I like to understand both sides of an issue or controversial event. So Ive been trying to understand the Vernon Hershberger raw milk and licensing case from the viewpoint of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the Wisconsin Department of Justice….and I think Ive got it figured out why they decided to file a motion to have the Wisconsin farmer, and father of ten, thrown into jail for allegedly violating the terms of his release (described in my previous post).
Imagine theres a big prize fight coming up. Theres this new Challenger who doesnt look very strong, but has won a few notable fights. But you–the local Mafioso Don– want the Champ to win. The Champ is reliable, knows how to break kneecaps for you when necessary to keep the suckers out there paying on their loans and scams. Besides, you run a book-making operation, and you and your pals can make a ton of money if you know the prize fights winner in advance.
It turns out you can control pretty much all aspects of the fight. You can pick the referee, and buy him off so hell make life easy on the Champ, and very hard on the Challenger. You can make the the rules so the Challenger cant hit above the neck or below the belt without being penalized, but the Champ can hit wherever he wants, and its all legal.
If by some crazy chance the fight goes the distance, youve assembled a group of official judges who will enforce your rules.
Theres only one thing you cant control–the Challenger. Hes a man of principle, and he keeps rejecting your offers of a few bucks to take a fall. It seems he doesnt want to give up his career for your offer.
What the heck, you figure. Youve got everything else under your control, what could go wrong?
To your complete and utter amazement, not only does the Challenger go the full 15 rounds, but the official judges give the decision to the Challenger on points.
You try to tell your high-roller friends, How did I know the official judges were going to be fair and honest?
Your high-roller friends dont want to hear excuses or explanations. All they know is they put big money on the Champ based on your guarantees about how the fight was in the bag, and they are pissed as hell. They hate to lose in general, but they especially hate to lose big money. They are telling you to find a way to get their money back, or there will be consequences. Maybe a broken arm, or a broken kneecap.
How do you, the Don, make everyone whole? Theres only one way you can think of: Go out and get the Challenger, Tell him he better figure out a way to come up with the dough thats just been lost, or hell go to jail. But I won fair and square, says the Challenger.
Fair and square?…What does that mean?
You cant do this, says the Challenger.
Yeah, just watch, says the Don. What are you going to do about it? Call the police?
**
Late update: Wisconsin Judge Guy Reynolds put off the state’s motion to have Vernon Hershberger jailed, until his sentencing hearing is held–now scheduled for 1 p.m. June 13, in Baraboo.
And this from Amy Bentley Salberg, one of Hershberger’s lawyers: “At the judge’s request, I am passing this along: if there are going to be reference letters or similar statements in support of Vernon, those must come through Vernon’s attorneys if they are to be considered by the court. Others will be tossed unread. Apparently, many people have been contacting the court directly (and anonymously). ” Best email address for Salberg: ams@realfoodlaw.com.
Ultimately, as Mark preaches it is a matter of teach, teach, teach your children… and your neighbors, turn them into internet activists before that freedom too is taken away.
Very nice description.
I see this a little differently. For 100 years killing bacteria was the goal and the mission. Now….our own government and its well financed NIH Human Biome Project says…stop the killing!!! We are killing ourselves!!! Hold the presses….bacteria matter. In fact, bacteria are what we are all made of!!??? !!!
Industry is saying….what the hell??….all we have are killing machines and we do not know anything about living food or growing things. All we know and all we have ever been taught to do is to kill for the sake of distribution ease, low cost, profits, and shelf life. Now the world is changing. The gut matters, digestibility matters, non allergenicity matters, consumers have become enlightened and the NIH studies are forever out of the human health genie bottle.
This new reality must really suck for big ag and their processors: The GUT…the customer…health…what the hell is that? Why does this matter??? Never has before!! Food is now connected with illness, diabetes, obesity auto immune illness?? Why not the age old addage….just go see your doctor?? These are all foreign concepts….never taught in school, never espoused by the ever powerful uniform wearing FDA.
