.
The share owners deserve what CDFA gives them if they can not sort out what is right from what is wrong. That is the truest measure of a person. You fight because your inner moral and ethical compass says to fight….not because the military political industrial complex says to fight.
Mark
I do not think it is an argument of understanding right from wrong or any lack of will to defend what one wants in their choice in food. It really depends on how the share contract was explained and the true relationship understanding the producer has with their partners and the clear understanding of what these partnerships really are.
They are more than a private contract, and a means for accessing a food that is in most cases hard to come by given the scale needed in a state permit.
Share arrangement is the first brush with community we have been denied from building for the past 60 years given the consumer economy that was to rule the world.
Well we learned that was a failed experiment, but we cannot be too hard on producers and thier partners if they have taken a step toward health but have yet to realize they are changing how we relate to one another and have been given an opportunity to take responsibility.
I did not know this with the origin of the cowshare in Wi, and neither did the state staff who worked on drafting the first documents of the cowshare in 1999.
This is the real reason for the clamp down on our choice and share arrangements, responsibility changes the paradigm.
Removes the middlemen of assurance and choice.
We cannot blame those who do not yet know that what is hapening to them is actually changing everything we have come to know as static.
The sole reason Michael won his case is that everyone knew the responsibility of the purchase of a share, and the conversation between producer and partner was just that, equal and on a different level from any other consumer aspect known to those in the partnership.
In the world of the sale of a silver bullet, share arrangements strike familair a cord, however it is meant to play a different tune if the aspects of that union is fully understood.
There are no silver bullets to anything, share arrangements really do not have much to do about milk.
The share holders stepped through a door and both producer and partners eyes are still adjusting to the light.
Tim Wightman
I cant Poll your email list resources of all of your cow share and goat share owners and find out if anyone has a connection with a state senator or state assemblyman because I dont have an email list of resources.
I do not presently belong to a cow or goat share. I buy my raw milk off the retail shelf at my local markets. The harassment of the small share operations appalls me and I wanted to lend my voice to help support them.
I have zero free time between my full time job, my part time business, my graduate studies and taking care of my family yet this situation is important enough to me that I made the time to call the offices of Mark Leno and Paul Fong (assembly person for Santa Clara County)
Thankfully Tims post gave me sufficient practical points that I my sleep deprived brain could make a coherent argument with the Assembly persons staffs:
"The owners of animals in share operations have hired the farmer to board, care and milk the animals to their custom specifications for their own personal use. The CDFA has no business interfering with private contracts between individuals nor does the CDFA have any business interfering with private non-commercial operations."
"Fresh raw jersey cow milk. Machine milked, filtered and immediately chilled. $5 per HALF gallon. Bring your own sterile glass jar. Pick up available on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday only. Easily located. Although every effort is made to ensure this milk is clean and healthy, the USDA does not allow me to sell this for human consumption….it is pet/livestock grade. You understand."
Which of the 2 or 3 "raw milks" does this fall under?
MW
When DATCP raided Vernon Hershberger last year, we were already in the heat of battle from a legislative fight, and legal threats pending against every known raw milk farm in the state.
The grassroots was already mobolized, we had the media's full attention, and the retaliation against DATCP was swift and brutal. Steve Ingham, the chief of food safety, announced his resignation within a week of the raid, because of how much embarassment and public outcry it had caused.
California needs to do the same. Consumers need to be organized and rallied. Start rousing the grassroots today! Grab the pitchforks and the torches! The time to rise up is now!!!
I can certainly understand why you or anyone that is just trying their best….might consider my post unfair.
War is unfair. Capitalism is unfair. Our current diets for Americans is unfair. Our current medical system is unfair and downright fatal. America is generally not fair. America does however have some pretty great things in its founding principles.
If you or anyone has listened to Mike Schmidt or even me for very long, you will have heard the word "war" a couple of times.
What is appallining to me is the naivity and simple unpreparedness that people stumble forward with as they go into this raging battle.
Kind of like sending a bunch of playful kids to fight a bunch of focussed well trained terrorists. The ignorance and complete lack of training, forethought, strategic confusion, and lack of preparation is appalling to me.
If we intend to prevail in this nutrition civil rights uprising and effort, we must all understand and comprehend the measure of the forces aligned against raw milk and its farmers. Each and every person that places a glass of raw milk to their lips must not take it for granted. They must realize that drinking raw milk is a massive poltiical statement and refutes the current paradigm at its roots and upsets the battleship of the FOOD INC CAFO PMO and FDA relatiionships.
If a raw milk farmer does not have a battle plan, a camera ready to film, ….a list of his consumers, then he is really ill prepared, irresponsible and is inviting defeat. As a Share Operator….having a list of owners is foundational if he is truly a share operator. Kentucky is an excellent example of how to prevail. Decisive, profound, strategic action….wins.
In CA CDFA is picking the Share Owners apart…..one by one.
CDFA is well organized, and will arrest, criminalize, suppress, demoralize, and in general destroy this dissarray of Share Owners if they do not immediately forge alliances, stand together, gain media attention to explain their story, meet with senators, hold hearings, demand CDFA changes, and fight like hell.
