Federal and state teams arrest people at gunpoint, destroy food, and seize assets—all because they’re afraid of unpasteurized milk and cheese. Please don’t let them trample the Constitution this way—a new Action Alert!

On August 2, there was an armed raid on Rawesome Foods in Venice, California, conducted jointly by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Department of Agriculture, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You may recall that we reported about a similar FDA raid on the same co-op last year.

Mike Adams, editor of NaturalNews.com, broke the story last week, and we thank him for his excellent and continuing coverage of this issue. He reports that armed teams were deployed with guns drawn, law enforcement ordered all co-op members out of the store, seized all the cash in the register, then handcuffed the co-op’s founder, James Stewart, and placed him in an unmarked car without reading him hist rights.

Then authorities seized $70,000 in raw organic food—raw milk, cheese, yogurt, and fresh produce—and poured an estimated 800 gallons of milk down the drain, though there was no evidence that any of the products were contaminated.

Two others were arrested as well: Sharon Palmer, owner of Healthy Family Farms, and Victoria Bloch, the LA County liaison for the Weston A. Price Foundation. They were charged with the production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese, and other products without the proper permit; and with “mislabeling cheese.” They were also charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit a crime.

Unpasteurized dairy products are legal in California, but the Los Angeles District Attorney says that applicable licenses and permits are required. This is a specious claim. As Mike Adams points out, Rawesome does not need a license because it is not a public store, but rather a private club or co-op whose members actually own a percentage of the cows, goats, and farms that produce the raw dairy. The state of California is trying to regulate it as a public grocery store, when it is instead a private buyers’ club. The facility is used only as a distribution point for the products that the members already own.

All three of those arrested have been released from jail after posting bail, but only on condition that they give up their First Amendment rights and refrain from talking to anyone about the case—specifically, from communicating in any way, verbally or nonverbally, about the government raids conducted against them.

The public has responded with outrage. A public protest was held in front of the LA County Courthouse; this, together with the global attention the raid has caused, may have been responsible for the swift reduction in James Stewart’s bail—from $123,000 down to $30,000.

Bye-bye, Constitutional Rights?

The raid places a spotlight on the constitutional right of bodily autonomy. Do we have the right to decide what we eat? As the Supreme Court observed more than a century ago, “No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.” And Justice Cardozo wrote in 1914, “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”

The FDA’s position is that people do not have the constitutional right to eat what they want. In response to a lawsuit by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense (FCLD) Fund, the FDA made the following outrageous statements:

* “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.
* “There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.”
* “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families,’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.”

However, the US Constitution restricts the government from infringing on the rights of the people—so controlling what people eat, even through legislation, is an overreach of government power. In addition, it can be argued that health freedom—and the right to eat what we wish—is embedded in the ideas of privacy and personal autonomy protected by the 14th Amendment.

Government and Big Food

FDA justifies its actions from a food safety perspective. But virtually any food can contain harmful pathogens. In fact, you are 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other (FDA-protected) foods than you are from raw milk. Raw milk has been conclusively shown to be both safe and healthy.

The truth is, the FDA and other federal agencies are being motivated by the interests of Big Food—and in this case, the interests of the dairy industry. Once again, we see crony capitalism at work. The USDA has an entire marketing arm called Diary Management that actively pushes the sale of pasteurized cheese and milk.

This is merely the latest skirmish in the FDA’s long war against raw milk producers and small business owners. ANH-USA is working on a legislative approach that will buttress a right to health freedom, but for now, please read our new Action Alert. Congressman Ron Paul’s HR 1830 would authorize the interstate traffic of unpasteurized milk and milk products packaged for direct human consumption. Please contact your representative and senators today!

Thanks for bringing light to this, I was EXTREMELY pissed when I heard this. This is the 2nd time in a couple years this has happened!

Also, in addition to what is listed above, they outright STOLE $9,000 from the people that was not accounted for, meaning no record of having taken the money was listed. The level some of these people sink totally makes me sick.

