Yesterday, I wrote about how the FDA is morphing into an American version of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany during WW II. The Department of Agriculture has a similar track record and has been making a practice lately of illegally confiscating fresh milk produced by small farms from law abiding, tax paying citizens.
The milk stolen is not paid for and no laws are being broken. It is simply bully tactics from an increasingly bold Government Bureaucracy that arrogantly believes that it should have the power to choose the food consumed by everyday Americans.
Below is 2 minute video of a recent such seizure in Minnesota. Since when is milk fresh from the farm treated like an illegal drug?
Even if you do not drink fresh milk from the farm, I hope you are outraged by what you see below. While I do not eat Twinkies, people certainly have the right to choose to eat Twinkies and if a government agent illegally seized someone’s Twinkie stash, I would be extremely outraged at such a blatant violation of the US Constitution.
Can we afford to give the FDA even more power under S.510 now cloaked as an amendment to HR 3082? Absolutely not!
Please contact your Senators once again and ask that they “Vote “NO” on cloture for H.R. 3082 and to oppose the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act”! Click here to sign the petition that will be sent to your Senators’ offices by fax. Alternatively, you can call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senators by name to express your disapproval.
It is OUTRAGEOUS that a food safety bill is stealthily included in a spending bill! Watch this video below to be even more outraged at the blatant disregard for basic American freedom that our government officials now have:
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
If you really look at what’s behind these barbaric efforts happening across the country, it’s easy to see that Big Food Inc is driving the boat and commandeering police departments and government agencies at every level to do their dirty work. The multi-billion dollar multinational food corporations see the rise in interest in farmers’ markets, real food, slow food, local food, sustainable agriculture and direct farm-to-consumer sales, and are afraid of losing any market share. They know their products cause the vast majority of food-borne illness, as well as chronic disease, and they see the writing on the wall as people wake up to this.
The so-called “Food Safety” bills, and the related raids and shut-downs of small farms and buying clubs, do nothing to address the huge food safety problems of factory farming, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the gargantuan amounts of contaminants used in our commercial food supply (pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, additives, endocrine disruptors, rancid machine-made oils, dangerous refined ingredients, etc.). The FDA currently does have the authority to enforce the safety of food to a much greater degree, but it is populated by people with ties to Big Ag and Big Pharma, so its efforts are directed at supporting those interests. The status quo is interested in maintaining the status quo. Meanwhile, smaller state agencies are being pressured into pursuing small farmers, harassing their network of consumers, and burdening them with voluminous paperwork and crippling legal fees. Small farmers need our support, as does consumer access to their safe, nourishing foods!
The amendments like Tester-Hagan, which are attempts to provide a measure of protection to small farms and the consumer access to their foods, may not go far enough and need to be strengthened, not weakened or compromised. The $500,000 provision is for gross sales, not net sales, and could leave out and imperil many small-scale farms, and certainly will be a disincentive for them to expand and hire more employees.
Keep in mind that states like Minnesota and its legislators feel beholden to prop up corporations in their respective locales, like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, General Mills and the like in Minnesota. These companies are every bit as big and powerful and influential as the oil companies.
But maybe, just maybe, enough voices and enough messages from real people, in a repeated and sustained manner, will allow us to change the direction of our national and local policies, and save the small farms and producers who produce the safest, short-supply-chain food, who are directly accountable to their customers, and who respect the people, land, animals and community they impact.
By the way, I was disappointed (no, make that outraged) to see that the so-called “food safety” bills are supported by the likes of Michael Pollan as well as Ken Cook, founder of the Environmental Working Group. Here’s Pollan’s NY Times piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html
And Ken Cook’s post, in which he says that the concerns regarding the accelerated demise of small farms and consumer access to their foods amount to “internet rumors”:
Argh! Many people hold these influential gentlemen up on a pedestal and look to them for sound guidance, but are they being hoodwinked and influenced by Big Food Inc now? They need to hear from us as well, so after you contact your members of Congress in both the House and Sentate, consider contacting these men as well.