I have been into this hurricane before. I know what the forces alligned against raw milk are like. I know the CAFO FOOD INC PMO dairy industry lobbyists, and how the FDA operates inside of CDFA.
You may think that all of this talk of war is rediculous…..and unsettling. Those that have been in this fight know better. Do not be niave or act like innocent kids…..this is a war!
This fight is unsettling to say the least!!
Do not forget it.
Mark
If it is in the milk over there, it most likely is in the milk here in the US. There is no reason for any drugs to be in our food chain. These are some of the many reasons that people are moving towards healthy "natural" foods.
During the SB201 battle in 2008, the team that organized the uprising was much more than just 3 people.
Just keeping in real !
You are right. From my perspective initially….at least….it was a very small team…from other peoples perspectives it was a much bigger team and in the end it was a large team that was created.
The point in all of this discussion is that it does not take a huge team to cause a huge change to occur.
NO .A contract is not legal unless it is voluntarily entered into by both parties.A license is just a contract.
Have a share in a Racehorse, Showhorse, etc.
Several people were owners of my Whippet's parents who showed at Westminster . . .
So tell all those regulators to take a hike! You own a part of that animal and you are entitled to the proceeds from it . . . . whether it be a calf or it's milk.
Make your shareholders fight and don't back down.
Keep producing milk for your shareholders . . . . don't stop . . . . otherwise they win.
Kind regards,
Violet
http://www.kilbyridgefarmmaine.blogspot.com
I have been really busy these past few days and am now trying to catch up.
Since you did not answer my questions . . . . I will answer them for you.
Poverty level in 1966 – around 14.2%
Poverty level today (conservatively) – around 18.2%
Total money spent on the "War on Poverty" . . . . 11 TRILLION Dollars.
The GAO is a great place to research these figures. . . . and it can also tell you how much has been spent on the Miliitary since then.
Those figures may actually surprise you.
Our government is way to big and we are all to blame as we have allowed them to take way too much from us. I draw the line in the sand when they take away my freedom to produce healthy foods to feed my community and through regulation take away the
freedoms of the local producers who feed my own family.
It needs to stop.
Think about it . . . . Mark dismissed me when I said we must stand behind candidates that are for food choice and kick all those who has taken these rights away from us? All you need to do is to see how your own US Representative or Senator voted on S510 to see where your own elected Federal representation stands . . . and then he goes on to say to Joelie . . . reach out to elected officials in Sacramento . . . who don't really care about herdshares and want to regulate them out of business. I say . . . . kick all of those officials out in California who are against food choice and elect those who stand for food freedom. Let them know that they will not get your vote the next time around.
California is run by Democrats (or as we say with a chuckle the fruits and nuts of the US . . btw, my husband grew up in Paradise, California and went to Chico State so I can write this with a straight face) . . . . so why do you put up with this . . . . Mark?
On the 4th of July we marched with Scott D'Amboise in the Eastport, Maine parade . . . . Afterwards, I gave him MY copy of David's book . . . . The Raw Milk Revolution. He wants to raise chickens this year . . . . I think he is the only Senatorial candidate running for office who wants to have a backyard flock of chickens for his family:) Scott's kids drank a sample of our local raw milk and loved it. We educated a candidate for US Senate on food freedom issues . . btw . . . he really wants to talk to you David . . . .Scott D'Amboise was against S510 back in December which is why Mark and I reached out to him . . . . I challenge all those out there to do the same in your respected state Senate and Congressional races . . . all those against food freedom and small family farms need to be taken out in 2012
Kind regards,
Violet
http://www.kilbyridgefarmmaine.blogspot.com
The "Kid and it's milk":)
Kind regards,
Violet
This afternoon ( July 8 2011 ) I'm told that all the separate parcels from the same shipper were opened, then duty charged to the recipients, at 200%, which is the customs rate for dairy products entering the Dominion of Canada. In cases where the recipient refused to pay the duty, the package was returned to the shipper and he wound up paying for it
Perhaps someone close to Amos Miller in Pennsylvania will get us more information : his phone is 717 556 0672
.
I supposed one could argue with a herdshare animals are "commercially" boarded, in that the agister is being compensated for the care and boarding of the goats, cows, sheep, water buffalo, or whatever the dairy herd is comprised of.
This is what the CA dairy code says:
35011. A person shall not engage in any of the following businesses
unless he has obtained a license from the director for each separate
milk products plant or place of business:
(a) Dealing in, receiving, manufacturing, freezing, or processing
milk, or any product of milk.
(b) Manufacturing, freezing, or processing imitation ice cream or
imitation ice milk.
This states that a person cannot engage in the above stated "businesses" without a license. However, later the code states:
35017. This article does not apply to any of the following:
(a) Any private home that is manufacturing for its own use.
So, if a private home is manufacturing for its own use, then a license is not required. And in fact, it is not a "business", it is subsistence farming. I believe share owners are exempted from needing a license since they are, in fact, a private home producing for their own use.
The law does not state that the dairy animals must reside on the premises where one lives in order to produce for the private home.
