Milk Wars
Stung:
Well, thank the gods that vile criminal was stopped!
Come on, folks. If this is the government's best effort at expenditure of law enforcement funds, it's time for a stable-cleaning. They set up a sting operation on an Amish farmer. Wow, that was a pretty risky proposition, wasn't it?
Yes, yes; I know all about the dangers of unpasteurized milk. But he wasn't selling them milk straight from the cow, as certain entities would like you to believe. The term "raw milk" refers to something else entirely. Read about it here in Wikipedia, then superimpose that information over the fact that the farmer in question is part of a self-supporting dairy collective, and it starts to become clear what is likely going on... There's a high degree of probability that this is a private little war being waged by the State's dairy industry, and they're getting the Ohio Department of Agriculture to play the heavy for them.
As is nearly always true, the root of the issue is money.
This is no different than if Budweiser were to put the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission up to raiding homes and seizing your home brewing equipment (which you bought legally at Walmart for $49.95 plus tax) as a public health hazard. Government oversight does not exist to create protectionism for private interests; it exists to safeguard fair competition. (The entire domestic automobile industry and Harley-Davidson excepted, of course--but that's another can of corruption entirely.) When governmental forces step beyond those bounds, citizens are perfectly within their rights to protest and resist.
Health and safety laws exist for a reason, and they should be enforced stringently. However, setting up a sting on some ludditic farmer in a collective is clearly beyond the scope of public health enforcement. A single person riding the subway while suffering from the flu is an infinitely more serious threat to public health. I therefore do not buy into the "public safety" argument against farmer Stutzman.
Let's hope the judge is smart enough not to buy it, either.
Last September, a man came to Stutzman's weathered, two-story farmhouse, located in a pastoral region in northeast Ohio that has the world's largest Amish settlement. The man asked for milk.
Stutzman was leery, but agreed to fill up the man's plastic container from a 250-gallon stainless steel tank in the milkhouse.
After the creamy white, unpasteurized milk flowed into the container, the man, an undercover agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, gave Stutzman two dollars and left.
The department revoked Stutzman's license in February.
"You can't just give milk away to someone other then [sic] yourself. It's a violation of the law," said LeeAnne Mizer, spokeswoman for the department.
Well, thank the gods that vile criminal was stopped!
Come on, folks. If this is the government's best effort at expenditure of law enforcement funds, it's time for a stable-cleaning. They set up a sting operation on an Amish farmer. Wow, that was a pretty risky proposition, wasn't it?
Yes, yes; I know all about the dangers of unpasteurized milk. But he wasn't selling them milk straight from the cow, as certain entities would like you to believe. The term "raw milk" refers to something else entirely. Read about it here in Wikipedia, then superimpose that information over the fact that the farmer in question is part of a self-supporting dairy collective, and it starts to become clear what is likely going on... There's a high degree of probability that this is a private little war being waged by the State's dairy industry, and they're getting the Ohio Department of Agriculture to play the heavy for them.
As is nearly always true, the root of the issue is money.
This is no different than if Budweiser were to put the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission up to raiding homes and seizing your home brewing equipment (which you bought legally at Walmart for $49.95 plus tax) as a public health hazard. Government oversight does not exist to create protectionism for private interests; it exists to safeguard fair competition. (The entire domestic automobile industry and Harley-Davidson excepted, of course--but that's another can of corruption entirely.) When governmental forces step beyond those bounds, citizens are perfectly within their rights to protest and resist.
Health and safety laws exist for a reason, and they should be enforced stringently. However, setting up a sting on some ludditic farmer in a collective is clearly beyond the scope of public health enforcement. A single person riding the subway while suffering from the flu is an infinitely more serious threat to public health. I therefore do not buy into the "public safety" argument against farmer Stutzman.
Let's hope the judge is smart enough not to buy it, either.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 14:56
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