Farm Raids
By Monica @ 8:42 AM   
State and federal agencies are violating individual rights. Consider the following two tales of government confiscation or destruction of private property and unreasonable searches in the name of “protecting consumers”: the farm raids of Mark Nolt and Rinaldi and Bean. In two separate raids, one in August 2007 and one in April 2008, Mark Nolt's farm in Pennsylvania was raided for his refusal to apply for a state permit to sell raw milk. The first raid seized over $25,000 worth of cheese, despite no complaint of food borne illness and no proof of any danger posed by the cheese. In the second raid, six police cars and five unmarked cars descended onto his property, preventing neighbors or family from coming onto the property by threatening their arrest, seizing $30,000 worth of cheese, leading Nolt away in handcuffs, and seizing irreplaceable parts to his dairy equipment so that he could no longer make cheese even for his family, let alone consumers. The director of food safety also stole a book off his shelf, which was entitled Everything I Ever Wanted to Do is Illegal, by Joel Salatin.
The current, more stringent permitting process in Pennsylvania no longer allows a farmer to sell raw cream or butter, which would significantly add to farm income. To add insult to the injury of all of his lost income, Nolt has recently been ordered to pay over $4000 in fines due to his noncompliance. He is appealing the decision. Last September two farmers in Virginia, Rinaldi and Bean, were arrested for labeling their pork products incorrectly. While waiting for new tags to come in the mail, they used price tags that said "Certified Organic" but their pork was not Certified Organic by the USDA. 10 state agriculture officials and 2 policemen arrived at their door. They were handcuffed, their computers seized, and they were placed in separate vehicles and taken to jail. Their pork was destroyed by pouring bleach on it -- meat that had in no way been proven unsafe to eat. No consumer complained or got sick from this pork. Rinaldi believes that this heavy handedness was not actually due to the labeling, but the fact that Rinaldi and Bean were slaughtering their own pork. Processing in an inspected facility was costing the farmers as much as $1300 for four pigs, and transporting uninspected pork, goat, and sheep products is illegal in Virginia. Though we do not approve of the use of USDA Certified Organic stickers on non-USDA certified products, this type of police state response is completely inappropriate for a labeling infraction. When SWAT teams carry out the destruction and confiscation of private property for minor code infractions, it resembles the actions of a Soviet Politburo central planning office against the "kulaks", not the founders' vision of the United States of America.
These are just two of many examples where governments used force against US citizens and violated their Constitutional rights even though they had not harmed or threatened a single person. These actions are all too common in the small farming community, particularly among the Amish and Mennonite communities.
Labels: Farm Raids
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2 Comments:
I didn't know that this independent blog was in the works, but I've been looking forward to reading this type of content, so this is a welcome addition to the blogosphere.
I've known about the FDA raids on drug companies for many years, so these farm raids don't entirely surprise me, but it is still hard to be jaded when considering the devastating affects of such legal(ized) attacks.
Thanks for the comment, Aestus. I'd completely ignorant of raids being carried out on drug companies, but that doesn't surprise me either. Feel free to leave more information and links about that if you like.
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