And to Sylvia, I agree. If I were a share owner, and the government ordered the herd share manager who I had hired to care for the my animals NOT to care for them, and to deny me the product that I already own, I believe that my right to own property would be violated. I think I might have to sue them.
I would love to see scalable dairy regulations…or better yet, for small operations who sell within their immediate community to be exempt from any need of regulations. But since that isn't happening, the herd share is the best we've got if we want to provide ourselves with local dairy products.
We better exercise our rights, lest we lose them.
Aren't you familiar with Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders? Bernie is an independent (the only in the Senate) and a socialist, who is an ardent defender of family dairy farmers:
Violet, have you also heard that Vermont is about to become the first state to implement Universal Single-Payer Healthcare? It has yet to be seen whether the greed-driven Randian corporatists who control both political parties in the Federal Gov't will try to outlaw Vermont's not-for-profit healthcare system.
Vermont has an incredibly vibrant artisan cheese scene. It puts Wisconsin's cheese traditions to shame. I say this as a native Wisconsinite (even somewhat chauvinistic, admittedly) and licensed Wisconsin cheesemaker (the only state in the US to require cheese maker certification)
I think the biggest problem with our American political system is the iron-clad grip of the two-party system and corporate cash. You cannot talk about addressing the problem of Federal power unless you address the problem of global corporate power and corporate influence in the electoral system.
Also, Violet, I fail to understand why you think SB510 is such a critical issue, when the US Patriot Act (a MUCH bigger violation of civil liberties) has been passed time and again by both parties.
btw… the only Senator to vote against the US Patriot Act when it was first past in 2001 was Wisconsin's Russ Feingold. Feingold was defeated by a corporately financed "tea-party" demagogue in the last election cycle.
Violet, I am curious… why do you never talk about the problem of corporate personhood? Corporations are transnational entities that have far more power than our federal government, when you get down to it. At least the gov't is (in theory) democratically accountable.
joelie
While profits don't automatically make someone evil, the more money someone makes or has, the more they tend to be or become an enemy of free markets (i.e., freedom for everyone, not merely themselves and their privileged friends).
As Steve Gilliard so aptly put it, "The reason that some of us are more worried about government power than corporate power is that Coca-Cola rarely strafes the villages of Pepsi drinkers." If something is unlawful for an individual to do, then it is unlawful for any number of people, and no amount of voting or corporate charters can make it otherwise. Only government (supposedly "legitimately") uses a flow chart for everything that inevitably ends in "then they shoot you."
Prior to railroad owners going whining to the state and crying "Waah! Make them stop!", farmers had standing to sue a railroad who polluted (trespassed on) their property. Of course, apologists for the state will cry that such are the quaint old horse and buggy days, hardly applicable to the modern world. But a thing is not good or bad merely because it is old or new. Only a fool or shill would argue that "the displacing foods of modern commerce", as Weston Price termed them, are nutritionally superior to traditional foods consumed by humanity for thousands to millions of years. And likewise, only a fool would argue that the more recent research and development of permaculture would not be an enormous improvement over traditional, destructive, unsustainable monocropping used since the dawn of grains and government.
(Re that last: "Ever since the first agriculturalists in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley were conquered by the nomadic herders from the borders of the valley to set themselves up as the first ruling class in human history…the only differences have been who conquered whom, and what their ways of making a living were before the conquest.")
Let's not forget how the railroads came into being in the first place (like most capitalist industry) — as a massive government giveaway to big business:
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150740/why_ayn_rand_and_her_legion_of_followers_are_hopelessly_wrong
As for Coca-Cola, need I remind you again? Coke DOES strafe people with assainations and death threats. They just happen not to be Americans, so we don't seem to care (in the logic of neo-liberalism, American lives are worth more $$$ than the lives of Colombians)
http://killercoke.org/
Why hasn't Coke's corporate charter been revoked? As far as I am concerned, Coke should not be allowed to conduct business anymore.
Private mercernary forces (such as Blackwater corporation) which are employed by big business are just as dangerous (if not moreso) than the publlic state. The main difference is that with the government, there is at least some semblence of democratic accountability (though this is grossly distorted by the influence of corporate money).
There is no such entity as "Coke". If individuals have committed unlawful acts, then let's have a fair trial. Of course, try doing that in the state's courts.
I am so against Corporatism . . . . but I do understand that Corporations have given us the Airplane, Automobile, Energy Sources (Electric, Natural Gas, Petroleum, etc. . . .), X-ray's, MRI machines, antibiotics . . . when needed of course . . . . etc. , it is when we let them influence our elected officials that they become bad. I believe that Corporations should never, ever be allowed to give to any political campaign . . . . does that satisfy you?
As for Sanders and Leahy . . . boy they are really for the small family farm . . . . not! . . . please read "Mad Sheep by Linda Faillance" . . . it is an eye opener. None of her elected Senators helped save her flock of milking sheep. They were destroyed on a whim of Big AG . . . It is a must read.
Kind regards,
Violet
http://www.kilbyridgefarmmaine.blogspot.com
I think you read me the wrong way, my friend:)
Kind regards,
Violet
http://www.kilbyridgefarmmaine.blogspot.com