These bricks of “settled science” just became “unsettled rubble” of an earth quake that is quaking the establishment. How will the bags of money stay securely fastened to the rich, when consumers say,….no more, I buy local and unprocessed, my life and my families lives and health dependent on it.
Thats my take on this prize fight.This fight will end with new victors….the consumers and their closely connected farmers, and….the processors licking their wounds, nursing their bank account head injuries trying to refiguer who they serve and what they will do to emmulate the farmer.
Sorry processors…you can not fake high quality raw milk. It is real and it is the result of damn hard work green pastures, healthy cows and honest men and women.
Mike Schmidt always says to love the enemy and teach them….I love that idea, but when the enemy is brain dead and dependent on a paycheck to remain that way…it is hard to teach them anything. When the enemy is heartless…it is hard to love them.
I say teach and feed the consumer and love the consumer. Ignore the ignorant FDA and big ag processors. They will meet their own fates. It is just a matter of time and evolution.
In that scenario, genuinely-Independent farmers WHO FINANCE THEMSELVES OUTSIDE THE GOD-DAMNED USURY SYSTEM are demonstrating what profit-ability, really means. It’s war, and it’s about money. It always is
in his brilliant work, “World Economic Primacy”, Prof Kindleberger said that nations sometimes get a 2nd chance. Before he got locked-away in Victorville, for thought-crime, Edgar J Steele used to say “New America … an idea whose time has come”
Your words mean much…your words were also your actions!!
Bless you!!
The problem with regulatory two year olds is that they are paid very well to never grow up!! and their diapers really stink because their bowels are all fouled up.
No one wants to even get near a regulatory two year old, they have really smelly diapers and they speak indecipherable greedy selfish psycho-babble.
They do not drink raw milk!! Their GUTS and brains do not work and until they get another paycheck source…their brains will never work. Perhaps they need to be in “regulatory time-out” for about ten years.
The local food movement is not going to go anywhere unless farmers can make a profit from it, and often all that is missing is the capital to do so. There may be creative solutions that can help.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040623_Morninglane_Dairy_Vernon_Hershberger_food_freedom.html#ixzz2VGjjt9OY
My midwife worked very hard for the legalizing of homebirth, but she had a lot of help. One of the most moving things that happened during that fight was when an amish midwife spoke very simply, competently and succinctly about the right of a mother to choose in front of the legislature. There was also a VERY large number of amish citizens that filled the gallery that day to show their support.
Sometimes great things happen. We did all believe that there was a lot of money from the medical establishment muddying the waters, but we still won.
Since money is the root of all evil, maybe what we should be fighting for is the abolition of money, taxation, and promoting bartering instead of commerce. Of course, since that would bring the machine to its knees they would never let it happen. Revolution begins at home, each one of us decide whether you want to be part of the solution, or part of the problem.
“Sometimes great things happen.” Absolute truth, especially when you least expect it.
Lynn
Raw milk’s competition Shawn Pfaff, is a spokesman for the Wisconsin Safe Milk Coalition, (The Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association[The 5 billion dollar Wisconsin cheese industry.] The American Academy of Pediatrics & The Wisconsin Medical Society[The 38 billion dollar Wisconsin medical industry absorbing over 15% of our gross domestic product.] and The Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association) an industry lobbying group opposed to raw-milk sales.
Sale – “An agreement by which one gives a thing for a price in current money, and the other gives the price in order to have the thing itself.” “An essential element of a ‘sale’ is the money price which must either be fixed by agreement or capable of being ascertained therefrom.”
Principal – “Property Law: A term used as the correlative of ‘accessory’ or ‘incident’ to denote the more important or valuable subject, with which others are connected in a relation of dependence or subservience, or to which they are incident or appurtenant. Thus, it is said that the incident shall pass by the grant of the principal; but not the principal by the grant of the incident.”
I would imagine that one could argue that if one is selling milk to a processor and also raw milk on the side, the milk sold to the processor represents the primary business and the raw milk the incidental business; and if one does not sell to a processor (and therefore is not licenced by DATCP), his/her berries/veggies/soap/beef/9-to-5 job would be the primary business and the raw milk would be the incidental business. The amount of money one makes from each business occupation may bear this out.
