This is just going to get worse before it gets better. And I’d like to find some investigative report on this.
A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). Rawesome Foods, a private buying club offering wholesome, natural raw milk and raw cheese products (among other wholesome foods) is founded by James Stewart, a pioneer in bringing wholesome raw foods directly to consumers through a buying club. James was followed from his private residence by law enforcement, and when he entered his store, the raid was launched.
Law enforcement demanded that all customers (members) of the store vacate the premises, then they demanded to know how much cash James had at the store. When James explained the amount of cash he had at the store — which is used to purchase product for selling there — agents demanded to know why he had such an amount of cash and where it came from.
James was handcuffed, was NEVER read his rights and was stuffed into an UNMARKED car.
Related link on other crackdowns.
Only in America……………. (sic!)
Progressive Control Agents at work. And you thought that it will end at banning cigarettes and taking overweight children from their parents… In order for this to stop not a single Progressive must be left in charge of anything – vote.
So the FDA has a SWAT team. And it had been previously reported that the Dept of Education also has a SWAT team.
But when we were all arguing over the debt ceiling no one could find a single government program that could be cut.
Instead we just reduced (slightly) the amount of the increase in spending. So next year the FDA can hire more SWAT teams.
Didn’t this happen months ago? I’m in LA and remember the story from local news.
Another miserable example of the police state, none the less, even if the “raw foods movement” is about as silly as the “Christian Scientists”. I wish milk borne bacterial infections to all those who participated.
“wholesome, natural raw milk” You ever see a cows tits before its milked? I will stick with pasteurized thank you. Raw and wholesome do not always belong in the same sentence.
More of the Curry/Dvorak No Agenda’s Agenda!
Dvorak and Curry only do half-assed research, just enough to prove their agendas, not enough to be reliable.
I’ve drunk raw milk. We milked our own cow till I was about ten or eleven. If the cow doesn’t have TB, etc., they won’t give it to you.
Pasteurized is safer but people should have a right to decide.
I still think these nanny state SS goon tactics should be stopped before Der fuhrer and his elite “We know best. Set down and shut up under people” becomes even more oppressive.
I’ve got your raw milk right here.
http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2011/08/03/the-booby-blonde-whos-still-a-teenager/
Sorry if above link won’t show video.
If your using Chrome and open the link in an incognito window video will appear.
When I was a kid in Ohio, we lived down the street from a dairy farm. We used to go down there several times a week with a pitcher, and fill up right from the machine. Not one time during those years did my mother, my brother, or I EVER get sick from it. This is ridiculous.
God help them if they spill any of the milk.
We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond the original purpose.
The EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file “emergency management” plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” if there is a flood of spilled milk.
I wish at one of these press conferences when the Brown Shirt Goons announce these absurd actions that someone would ask the goon the following question.
Seeing as the technology for milk pasteurization is less than five hundred years old and the gene for the digestion of lactose is at least seven thousand years old, please explain the why the consumption of raw milk is dangerous?
Love how the country is broke, except for when it comes to expanding the police state.
They didn’t pay the kosher food “tax” protection money!
On the voice of reason some years ago they called one of these kosher places and got the cost of getting kosher it was very expensive. I wish I had the link to that show. It was absolute proof of the kosher conspiracy!
Back in the 1970s, when I was stationed in Idaho. There was a raw milk store in Boise. I heard that such things existed, but they had to keep the cows extremely well cleaned. So no excretions could possibly contaminate the product. Or bacteria wouldn’t flourish, where the cows were stalled and milked. I couldn’t see any real benefit in raw milk products myself. But I’m sure there are some health fanatics who will buy into anything labeled “organic” and “natural”. Still, with all the serious crime and criminals, far from being stopped. Why are government agents cracking down on raw foods suppliers? Cause they don’t shoot back, I suppose. Or threaten to sue the state for every dime. Or have a friend in state politics. Is food a controlled substance now? Aren’t Drugs, Tobacco, and Firearms enough to police? I guess it was that the regular dairy suppliers were losing customers. So the LA agents were helping to maintain the status quot.
Well I drank nothing but raw milk for at least 20 years. My patients drank it for over 40 years (we had a family dairy farm). No issues that I am aware of.
I work with a guy that was also raised on a dairy farm and still has 1 or 2 cows that he milks by hand so he has drank raw milk for over 50 years.
