Of all the things I find upsetting about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s case against Pennyslvania farmer Dan Allgyer (and there are many), the most upsetting is the agency’s admission that its agents entered private residences to pick up their milk.
They didn’t even go onto the property under their own names, but under aliases. And they didn’t just do it once or twice, but “placed orders for unpasteurized cow milk on 23 occasions,” according to the filing in Pennsylvania District Court seeking a permanent injunction against Allgyer.
The way food clubs like that in Maryland work, various members offer their homes as drop sites. Food orders are packed at the farm, and shipped via a delivery truck that leaves it off according to where members designate they want to pick it up. Members may have a refrigerator in the garage or coolers on the deck where members come to pick up their orders.
It’s testimony to just how private these arrangements are that food can only be obtained at another member’s home. There’s nothing even vaguely approaching a retail sale open to the public.
In any event, if you figure FDA agents made pickups at six different residences over the year-plus of the investigation, then they likely entered a half dozen residences perhaps four times.
How would you like undercover FDA agents on your property? Probably not too much, on even one occasion. But four different times?
And what were the agents doing while on private property? I just wrote an article for Grist in which I speculated about the possibilities. (Last time I looked, it was the second most read article on the site.)
What intrigues me as well is the question of whether FDA agents violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Just to refresh your memory, here’s what it says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
It seems clear that the FDA didn’t have search warrants to enter the residential properties they picked up their milk at. But did they need warrants? An FDA official refused to respond to my question on this matter.
But I’ve since been in touch with four lawyers and a law enforcement agent about this question, and they are divided. Two lawyers tell me they think the FDA might have gone too far without establishing “probable cause” in advance with a judge. Two other lawyers, along with the law enforcement agent, tell me that likely the FDA has legal precedent on its side. The main example they use is undercover drug investigations. In those cases, the law enforcement agent tells me, undercover agents are presumed to have been “invited” into residences to obtain drugs. The same could well hold in the case of the raw milk investigation–by virtue of joining a buying club, the FDA agents were then “invited” to obtain their milk, he says.
Perhaps this question will play out in a courtroom discussion. It could be that illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine are in a somewhat different investigative category than raw milk, with different investigative requirements. In other words, if you’re going to sneak onto someone’s property to obtain raw milk, you better have an awfully good explanation, made in advance.
In the meantime, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses…” has a pretty hollow ring to it, knowing that FDA agents can just come slinking around your house looking for food they don’t approve of. ?
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The Maryland food club now has a Facebook page along with a page for donations to support its legal fund. And I can’t figure out if the FDA Facebook page is the agency’s official site, but it sure is filled with decidedly unfriendly commentary from foodies.
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Finally, Saturday is the Third Annual Raw Milk Symposium, being held in Minneapolis. Canadian farmer Michael Schmidt is the keynote speaker, among a cast of many experts.
I just got home from another Share the Secret Raw Milk Presentation in LA and it is 0230 in the AM…I have had 4 hours of time to think about this.
Suffice it to say that after Liz Reitzig called me today and asked me to come to WA DC and speak on the steps of the capital in support of Raw Milk on May 16th along side Sally and others….I am feeling the burn and the desire to really throw some rocks at the FDA.
What the FDA has done is tantamount to building an enforced Virtual Raw Milk Berlin Wall
( with out even a check point Charlie ) arround US citizens as a favor to CAFO FOOD INC PMO interests and protection of for-profit Big Ag agendas in spite of health and all of this is done for big ag processors interests.
This absolute abuse of the nutritional civil rights of US Moms and their families and kids is criminal. When the most allergenic and maldigested food in America ( pasteurized milk ) is given no alternative…that is a crime. That is forced illness and forced malnutrition.
The FDA just stepped on the land mine and the trigger just clicked….and when they lift their foot in an attempt to make their next step, it will be their last in this pasture. The people have just been given the microphone and they will speak. Michele Obama will listen and the FDA will be exposed for its crimes. No more hiding no more quiet.
I will be there on the 16th of May….I will tell the FDA to "tear down this wall"….I will tell the FDA to respond to my citizens petition ( now three years old ) and start obeying our laws. I will tell the FDA that Pasteurized Milk is the most allergenic food in America and Safe Delicious Raw Milk stabilizes MAST cells and saves kids from Pasteurized Milk Allergy and has killed no one in the last 40 years. I will tell the FDA that they must put kids above greed.
The FDA has just picked on their last Amish Raw Milk producer.
Not sure how much Ghandi or MLK I can muster….this is a fight and now we have seized the initiative. There are TWO RAW MILKS IN AMERICA and now we can teach the media and the congress about safe non-cafo non PMO human consumption raw milk…the clean and safe and delicious kind. The kind that the FDA denies exists.
Mr. Sheehan… Tear Down This WALL!!
Gorbi was so much better than Sheehan.
Sorry Gorbachev….at least you drank Raw Milk Kefir.
Dear Raw Milk producers, consumers and nutritional patriots….now is the time to take this fight to WA DC. Please attend and liberate our precious living food and its farmers after 100 years war on this living food and of ugly biased beligerent oppression. We all need the "jobs and health" here in America. A rennaisance of safe delicious locally produced raw milk will do both of these things and so much more.
Mark
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will. Hannah Arendt
Ken Conrad
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-08-monsanto-FDA-taylor
Mike Taylor, who has worked for FDA, for Monsanto, for law firms representing Monsanto, for USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service, and now for FDA again. Taylor was in part responsible for the approval of rBGH in the early 90's, despite scientific evidence of its danger. Now he is responsible for implementing the new food safety laws.
(p.s. Posting this link was the final straw that got me banished from Bill Marler's blog. Guess he doesn't like me pointing out the truth about FDA!)
http://host.madison.com/business/article_717e5aac-a74d-5b0d-8070-6d429863d5e0.html
Like the name of this website, lol… "I drink on the job"
Good article.
This law student wrote a very scholarly 37 page assessment of the legal situation in the USA and the chances of CFR 1240.61 legal change via legal challenge in America.
One of the points made in this extensively footnoted thesis is that perhaps a challenge could be made on racial grounds ( it was not explained and it is my injection that race and Lactose Intolerance provides this link to constitutional grounds )
I know that 30-70% of some racial subgroups have some form of milk maldigestion and that those lactose intolerant like conditions only happen when they drink pasteurized milk and not raw milk ( perhaps as high as 94% in these these racial subgroups ).
So how about this…..
A massive class action suit against the FDA claiming a disparity in racial treatment of black populations showing that pasteurized milk makes them sick and raw milk does not.
This could have some real political teeth and the testimonials would shake the FDA and Sheehan to their core. If it did not win it certainly would get headlines and move the movement forward. After all, this is a civil rights movement based in nutritional equities and farmer and consumer freedoms and the good old unadulterated truths.
Out here in California, we haev so many black and Asian consumers that say constantly that they can drink OPDC with no problems but pasteurized milk confines them to the bathroom for hours.
The read is deep but worth the education….excellently done. WAP and even Beals and OPDC made it into the text.
http://law.psu.edu/_file/aglaw/Bringing_the_Cow_To_Court_Legal_Battle_Over_Raw_Milk.pdf
Mark
With passionate moms and the truth on our side…it is matter of "just doing it…."
Some body call Ron Paul. He was mentioned in the Legal Thesis cited above. He needs to be invited to the WA DC Raw Milk event. We have a cow coming to the WA DC event…we can get Ron Paul. It is a pretty safe political bet that who ever comes to this event will look good to the average American…logic and moms and a cow for gods sake.
Mark