It’s becoming a familiar refrain. The government officials who say they’re just trying to protect us, the public. And the small-farm owner, who says he’s being harassed.
I heard it once again last evening. At the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Terrance Powell, the director of food inspection, explained to me that Organic Pastures Dairy Co. hadn’t shown up for a scheduled hearing yesterday (Friday) to explain why it had 15-20 unlabeled bottles of raw milk in its inventory at the Santa Monica Farmers Market last Saturday, as well as at another farmers market several weeks previous.
He sounded irritated as he told me that Organic Pastures’ lawyer had telephoned earlier in the day to request a postponement of the hearing. “This is an office hearing. It is fact finding. It is a courtesy, and not a requirement.”
The dairy’s lawyer, he said, offered to FedEx information to explain why the dairy had unlabeled milk. “I hope (Organic Pastures) is going to give us something mitigating,” he said. “Maybe there’s something we don’t know.” As of now, though, “There were two complaints…about raw milk being sold without labels…Our inspectors investigated and found raw milk being sold without labels.”
If the information isn’t mitigating, there could be problems—possibly a request by the L.A. department for criminal charges against Organic Pastures’ officials and/or the dairy itself. “I would be willing to” request such charges, he stated. “I would be failing my fiduciary duty if I didn’t follow through.” Any charges would be misdemeanor charges.
When I told him it seemed a bit of a coincidence that his inspector visited Organic Pastures the day after it was finally allowed to again sell milk after more than two weeks off the market, he said, “It wouldn’t matter whether it was milk, beef, bones, or what.” The complaints came from ordinary citizens. “We have pretty educated consumers in Los Angeles.”
Mark McAfee sees the L.A. cases as “baseless.” The L.A. inspectors “didn’t see any (unlabeled) milk being sold. They claimed it was being sold….They came to our farmers market with the intent you can’t sell raw milk.” He claims the unlabeled raw milk belonged to one of his employees, that it was his own “personal” raw milk, intended for making cheese.
There was no reason to go to the hearing, he says, because “our attorney says it’s baseless.”
It sounded pretty serious to me, I told McAfee, but he says he’s seen so much of it, he doesn’t get as upset as he once might have. “Four years ago, there were 79 criminal charges suggested by CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture). “The district attorney in Fresno laughed them out.”
So the L.A. official’s talk doesn’t bother him. “We are used to their harassment.”
I wish I could predict where this particular situation is headed, but I’ve given up trying to anticipate what the sides will do. There are obviously two very different mindsets at work here.
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