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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Activism Opportunity for Manna Storehouse
By Monica @ 7:26 PM
The Stowers family is pleased to announce that you can follow their case through their attorney's website, The Buckeye Institute. The press statement can be seen directly at this location. For those unaware of the raid on Manna Storehouse, I've written about the incident here, here, and here.
Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Stowers' legal fund is encouraged to make it to the Buckeye Institute. The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and education group and does not perform contract work or accept government grants: "To maintain the highest degree of intellectual integrity, we need the support of the people whose lives we're seeking to improve through sound public policy. We thank you in advance for your support. "
I received an email requesting people to write letters, especially to the Governor of Ohio, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department. If anyone has experienced a similar tale of government abuse, please leave it here in the comments and I will forward it to the Stowers', as they would like to hear about it.
Will you please join me in writing these three government offices? We need to send a clear message to the officials in Ohio -- and other government agencies in the country no doubt following this case closely -- that these types of actions are completely unconstitutional and unacceptable. Here is my letter. Feel free to adapt it to your needs.
Dear __________,
I am extremely disturbed at the strong-arm tactics displayed in the raid on the Stowers home in late 2008. Not one complaint of illness has been made against Manna Storehouse, nor has any evidence been offered that the products of the Stowers farm are dangerous. Would this type of action have been acceptable in America in 1808 or even 1908? No. Then why is it acceptable in 2008? It is not.
People have a constitutional right to enter into contractual agreements that harm no one, and they have a right to do so without government permission slips. For too long now, a government official has been responsible for deciding what is healthy. The current regulatory scheme drastically decreases choices available to consumers and forces them to buy food products as the government sees fit -- regardless of their own judgment or unique circumstances. This is a complete anomaly in human history. For thousands of years, even well into the history of the United States, humans have survived and lived perfectly healthy lives without a government dictating their food choices.

The members of the Manna Storehouse coop are informed consumers. As for the possibility of food-borne illness, there are no guarantees of safety even from federally inspected items, including pasteurized milk, beef, chicken, tomatoes, sausage, spinach, and alfalfa sprouts -- despite what government agencies would like us to believe. All Americans need to be more informed about their food choices -- not lulled into a false sense of complacency about a particular product simply because it is deemed "safe" by a state or federal health agency. Americans must have the right to eat the food they choose. Should situations of harm to consumers arise, Americans will always have a recourse: the courts.

Yet there wasn't even a case of food poisoning as an excuse for this raid. No one complained or became ill from purchases from the Manna Storehouse coop. No one's rights were violated until the Stowers home was forcibly entered. Why was there a need to raid the Stowers home and confiscate thousands of dollars worth of food, including private supplies as well? This type of action resembles something out of a Soviet Politburo handbook. It is most certainly not our founders' vision of the United States. The Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department should be ashamed of themselves.

Ohioans, indeed all Americans, should be allowed to to make their own decisions about the food put into their bodies -- without any government interference whatsoever. The government should not be able to unlawfully seize peoples' very sustenance because of minor code infractions. Government agencies appear to need continual reminders that it is they who serve American citizens -- not the other way around. This outrageous action against the Stowers family is a clear violation of the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and all such raids need to come to an end.

Monica Hughes, PhD, founder of Free Agriculture -- Restore Markets (fa-rm.org)

Labels: "Safety", Farm Raids, Individual Rights

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Another Update on Manna Storehouse Raid
By Monica @ 9:26 PM
David Hansen, president of the Buckeye Institute, stopped by and left a note here on my blog that he will be representing the Stowers family in court. Thousands of dollars worth of private property, including $10,000 in food, was stolen by the government. The Buckeye Institute's entire press release may be found here:

The Buckeye Institute argues the right to buy food directly from local farmers; distribute locally-grown food to neighbors; and pool resources to purchase food in bulk are rights that do not require a license. In addition, the right of peaceful citizens to be free from paramilitary police raids, searches and seizures is guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14, Article 1 of the Ohio Constitution.
"The Stowers' constitutional rights were violated over grass-fed cattle, pastured chickens and pesticide-free produce," Buckeye Institute 1851 Center of Constitutional Law Director Maurice Thompson said. "Ohioans do not need a government permission slip to run a family farm and co-op, and should not be subjected to raids when they do not have one. This legal action will ensure the ODA understands and respects Ohioans' rights."

