I’m glad to see Mark McAfee so upbeat. “The power resides with the people,” he says in his comment on my previous post. “By April new legislation will be introduced and the Blue Ribbon Commission will have made its recommendations. We will have earned far more than AB 1604 would have ever given us. Raw milk is here to stay and Big Dairy and Big Pharma better enjoy their little battle wins because the people always win the wars.”
I guess you have to be upbeat to put up with what he’s put up with over the years, when your business is placed in jeopardy by government regulators on sometimes a daily basis.
As for me, I feel this uncomfortable tightening around the neck. Why should new legislation in April do any better than new legislation did last week? Why should a commission’s findings (assuming they are even on point) be listened to when 700 people jamming a hearing weren’t listened to?
Since when do “the people always win the wars”? There are dozens and dozens of countries where the people lose on such a regular basis that they give up. We call them dictatorships, but are we that far removed? A society denied access to healthy foods many value seems to have lost an important degree of freedom, and based on recent happenings with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and cloning, in addition to raw milk, things are heading in the wrong direction.
In recent comments, a number of people have wondered why the regulators have begun focusing so heavily in their raw milk inspections on coliform counts, rather than sticking with seemingly more relevant E.coli and other pathogens that sometimes make people sick. A few have pointed out that the science around coliforms as a disease agent is as hazy as, well, a California Department of Food and Agriculture regulation.
Let’s face it—c oliforms are mainly a diversion, an additional excuse to go after raw milk producers Organic Pastures and Claravale Farm. They’re just another potential tripwire—insurance, if you will, from the regulators’ perspective…as prosecutors might say in going after mobsters, “If we don’t get them on extortion or racketeering or assault, we can always get them on income tax fraud.”
The situation in California is especially fragile because the entire state depends on two producers. It’s pretty easy for the authorities to focus their efforts in such a situation—get rid of one or both, and that’s pretty much the game.
Kathryn makes a very interesting point following my recent posting about Ron Schmid, that herd-share type arrangements present the best hope for success in fighting back because they more naturally align farmers and consumers. I’d add that this approach helps disperse the targets for the authorities–it’s much tougher to fight many small producers than a few larger ones. That explains why New York authorities are fighting tooth-and-nail against the limited liability company (LLC) organized by Meadowsweet Farm.
My main question at this point is whether the authorities want to entirely rid big states like California and New York (and eventually the entire country) of raw milk producers, or just harass them enough to discourage other dairies from taking the raw-milk route and thereby keep consumer demand in check. If you think my first possibility sounds totally paranoid, consider that in the FDA’s PowerPoint presentation about raw milk from last March, slide 60 contains this message to local regulators: “FDA encourages everyone charged with protecting the public health to prevent the sale of raw milk to consumers…”
Either way, it’s a serious situation if you believe people should have access to natural nutrient-dense foods. As Bob Hayles has said any number of times, this is a war. I appreciate Mark’s effort to remain optimistic—in any war, you have to keep the troops’ morale up. And sometimes, when things look worst, the tide turns. But in the end, people usually have to fight harder than they ever expected to win a war.
Additional irony is that Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which stimulated regulation of (and was welcomed by) the then-new factory food industries, has spilled over to limit choice in non-industrial local food contexts.
Given that the regulators and many laws don’t distinguish between large and small, we are left with the slim hope that legislators (in this case, a Committee) will figure it out and make sense of nonsensical rules. The path that we’ve followed since Sinclair (never mind the path followed since the Constitution and Bill of Rights) is not particularly encouraging of free choice. We are where we are, though, and Mark is fighting the good fight. I’m not sure what other choices there are, other than steeling ourselves for the long fight and keeping vigilant.
The value of that protection is difficult to overestimate.
Sometimes counter-attacks, even successful ones, are the last ditch attempt of a dying and ultimately defeated enemy. Put differently, when things are at their worst is often when the pendulum is ready to swing the other way. It is hard to say what the exact situation here is, but we mustn’t loose hope.
On the other hand, despite the hopeful food freedom movement, the general trend of the country is not good with respect to freedom and liberty, and could overwhelm our successes. But then, what I said above could equally apply to this too, particularly with the successes of the Ron Paul Revolution.