Update, 2:36 p.m.: The official word from the DA's office is that Stewart, Palmer & Bloch were arrested on criminal conspiracy charges stemming from the alleged illegal production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese, yogurt and kefir. The arrests are the result of a year-long sting. The 13-count complaint alleges that an undercover agent received goat milk, stored in a cooler in the back of Healthy Family Farms van, in the parking lot of a grocery store. While it's legal to manufacture and sell unpasteurized dairy products in California, licenses and permits are required. Rawesome may have violated regulations by selling raw dairy products to non-members.]


read more at: http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2011/08/cops_raid_rawesome_foods_owner_james_stewart_arrested.php

Sad........just damn sad. And this is freedom? I don't think so......

And I love the undercover thing too, what a big man.....I hope he's proud of himself. Don't they have better things to do than worry about something like this?

we are not 'free' to risk others lives, even if they are ok with it. This is why there are laws against certain drugs,,,
This is why we need licensing to operate certain vehicles and machines

This is why we need permits to sell food,,,,,especially out of a truck,,,

No, you know what it is about? It's about $$$$$$, plain and simple, they don't give a damn about health here. If you think they do you are being very naive. Health isn't what makes them money, sickness is. Anything that could cure people of their own accord WITHOUT them (such as this raw dairy), is a threat to them and their money. So they can, have and will do anything they can to stop people from pushing such products, look here if you don't believe me:

http://www.naturalnews.com/033280_FDA_raids_timeline.html

Look at all the raids they made on innocent people over the years! This is NOT about keeping people safe and never has been. It's all about control, power, money, illness and death.

And on the drugs thing, don't even make me laugh! They crackdown on us for the TINIEST little things, and yet they can put whatever they hell they want on the market with little to no consequence if something goes wrong! Just like here:

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/308473

The things they put out risk our lives all the time and even outright have killed people as was the case recently here, but are they punished? Nope!

These people are damn hypocrites! Whether it be all the drugs they allow on the market, or what garbage they allow in our foods, they are NOT held to the same standard we are. So don't even try that, because they don't come CLOSE to practicing anything they preach.

Oh and also, who the hell is the government to stick their nose in someone's business if everyone involved knows the risks of what they are doing and choose to do it? To hell with that! If I wanna drink something, it's MY choice, and MY responsibility, not anyone else's. They need to mind their own damn business and butt the hell out of our lives. There's much more important things to worry about than what a small farmer is doing of his own accord.

No its not just your business. Underage drinkers tend to be less responsible with stuff like alcohol because they haven't fully matured yet. More likely to drink and drive or do other stupid stuff. The US isn't the only country that has a drinking age. The Japanese government isn't about money and they have one.

There was a time when people grew all their own food, butchered and ate their livestock, milked their own cows, goats..etc.

Seems we are far less healthier now than 'back in the day'

I don't drink milk, any milk.
If I did, I'd rather buy it from a farmer that just milked his animal than the packaged **** we buy in grocery stores that the government controls.

**** the FDA, those who allow deadly drugs on the market on a regular basis... do you really think they care about our health.

it's all about money, as usual!

oh yeah...cause legal age drinkers are soooooo responsible!

Some are but statistically younger people are less responsible. Their minds have yet to fully develop. That is the same reason for the age of consent. Same reason for age for driving etc.

yeah, i get it, i'm a mom.
responsible drinking...just a funny term to me

This has nothing to do with peoples safety and has everything to do with government being in control of every aspect of yours and my life. If I want to buy raw food I should be able to buy raw food, if I decide not to have my doctor issue me pills and want to go a natural route that should be my decision not the governments. This is a direct result of too much money floating around in Washington, the mega agricorps are paying our government to force us into buying their genetically produced "food".

And another thing, let us not forget that the USDA (government) knew about all the contaminated ground turkey and did nothing about it until someone got sick. Why is this? Because Cargil Meat Solutions is a big corporation with lots of money.

Hey when my friends and I drank in college we were very responsible. We did it at someone's house and if we were drunk we just crashed there. The only drinking and driving we did was on a mongoose (halo 3 atv) XP

Fast Food Nation

Schlosser opens the book with the ironic delivery of a Domino's Pizza to the top secret military base, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He describes various high-tech capabilities of the base and its extensive defensive system, speculating that if the worst were to happen and the entire base were entombed in the mountain, anthropologists of the future would discover random fast food wrappers scattered amongst military hardware.