However there are increased risks so the Gov has imposed restrictions for safety reasons. But it sure seems like there should be away to regulate the sale of raw milk in away that assures it is safe.
#17 atmusky…certainly there is a way, but the dairy lobby will make sure it never happens.
Bumper sticker: “I Will Give Up My Glass Of Raw Milk When They Peel My Cold Dead Fingers From Around It.”
Fight the power: http://realmilk.com
It won’t be long until the sale of real/raw meat is banned in favor of irradiated meat food product.
GOVERNMENT DATA PROVES RAW MILK SAFE
http://westonaprice.org/press/press/government-data-proves-raw-milk-safe
“…Using government figures for foodborne illness for the entire population, Dr. Beals has shown that you are about thirty-five thousand times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk…”
Of course, after the FDA SWAT team confiscates the raw, unpasteurized milk, it will dispose of it in the only way they know how – pouring it into the sewer, washing it out to sea…contaminating the fish…
I prefer my milk pastuerized with copious amounts of growth hormone, pus, and fecal matter.
I you replace milk with weed, I could see the need for swat, but are milk men armed and that dangerous?
I guess it should come as no surprise that there is a movement of militant “natural food/health food” activists (some of whom advocate armed resistance). This level of enforcement doesn’t develop all on its own — it’s in response to actions on the other side.
I doubt the dairy industry is the moving force behind such raids — they fought pasteurization laws as hard as they could for decades at the local, state and federal levels. Finally, when statistics definitively showed that such laws immediately cut child mortality rates in cities by more than 3/4, legislatures at all levels “manned up” and passed them.
My uncle Karl worked in a TB sanitarium in the 1930s before deciding to go back to school and become a doctor. (We called him “Uncle Doc.”) Anyone who let him hear them advocate drinking raw milk was in for a long, impassioned and scary lecture.
If you live on a dairy farm or even have just the one cow which you or a family member milk personally, sure, go ahead, drink it raw and best of luck to you. But milk that has gone from cow to milker to processor to packager to wholesaler to retailer should be pasteurized as early in the process as possible.
What’s next? Militant opposition to vaccination, which has saved literally billions of lives? Oh, wait….
There is a documentary on this called Farmageddon
Just out:
http://farmageddonmovie.com/
Actually, raw milk is for sale in most supermarkets in California. But you need permits to produce it for sale, and the permitting process includes regular inspection and testing of the cows and equipment used. There is one commercial dairy (that I’m aware of) which sells raw milk in supermarkets. They also sell pasteurized milk and other products dairy products.
These people didn’t go through the process, claiming to only be selling to “members” of their “private club”. Much like the way bars run in some areas.
While I’m all for letting people poison themselves and thus reduce the surplus population, these folks were pretty clearly breaking the law as it exists. There’s nobody stopping folks from buying raw milk in Los Angeles. See above. They just have to do it legally.
This might be a legitimate story but the ridiculous bias slant is a clue that it probably isn’t.
I’m OK with this. The government has passed regulations to protect the quality of food. This action was in enforcing those regulations. Why are people arguing for freedom to eat food the government has deemed unsafe?
#12 Ah_Yea said, “While the nutball liberals can’t? (BigBoyBC Dvorak and Curry only do half-assed research”
Are you calling me a “nutball liberal”? Boy are you wrong!
Your prejudice Ah_Yea is showing, be careful, next you’ll star sounding like a bigot and then it’s a short trip to Racist.
Ready access to raw milk is way down my list of things to worry about.
#28 – the point here is that the government should not be sending armed SWAT teams to arrest people who sell food that may or may not be of a certain “quality” to people who can make perfectly reasonable choices on the matter for themselves. I am fairly certain that there are dangerous criminals posing actual legitimate threats to others’ lives that could probably use a good SWAT raid a lot more than some raw-milk distributors. Besides, why are we to assume that what the government says is “safe” is the only food we should be allowed to eat? Are we that stupid that we should not be able to make choices about our own health and well-being for fear of being SHOT at?
One of the linked articles compares this guy to Rosa Parks but that is so lame. A free speech/equality issue based on someones skin color is a completely different thing than a farmer providing raw milk to the public without a permit when everyone providing raw milk has obtained permits. The issue of possible contamination with bacteria and death, which could be a result of sickness, is light years away from Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. Where do these bozos who make these comparisons come from?