If you have law enforcement business in Michigan’s Charlevoix County, you better see the sheriff first. The word around Charlevoix County is that its sheriff, George Laseter, has warned other law enforcement and regulatory agencies—including the FBI, federal marshals, Michigan State Police, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture—to let him know before sending agents in on cases.
I need to point out that I wasn’t able to confirm this with Sheriff Laseter, who hasn’t returned my calls. However, he did previously indicate to me that he was unhappy over the Michigan State Police involvement in escorting an MDA agent to convince Greg to have his cattle tested for bovine TB. An MDA official indicated she hadn’t heard anything about such a move by the sheriff, though it is certainly possible the word came in to a higher-level office.
I suspect there is at least a bit of truth to it—that there was some followup from the sheriff’s office to other agencies regarding the intrusion into his territory a few weeks ago.
If that’s the case, what I’m hearing here is similar to what I heard in the case of Richard Hebron after the sting against him last October for allegedly violating Michigan’s ban on retail sale of raw milk. When the MDA sent the case to a county prosecutor, it stalled. The county prosecutor in that case, like the county sheriff in this one, really didn’t want to dirty his hands, or sully his reputation, with anything having to do with enforcing arbitrary agriculture regulations.
It’s a theme that Joel Salatin raises in “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal”. In many instances when he’s been faced with a threat from state regulators, he’s called in his local legislators and other locally elected officials. On a number of occasions, they’ve come to his aid, and helped him fight off the regulators.
What do the locally elected officials know that the state and federal bureaucrats don’t know? They know what Milkfarmer states so eloquently in a comment on my previous post: “The raw milk (and real food) issue cuts across all lines. Long haired hippies, conservative Christians, aging stock brokers and home schooling moms….they all desire the health giving properties of living food, and are flocking to those that produce it. True Health knows no bounds…These are the people that see the Lie…..and their number is growing everyday, one consumer at a time.”
The message from Greg and Joel is this: When the bureaucrats from the state capital, or the federal capital, come calling, the best place to go for help is often locally-elected officials. They understand the pulse of the community, and that pulse tells them there aren’t a lot of votes to be gained from harassing or prosecuting real farmers producing real food.
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