Well said, Beth. You should start a blog girl! You’ve got some awesome stuff to say! 🙂
I hope the milk spills in the car and they have to live with the smell forever!
Here is a great blog post by David Gumpert on this situation in MN:
“What can customers do to resist? I think Milk Farmer, Mark McAfee and Nancy Jacques have the right idea. The lawyers among us won’t say this because they can’t advise people to break the law, but I will say it. The time has come to stand up in groups, and make them arrest us with our milk, or whatever food they are trying to take from us.
The purpose would be to create the basis of a legal case. One or more consumers would need to step forward in such a situation as on Tuesday and take their milk, challenging the authorities to make an arrest. The charge in such a situation would presumably be disturbing the peace or something similar, but the consumer could argue that the state was stealing his or her food. I’ll leave the rest to the lawyers, but presumably taking possession of your food–food you’ve been receiving regularly for perhaps ten years and you’ve already paid for in a private transaction–to prevent theft would make for a pretty good argument, and something that might make sense to a jury of your peers.
I can’t think of any other options, aside from letting them continue to trample our rights and our access to our food. I have to believe it’s what our forefathers would have told us to do. ”
You are so right on, Elisabeth. These folks operate above the law – they take what they want without due process when they want to and without compensation to those they steal from. They put handicap stickers in their windows because they feel “entitled”. It is arrogance, pure and simple and these people are getting paychecks with money from the people they oppress.
Maybe this is off-topic, but I really hate how easy it is to get a “handicapped” label for a vehicle. As the commentator stated, the fella had no problem getting crates of milk into his vehicle, but he wants the right to park close at the mall. As an individual with a physical handicap who rejected the offer of this accommodation, I resent this kind of public scam. I believe that people who take advantage of handicap parking, as this man does, have a lapse in moral character. This is the kind of person working for DA.
Ari, thank you for your comment. These government officials are killing these farmers just the same as the Gestapo did but in a different way .. they are bankrupting them by seizing their products without evidence of harm and scaring others from undertaking this most wonderful and basic of careers .. farming the land in a way that does no harm to the environment and offers a fine product to the people in surrounding communities.
Those people had paid for that good milk. It was taken from them without trial, without due process, without explanation, without payment, by force, without their consent, against their will. This is a free country? These people have rights? What rights?
What about our constitution, which says that nobody shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, “without due process of law” What process? What law?
This is a very mild example of what the government will do if given unlimited power over food by the S510 hidden in HR 3082. The Gestapo followed no law, recognized no rights except its own, Will the FDA?
The FDA has already filed documents in court stating that the American people have no right to choose their food, no right to have any particular food, no tight to choose food for our children. All that power belongs to the FDA, according to the FDA.
Does anybody seriously want the FDA to be free of judicial oversight, free to seize and recall and destroy anything it wants to , without due process of law?
If you don’t want the FDA to have unlimited power over your food, Please contact your senators and insist that they stop the S510 in HR 3082, and help save our farms and our freedom.
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The arrogance is mind boggling. Hopefully more people can wake up before it is too late. This creeping control over our lives will continue until one day the government will insist that you eat irradiated carrots and do not permit you to eat fresh carrots due to “food safety” issues. It is a slippery slope that we are on with food choice freedom being sacrificed at every turn.
“Investigation”?! There needs to be an investigation into the government and what right they could possibly have to steal REAL food, that you have the right to eat!! I am so upset I could really cry, and I don’t even live in America. It’s upsetting what your government is trying to control; the right to choose what you put into your body.
I would not call it similar to the Gestapo nor the secret police of the former USSR because, quite frankly, these farmers are not being rounded up and killed. I happen to come from former East Germany and we experienced BOTH of those, and this is nothing like that. Still, it’s upsetting due to the powerlessness you must feel, having your rights denied, as well as the unfairness and platant anti-capitalist nature of the government’s actions.
This makes me so angry………. Who do they think they are and how dare they???????? What is happening to our beloved country?