NONE of those tactics will change the states ability to make your nutritional choices for you, rather than allowing you to make your own choices.
Just because this or that state decides to allow herdshares today, that doesn’t preclude the same states from changing their rules next year and outlawing those same herdshares.
Just because a state recognizes an LLC doesn’t preclude a new agriculture commissioner from declaring them illegal next year.
Just because Missouri chose to loosen their interpretation of the states raw milk sales rules this year doesn’t mean they won’t tighten them up again next year.
If California does indeed pass the 50 coliform limit as they have said they will (which I don’t think is going to happen), they are not stopped from writing a new law next year and re-imposing the 10 coliform limit.
The point I am trying to make is that so long as the state has ANY control in choosing your food for you, they have TOTAL control in choosing that food, choosing when and how to exercise that control.
The bottom line is that making our own nutritional choices is either a right, that the state has no hand in, or it is a priviledge, granted by the state, just like driving on public roads, and that the state should have total control over.
It’s one way or the other, with no in between.
If it is a priviledge, to be allowed by the state as they see fit, then we need to quit fighting right now, dissolve the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, and let the state go ahead and dictate what we consume without fighting that control.
If, however, as I believe, it is a right, then we need…no, we MUST…fight this like the war it is. That means taking small victories in battles where we can, like the 50 coliform limit in California, FOR NOW, but not losing sight of the fact that these are just victories in individual battles in a much larger war, and that that war will not, indeed cannot, be won any way short of a ruling in federal court, that a state cannot overturn, that it is our RIGHT to make our own nutrition choices.
Anything short of that, while, perhaps, a small temporary battle victory, is a loss of the overall war, and the loss of yet another of our freedoms.
Bob Hayles
Thornberry Village Homestead
Jasper, GA
706.692.7004
Thornberry Village Homestead…a small goat dairy, owned by God, managed by Bob and Tyler.
thomas j. jackson.
General George S. Patton
Gary…"Never take the counsel of your fears" is a quote from Andrew Jackson, not Thomas Jackson…LOL
Bob Hayles
You have far too much confidence in the courts. Our justice system has slipped so far that there can no longer be any assurance of a right ruling at any level. Also, since California is in the 9th circuit, don’t expect a favorable ruling until you get to the Supreme Court. And even at the SC, the court has a tenancy to not make rulings that, though right, would drastically upset the current system status quo. In other words, even though this has fundamental implications for contract law and basic freedoms, to overturn the entire food regulator apparatus is too big a change for them to contemplate.
Don’t expect the owning of a goat to be legal much longer. With NAIS and such the state is doing everything it can to gain absolute control over the food system.
In the long run it may take outright civil disobedience to change the fundamental legal framework. This is not without precedent. It took citizens willing to disobey the government to gain changes with respect to slavery, prohibition, segregation, homeschooling, and more. Those to are all issues where they were fundamentally right but the courts would not or could not side with them.
http://www.nonais.org
Cattle Ranchers, Small Farmers, Homesteaders,
Pet Owners, Organic/Humane Consumers…join
the Revolution!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heath-calvert/why-i-support-ron-paul_b_84148.html
"Ron Paul is a paradox. He is a ten-term Texas congressman who voted against the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Real ID Act, internet regulation, those acts last year that stripped Habeas Corpus and Posse Commitatis, plus this week’s Democrat sponsored Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (a precursor to internet filtering and University monitoring by the Department of Homeland Security). Democrats shutdown when they see the letter "R" next to the word Texas, and Republicans can’t say "he’s not a republican" enough. He will quickly remind you that Republicans used to be the antiwar party, and in fact George Bush had been elected on a promise to stop policing the world. Republicans used to be the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, and sound money. Now sound money isn’t a sexy topic, but those listening to Ron Paul are starting to wake up to the gravity of what threats can be brought by a steeply declining currency, ballooning debt, excessive militarism combined with over extension, and a government that seems more interested in collecting data on it’s own citizenry and protecting corporate marketshare than preventing future attacks."
