- The public is outraged at the two armed raids on an organic
coop in California, even before knowing that California is also giving
cease and desist orders to goat farmers, and having little idea that the
FDA-approved pasteurized is contaminated with Crohn's bacterium.
-
- The FDA has also moved to stop the interstate transport
of raw milk. Live over the border from a state with raw milk and
have none available in your state, and the FDA wants to prevent you from
bringing that milk home, though it is legal to buy in one state and legal
to drink it in your own. Just not legal to get it there.
-
- The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund has taken the
raw milk transport case and the goat farmers' case, which sound great,
only the arguments they are making sound wrong even to non-lawyers.
-
- The suit, filed July 22 in the Superior Court of Santa
Clara County, asks for a declaration by the court that Gerbode, Skiwski
and Sullivan have the inalienable right to purchase, own, possess and use
a goat, that they have the inalienable right to consume the raw milk produced
by their goat and a declaration that they have the inalienable right to
contract with the Hulmes to board, care for and milk their goats.
-
- Where does it say in the Constitution or in law that
anyone has an inalienable right to own a goat? To drink
raw milk from their goat? To board a board a goat? Rather than
go after the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA)
for what it is doing and challenging its authority to do so, or any basis
on which it is doing so, or the bizarre legal distinctions it is making,
why is FTCLDF putting anyone's rights in the hands of a court to decide
if they exist?
-
- By designing such an argument based on rights that are
not spelled out in such a form anywhere, the FTCLDF opened the door to
the FDA to assert in court as they are doing right now in the raw milk
transport case, that
-
- "There is no absolute right to consume or feed
children any particular food."
- "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."
- FDA's brief goes on to state that "even if such
a right did exist, it would not render FDA's regulations unconstitutional
because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized
milk promotes bodily and physical health."
- "There is no fundamental right to freedom of
contract."
-
- If the FTCLDF has no chance to win with its current arguments,
what of the obscene precedents it would leave in its wake - the removal
of the human rights around food, around contracting and around everyone's
health.
-
- But how could a judge possibly agree that the rights
FTCLDF has put on the table exist in law?
-
- Yet, there are other arguments to be made. In the
transport case, the FDA likely doesn't even have jurisdiction and could
have been stopped right there. Where is that argument? Why
is it not being made? Or other arguments that deal more directly
with what the FDA is doing and holds them accountable with specifics in
law so a judge could rule favorably?
-
- The public's concern about access to the food of its
choice, to contracting freely and most certainly to its own health - the
most basic of human rights - mean it has reason to watch closely the arguments
being put forward. Are they winning arguments or are they dangerously
ill-conceived? Is this a legal group with a history of success in
protecting farmers or one that has lost many farming cases?
-
- Who are the lawyers at the FTCLDF and what is their own
history of success in carrying forward what farmers have counted on them
for?
-
- One lawyer there had some issues (http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/SPPA/NAISOpenZanoni.html)
in the past that conflicted with farmers' needs around the National Animal
Identification System, and is now on the USDA's Advisory Committee
on it. Jim Hightower, former head of the Texas Department of Ag calls
NAIS a "lunatic" (http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/1364)
system and says it would be so onerous, it could destroy small farmers
in the country.
-
- [NAIS] far more onerous than the burden put on owners
of guns and autos, the only two items of personal property presently subject
to general systems of permanent registration. Gun owners, for example,
can take their guns off their premises (to go hunting, attend a gun show,
or just carry them around) without filing a report with the government.
But NAIS would deny this freedom to chicken owners! The authorities are
declaring hens to be more dangerous than a Belgian FN Five-SeveN handgun,
and every time hen #8406390528 strays from her assigned GPS locale, NAIS
autocrats would require her owner to report within 24 hours the location,
duration, and purpose of her departure--or be subject to a stiff fine.
....
-
- To find out who's driving this, we have to ask the old
Latin question, Cui bono?(Who benefits?) That takes us to another
obscure acronym, NIAA, which stands for the National Institute of Animal
Agriculture. Despite its official-sounding name, this is a private consortium
largely made up of two groups: proponents of corporate agriculture and
hawkers of surveillance technologies. They are the ones who conceived the
program, wrote the USDA proposal, and are pushing hard to impose it on
us.
-
- Such industrialized meat producers as Cargill and Tyson
have three reasons to love NAIS. First, the scheme fits their operations
to a T, not only because they are already thoroughly computerized, but
also because they engineered a neat corporate loophole: If an entity owns
a vertically integrated, birth-to-death factory system with thousands of
animals (as the Cargills and Tysons do), it does not have to tag and track
each one but instead is given a single lot number to cover the whole flock
or herd. Second, it's no accident that NAIS will be so burdensome and costly
(fees, tags, computer equipment, time) to small farmers and ranchers. The
giant operators are happy to see these pesky competitors saddled with another
reason to go out of business, thus leaving even more of the market to the
big guys.
-
- Third, the Cargills and Tysons are eager to assure Japan,
Europe, and other export customers that the U.S. meat industry is finally
doing something to clean up the widespread contamination of its product.
A national animal-tracking system would give the appearance of doing this
without making the corporations incur the cost of a real cleanup. The health
claims of NAIS are a sham ....
-
-
- In order to protect our farmers, the basis of safe food
in this country, there can't be complacency about the legal cases being
filed against the FDA, anymore than there can be ignorance of the programs
the big meatpackers are moving forward through a corrupt USDA.
-
- While people have been looking forward to sustainable
agriculture blossoming in this country, the "other side" has
planned very thoroughly to get rid (http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-
- and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html) of real
farming in the US. To stop those plans will require awareness, vigilance
and an end of hopeful trust in any organization. When the National
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) betrayed its members - small farmers
- by making no effort to stop the Food Modernization and Safety Act though
it was clear that the FMSA would put control of all food and all farms
under the power of a Monsanto VP (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-
- who-plea_b_243810.html) at the FDA, then there is a problem
with relying blindly on NGOs.
-
- Scrutinizing lawsuits that mean the difference between
one's children having access to real food and thus health at all; checking
on organizations, their history and board members; knowing how things intersect
and where the funding (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Food-Safety-Reform-
- and-t-by-Nicole-Johnson-100426-437.html?show=votes) is
coming from, are necessities.
-
- There is no room for naivete when the companies involved
are the same ones who took apart the economy, developed genetic engineering,
(http://www.rense.com/general7/gw.htm) profit most by the absence
- of food,
- (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/
- johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html)
and have well hidden plans (http://www.opednews.com/articles/FOOD-SAFETY-
- REGULATIONS--by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090108-947.html) to destroy
farming.
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