On the morning of December 1, 2008, law enforcement officers forcefully entered the Stowers' residence, without first announcing they were police or stating the purpose of the visit. With guns drawn, officers swiftly and immediately moved to the upstairs of the home, finding ten children in the middle of a home-schooling lesson. Officers then moved Jacqueline Stowers and her children to their living room where they were held for more than six hours.
This is pure evil. We cannot allow the government to turn this country into Stalinist Russia, seizing peoples' very sustenance because of minor code infractions! The government is supposed to work for us, not the other way around. No one even complained or got ill from anything the Stowers' were distributing. But that's so typical of all these farm raids -- no one got sick from Mark Nolt's raw cheese, or Michael Schmidt's raw milk, or Bean and Rinaldi's pastured pork. These people are simply doing what people have only been doing for millenia now. You know, that "growing and selling food" thing. I just don't know how humans survived for millions of years without a government to dictate to them what not to eat.

How long until the government decides we can't grow our own vegetables for "environmental" and "safety" reasons?

Let's work to make sure that day never happens.
Labels: De-regulation, Farm Raids, Government Idiocy, Rants and Whines

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Review of "Mad Sheep"
By Monica @ 5:26 PM
In a recent search at my local library for readings on the history of agriculture in the United States, I came across a potentially interesting book entitled Mad Sheep, with the subtitle, “The true story behind the USDA’s war on a family farm.”

The cover and dramatic red lettering made me think that this book might be a typical leftist rant against corporate agriculture. Never judge a book by its cover, they say.

This book should be required reading of anyone wanting to know more about USDA and agricultural policy. It chronicles the extraordinary story of an entrepreneurial family of Vermont farmers that did years of research and sought to establish a new type of sheep farming industry in the United States. Their story is unforgettable. Unfortunately, its ending is far from happy.

In the 1990s, two scientists named Larry and Linda Faillace returned to the United States from a research stint in Britain, in anticipation of starting an entirely new sheep farming industry that had not been carried out in the United States before. Typical American sheep only give 100 pounds of milk per year, while the breeds the Faillaces wanted to import averaged 10 times as much, thus for the first time promising a viable sheep milk and cheese industry in the United States. After several years of research and international travel, the Faillaces arranged, with the assistance and approval of the USDA, to import three different breeds of sheep into the United States – breeds that had never been raised in the US before. The genetics and feeding history of the sheep had been tirelessly researched over several years before arranging their importation into the US.

As scientists, the Faillaces were educated about and had done research on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), and made every effort to minimize the risk of bringing these infectious diseases into the country. One of the breeds they chose had never had a single case of scrapie, a known TSE which is already endemic in the US. They also made significant effort to show, before importation, that the animals had never been fed meat or bonemeal of any species, which is the most widely believed cause of TSEs, though this was not a USDA concern at the time. After three years of research and work with the USDA, their chosen flock successfully completed USDA quarantine and were given an inspection that stated the animals were free of any infectious disease or exposure to infectious disease.

Two years later in 1998, they were approached by a USDA bureaucrat, Detweiler, and asked to surrender their animals based on “new research that sheep could be susceptible to BSE.” BSE is a TSE, but BSE is mad cow disease, and no sheep in the world had ever naturally contracted BSE. Further, the Faillaces could document that their sheep had never been fed animal products. The USDA officials would not release any “scientific” information leading to their request, but under duress admitted to the Faillaces that their request to “depopulate” the farm was based not only on this secret scientific information, but on political pressure as well. Political pressure from whom? The USDA wouldn’t say, but Linda Faillace speculates:

Was this retaliation for the EU not accepting US hormone-treated beef? Was someone in the sheep industry angry over our importation? Was the dairy industry feeling threatened? And what was the political pressure Detweiler referred to? The National Cattleman’s Beef Association? The pharmaceutical industries? The last thing drug companies in the United States would want was BSE, because bovine by-products are used in a wide variety of pharmaceutical and cosmetic products – everything from insulin to bovine placenta for estrogen and anti-wrinkle creams. And if a country finds BSE, they are no longer able to source their products form the native cattle population. (p. 70)

The USDA could provide no proof that the Faillace’s sheep were infected with TSEs, and it was obvious to Detweiler after meeting the Faillaces that she wasn’t going to be able to pull the wool over their eyes on the science. These were not just a bunch of country bumpkins. They knew their stuff and they refused to surrender their animals, although they did agree to turn over any sheep that they decided to kill. Another farmer who had previously obtained sheep from the Faillaces also surrendered a few sheep to the USDA for testing, and these sheep were determined to have “a foreign TSE of unknown origin.”