Gandhis dictum, First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
The 9thg circuit historically has been a liberal circuit, looking unfavorably on the conservative side of many social issues, like abortion, gay rights, drugs, etc., but that actually works in our favor. We are looked at as weirdos, liberal ageing hippie types, whether that fits us or not…just the kind of folks that the 9th circuit usually favors.
Given a choice between coming down on the side of corporate agriculture or ageing hippies, I’d put my money on the hippies in the 9th circuit…<g>
Bob Hayles
Thornberry Village Homestead
Jasper, GA
706.692.7004
Thornberry Village Homestead…a small goat dairy, owned by God, managed by Bob and Tyler.
On the other hand, I was relieved to learn that living under AB1735 does not mean that we lose access overnight. If the producers are "allowed" to fail 3 out of 5 tests at the (ludicrous) new standard before anything happens to them, and CDFA tests only once a month, then it does give us three months minimum in which to operate. That should be plenty of time to file an injunction which then buys us more time. It is possible that a rulemaking process follows in which we can actually argue for a reasonable standard, one which embodies the notion of coliform count as an esthetic issue only, not a safety issue (because we already test separately for pathogenic coliforms). It would embody that assertion by being a whole lot higher (looser) than the current standard. It’s even possible that we can get that made law.
But I wouldn’t look for ultimate solutions — a Supreme Court decision that protects the right to choose our food, say — because it is unlikely that this court will ever go against the corporate regime, it’s already demonstrated a willingness to engage in bizarre legal contortions to support it. If it does defend such a right, it will only be in a way that benefits large corporate producers more than us (there are lots of ways to parse "choice"). Specific, local (state) solutions actually feel more solid to me. If we establish a reasonable standard in CA, will we have to remain vigilant? Of course. This is not always going to be as intense as it has been the last few months. But it is never going to end — not as long as we have the kind of society we have.
It would be nice if we could get some big decision that would nail this down for us and then we could all go home. But (since we’re quoting) isn’t there something about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance? I know it feels really unfair that we keep having to defend the good stuff against these attacks. But I think it’s just the way the world is. What’s important is that we keep doing it. There’s that other one about a republic, if you can keep it. Maybe this is just the day-to-day work of keeping it.
So for now, I’m just focused on what we can do. There will still be a process in a public forum. If we educate ourselves and participate actively, we can show the truth about the CA standard in a public forum. But we have to be able to speak their language and show them why, even in their world, what happened here was wrong and based on falsehoods.
In addition to the question of what would be a good coliform standard for "esthetic" purposes, right now I’m wondering about the illegality and bad behavior that have characterized the process — is Nicole Parra’s office looking into this? Whose jurisdiction is it (AG or Sac DA)? How does it affect the standing of AB1735 that it (the raw-milk part) was brought into law by an illegal tactic (lying to the legislature and declaring it non-controversial)? Was it in fact standard procedure for 1604 to go to the Appropriations Committee or not, and if not, how did it get there? Is anyone acting on this stuff?
If I can get answers, I’ll let people know.
Oh, P.S. — I think the herdshare thing is better than nothing, but it also will keep the raw-milk business much smaller than it would be if the stuff were on store shelves. A lot of us will still join co-ops and take turns picking up our milk and distributing it, but that just makes it a lot harder, and a lot of people won’t bother. It also keeps it invisible, as opposed to something shoppers see when they’re looking at the dairy stuff in the store. And keeping this industry small and invisible — if they can’t eliminate it entirely — still works pretty well for the other side.
I’ve argued before that it’s not about the dollars being taken away from industrial ag, that’s not even a drop in the bucket — it’s about suppressing an alternative model, one that’s embarrassing for big ag. And if you can’t eliminate it, but you can drive it underground, that largely handles it. You prevent most people from being aware of it. Which is the point.
Do what you need to do to take care of yourself, and keep working. Thanks to everyone.
All for now,
sorry to correct you, but it was t.j., not andrew. spoken to jedediah hotchkiss at rockfish gap, june 1862, on his way to join lee at richmond. and there’s no "the."
Bob
On the 9th circuit, I don’t know if that would be enough to overcome their nanny state tendencies.