Both, suggests Schlosser, would give important clues about the nature of American society. America is becoming an obese country and needs to act upon the fast-food chains. The book continues with an account of the evolution of fast food and how it coincided with the advent of the automobile. He explains the transformation from countless independent restaurants into a few uniform franchises. This shift led to a production-line kitchen prototype, standardization, self-service, and a fundamental change in marketing demographics: from teenager to family-oriented.

Regarding the topic of child-targeted marketing, Schlosser explains how the McDonald's Corporation modeled their marketing tactics on The Walt Disney Company, which inspired the creation of advertising icons such as Ronald McDonald and his sidekicks. Marketing executives theorized this shift to market toward children would result not only in attracting children, but their parents and grandparents as well. More importantly, the tactic would instill brand loyalty that would persist through adulthood via nostalgic associations to McDonald's. Schlosser also discuss the tactic's ills: the exploitation of children's naïveté and trusting nature.

In marketing toward children, Schlosser suggests, corporations have infiltrated schools through sponsorship and quid pro quo. He sees that reductions in corporate taxation have come at the expense of school funding, thereby presenting many corporations with the opportunity for sponsorship with those same schools. According to his sources, 80% of the sponsored textbooks contain material that is biased in favor of the sponsors, and 30% of high schools offer fast foods in their cafeterias.[5] Anecdotes are given suggesting that students that disregarded sponsorships could be punished, such as the case with high school student Mike Cameron. He was suspended from school for an incident on "Coke day"; while his fellow students wore red or white T-shirts and posed collectively as the word COKE while aerial photographs were taken, Cameron instead wore Pepsi-blue.

In his examination of the meat packing industry, Schlosser finds that it is now dominated by casual, easily exploited immigrant labor and that levels of injury are among the highest of any occupation in the United States. Schlosser discusses his findings on meat packing companies IBP, Inc. and on Kenny Dobbins. Schlosser also recounts the steps of meat processing and reveals several hazardous practices unknown to many consumers, for example, the practice of rendering dead pigs and horses and chicken manure into cattle feed.

Schlosser notes that practices like these were responsible for the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka Mad Cow Disease, p. 202-3), as well as introducing into the food supply harmful bacteria, such as E. coli O157:H7 (ch. 9, What's In The Meat). In the later section of the book, the fast food industry's role in globalization is discussed, linking increased obesity in China and Japan with the arrival of fast food. A summary of the McLibel case is included.

In later editions, Schlosser provided an additional section that included reviews of his book, counters to critics that emerged since its first edition, and then discusses the effect that the threat of BSE had on Federal Government policy towards cattle farming. He concludes that, given the swift, decisive and effective action that took place as a result of this interest and intervention, many of the problems documented in the book are solvable, given enough political will.

Wiki

Alcohol is another thing. It has been proven time and again to cause major problems, yet they never really do much about that do they? Yet something like raw milk which only "possibly" can cause issues and has health benefits? Oh no, people can't have that.

Regardless though, I am sick and tired of the government trying to do our thinking for us. Whatever happened to personal responsibility for our actions?

until there is some type of outbreak and it becomes something not so 'small' anymore,,,

Im glad we have a system of checks and balances, even if it involves occasional hypocrisies and inconsistencies

at least we TRY to look out for the bigger picture/society with certain safeguards and requirements,,,


I would no more want the USDA 'butting out' of the distribution of food than I would want the justice department 'butting out' of the distribution of justice

throwing the whole system out is a poor substitute for finding ways to make it work better,,,

Except it ISN'T occasional it happens all the time!

The system is fraudlent msharmony, period. It's there to make them appear like they give a damn but they don't. They check us, but they NEVER check themselves. That is the definition of a double standard. Until they check themselves as stringently as they do us BEFORE something happens, they don't deserve and will not get any shred of respect from me.

The same goes for the justice system too. It never is going to get better, because they don't WANT it to.