When the USDA revealed a portion of the test results of the Western blot (which is the least reliable test for TSEs), it was clear that the samples had undergone degradation and that there was an absence of negative controls and molecular weight markers – both necessary for at least preliminary proof that the sheep has a TSE. The data were a mess. Positive control lanes were negative, samples that were supposed to be negative tested positive, and one of the USDA’s own scientists who developed the test admitted privately to them that it was unvalidated and should not be used in court. When the Faillaces requested the original samples to do independent testing and carry out “gold standard” testing, namely immunohistochemistry and histopathology, they were told the samples had been inadvertently discarded. The laboratory director also lied under oath about testing the samples blindly.

After the Faillaces filed for all of the testing information to be released from the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act, the USDA’s documents revealed four hundred negative test results from the Faillace animals and other animals originating from their farm. After four years, the USDA could still provide no evidence that there was anything wrong with the sheep, while repeatedly pressuring the Faillaces to turn over their herd. At this point, more TSE tests had been run on the Faillace herd of 125 sheep than the entire cattle herd of the United States, in a vain search for mad cow disease in sheep. The animals had been under quarantine for two years. Regardless of the feed records and negative test results, the USDA Secretary ordered the animals destroyed, a decision ultimately upheld by a judge in court. The Faillaces filed for an appeal, and although the federal appeals court expedited the hearing, the court admitted that it did not have the right to stop the USDA from seizing the animals should they decide to do so before the appeal date.

After months of dealing with tapped phones and constant surveillance of their property, in late March 2001 only two weeks before the hearing in the appeals court on April 10, 2001, 27 armed federal agents and 13 USDA officials arrived at the Faillace farm, seized all their animals, and sent them to Iowa to be destroyed. The USDA also confiscated their sheep semen so that they would not be able to rebuild their herd by crossbreeding with American sheep. Despite a USDA promise to pay “fair market value” for the herd, and despite the Faillace’s estimate of a profit of $11.3 million had the herd not been quarantined and sales of lambs not restricted for nearly three years, the USDA paid the Faillaces a measly $250k for five years of hassle and lost income.

After the Faillaces lost their sheep, the laboratory that had conducted the original Western blot tests was shut down due to negligence. A USDA-appointed panel concluded upon seeing the condition of the laboratory that the accuracy of the TSE work in the Faillace case had to be questioned. Unfortunately, it was too late. And even so, tests conducted on every single destroyed animal in the Faillace herd were negative by IHC and histopathology – the gold standard tests for determining whether an animal has a TSE.

Nearly a decade of the Faillaces’ work had been destroyed – for nothing. The lack of conclusive proof of any TSE in the destroyed Faillace herd (it took the USDA over a year to release the test results, and they kept testing and re-testing in vain for a year in order to try to obtain positives) also didn’t convince the USDA not to enforce a five year quarantine that didn’t end until 2006. This quarantine prevented them from keeping hooved animals, and much of their farm equipment was ordered destroyed by incineration in an incinerator in Massuchusetts. When Larry Faillace followed the dump truck that was removing the materials from their farm for supposed incineration on USDA order, he found and documented with photographs that the materials actually went to a landfill in north Vermont. So much for the threat of mad cow disease in sheep --- it was a complete ruse the USDA was going through to maintain public confidence in their decisions. The Faillaces had had enough. They sued the USDA for fraud so that the quarantine would be lifted.

Their case was not heard years later until three weeks before the quarantine ended. The judge ruled in favor of the USDA that the quarantine was legal.

There you have it. The USDA carried out a war on various sheep farmers and other imported animals for five years under the fantasy that imported sheep (documented to have never been fed meat meal!) might transmit mad cow disease to cows or humans. In the meantime, the USDA allowed actual mad cow disease (BSE) to emerge in cattle the United States. A year after the first emergence of BSE in the US in 2003, the USDA ordered decreased testing of BSE to approximately one tenth of a percent of animals in 2004 – a 32% decrease in testing. (Wouldn’t the emergence of BSE in the United States logically call for more testing?) When a single case of BSE was also found in a dairy herd of 4000 cattle in Washington, the herd was quarantined for one month. Only 131 other animals were slaughtered and tested before the USDA proclaimed the BSE to be an “isolated case”, lifted this one month quarantine and milk sales were resumed. Contrast that with the Faillace experience. The Faillace farm underwent a five year quarantine following destruction of the animals, and their entire herd was destroyed with no evidence of a TSE at all, let alone that it could have spread to cows and caused mad cow disease.