Or do you mean that “incidental” was defined either in a court case or in some legislation? If so, could you please reference the definition and source here?
When you say “This exemption also shows the true intention of the author” are you referring back to the original legislation mandating pasteurization? That’s where statutory intention would be found.
Incidental 1. being likely to ensue as a chance or minor consequence
About how I got my definitions; I entered the entire phrase into a yahoo search.
When I said “This exemption also shows the true intention of the author” I meant the exemption shows that the author was not thinking about food safety but about preventing competition from farmers. The fact that the author didn’t define incidental sales not in the regular course of business also says a lot and DATCP still to this day has not defined it. They have only made a rule, a rule that probably hasn’t even gone through proper review. This may be the reason they never charged Vernon with selling raw milk.
I’ve also noticed that DATCP has over the years, taken it upon themselves to arbitrarily change the wording of the statute. For instance, a few years ago DATCP wrote the incidental sales exemption out of the statute and was instructed by a judge to put it back in when their action was outed during a trial. I also get the impression the the original statute didn’t read not in the regular course of business and I don’t think there was originally a prohibition on advertising. The exemption had to apply to the thousands of people who were buy raw milk farm direct in 1957 when the statute was written. DATCP claims they haven’t change their rule but we all know this is nonsense. When did this clamp down start, in the late 90’s?
Relating to “incidental”: as I understand law, the definition in the law dictionary is what you go by unless a word/term was further clarified by either the legislation itself, or a judge who can rule on legislative/statutory matters. How a word is defined in a “regular” dictionary is irrelevant, as is how DATCP interprets a word/term. Remember, DATCP is part of the executive branch of government, and their job is to enforce “laws” (statutes, in this case); only the legislative branch can make “laws” and the judicial interpret “laws”. DATCP can only make decisions on their own rules, not on statutes. FTCLDF are idiots for not nailing DATCP on this, and DATCP will continue until someone challenges them.
I *believe* the hassle from DATCP started with the Wayne & Janet Brunner Farm and the Gleta Martin/Tim Wightman Farm(Tim, ironically, a board member of the Farm-To-Consumer Foundation), who both set up farms as CSA/corporations in the late 1990s (?) with the *intention* of selling raw milk. The *intention* of both farms was to make raw milk a business offshoot, and they asked the state how they could do this. The state gave permissions, the state took away permissions, and basically drug them through the muck for years. Raw Milk As Business Venture is when the hassle started. Before that, those who lived in the country bought milk from their neighbors and nobody cared. One could argue that the dairy industry felt threatened, but one could also argue that Brunners/Martin-Wightman worked outside their statutory boundaries (making the incidental the primary), and as you’d expect the state had to deal with this. When we started our farmshare in 2007 the WI farmshares were getting corporate exemptions from the state, which the state chose not to renew. The farmshare as exists today in Wisconsin came from this change (the LLC/association membership as promoted by FTCLDF). I honestly believe that if we all would have stuck to incidental sales (which, I’m sorry, means no advertising – but doesn’t exclude word of mouth) and stayed away from these corporate structures, and then challenged the incidental sales clause if threatened by the state, we would have been left alone. But that doesn’t make city people happy or the Weston Price Foundation any money.
rawmilkmike, I’d suggest you start reading the law dictionary and you’ll see that the language they use and the language we use are not the same. In a legal setting, you are expected to speak their language, not the other way around. Google “Black’s Law Dictionary pdf” and free downloads come up (for the 4th edition; any editions later than that through the current – the 9th – you’d have to pay for). This is the first one on google, and it works (no virus/spam):
livingfreeandclear.com/downloads/files/Black’sLaw4th.pdf
And here’s the WI State Law Library. They can probably help you get a copy of the original 1957 legislation (probably for a copying fee):
http://wilawlibrary.gov/about/locations.html