The mad cow coverup doesn’t stop there. The legal battle between the USDA and Creekstone Farms has gone on for three years now, as I’ve recently written, with the most recent court ruling in 2008 in favor of the USDA’s position to deny Creekstone Farms the right to test for mad cow disease.

This story beggars belief, doesn’t it? Massive corruption in our government agencies and the courts, both of them obstructing justice and truth. But wait – it gets worse.

In 1998, preliminary unpublished results from a study in Britain showed that sheep thought to have scrapie (a TSE that is already widespread in the United States) actually had BSE. Only a few scientists were privy to these results. Detwiler, the USDA bureaucrat who instigated of the quarantine of the Faillace’s farm in 1998 (probably partly as a result of this unpublished research), had been one of these few scientists. But in 2001, just months after the Faillace herd had been destroyed, an independent audit did DNA testing of the brain samples used in that study. 100% of the tissue was of cow origin. The supposed sheep brains being investigated for BSE (mad cow disease) were actually cow brains. File that story under the “duh” category.

Mad Sheep is nothing short of stunning. It is required reading for anyone interested in the government violation of individual rights when it comes to agriculture. Most people do not think of the USDA as a corrupt agency in comparison to other government agencies. Unfortunately, an honest review of the facts indicate otherwise.

Labels: Farm Raids, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend

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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Update on SWAT Raid on Manna Storehouse
By Monica @ 10:14 PM
Here is an excerpt from an email that Manna storehouse sent to their co-op customers. I wrote about the SWAT raid on the Stowers family here.

I will leave them an email about the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund but it occurred to me that some of my readers might be able to help if so inclined. In short, if you have experience with the Ohio Department Agriculture, the Health Department, or books on criminal law in Ohio, you may be able to help the Stowers family. If you would like to help with these things, their contact information is available at their storefront website. However, please don't overwhelm them with supportive emails, as their computers have been confiscated.

"Hi everyone. First of all, we would like to thank everyone for the phenomenal support and encouragement you have given us during this very difficult time for our family. We have been unbelievably overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and concern from many, many people.

At this point, we still have not been charged with anything, so we are devoting most of our time to research. We are trying to prepare ourselves for what lies ahead.

Many people have asked how they can help. Here are a few things that we are in need of.

*Anyone who has any information or experience with the ODA or the Health Department - we would love to hear about it! We are trying to learn the ORC laws regarding these agencies, their administrative procedure, etc... We will gladly talk with anyone who has information, advice or experiences to share.

*Books on criminal law in Ohio. We would love to borrow any legal books of this nature that anyone might have.

*Computers - We need to borrow 2 computers with the capability to recognize a wireless connection, preferably with Microsoft Excel. This is imperative for us in the research we are doing and would only be until we can get our property back.

Labels: Activism Opportunities, Farm Raids

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Monday, December 8, 2008

For Farmers -- How to Survive a Farm Raid
By Monica @ 3:26 PM
The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund has some advice to farmers for surviving a farm raid. Go check out the entire page and their list of resources. For starters:

You can call the Emergency Hot Line Directly, or call the office during regular business hours. The lawyer on call will be paged to call you back.

To help you remember the numbers, we send out a free magnet with your membership packet. Call us if you didn’t get one or lost it.

Office: 1-703-208-FARM (3276)
Emergency 1-800-867-5891

If you aren’t a member yet, consider joining now.
Labels: Farm Raids

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Farm Raids (II)
By Monica @ 3:23 PM
From Campaign for Liberty comes this disturbing story:

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.

So what was the problem? Apparently, a Department of Agriculture official had been notified that a local college group had obtained some uninspected beef from Manna Storehouse. The consequence:

Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.

Unfortunately, this report of yet another farm raid bears all too common similarities to the two other raids I’ve written about recently. You may read about more examples of government confiscation of private property and entrapment here.
Update: stories about this event are popping up all over the web. Here is a report from The Complete Patient.
Labels: Farm Raids

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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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