An Ohio Department of Agriculture agent seized food, electronic devices and documents from a Pittsfield Township organic and natural food cooperative believed to be unlicensed, according to a search warrant filed yesterday in Lorain County Common Pleas Court.I've been following Internet accounts of this over the weekend and haven't been able to verify what went down.
Some accounts are reporting a SWAT raid.
I haven't been able to confirm this, so I've been hesitant to comment. It would not surprise me to learn the "Authorized Journalists" have once more failed at government watchdoggery, but at this point not enough is known to make a judgment. Just like it would not surprise me to see organic food distributors treated like homegrown terrorists.
[Via HZ]
10 comments:
I'm waiting for people to have to get permits to grow gardens in Idaho. The parasites here have laws that have sales tax on food, all food. So by Idaho families growing their own food, they are cheating the parasites out of "their" hard earned money. I easily can see police raiding homes and pulling up gardens in backyards as whole families have guns pointed at their heads. For not having the permits to be allowed to grow such a garden.
My views here are not too far off base. If anyone is making their own bio fuels and its found out by big brother. You will be subject to that fuel taxes you didn't pay on however many gallons that they say you used. They see it as someone using the roads and not paying their fair share in taxes for that road use.
Think I'm joking? I'm not and they have federal laws behind them for a family growing a garden in the back yard. Its called if I have it right, Filburn vs Wicard or something like that.
Even without sales taxes on food, you are cheating local and state governments because the fuel taxes taking that food to market are not being collected. So yea, I see families having to go to big brother to get a permit to have a family garden as loot to big brother keeps going down in this economy.
I think we're fools if we only draw the line on guns.
If they start preventing us from growing our own food, they've crossed the line.
If they start demanding that we turn in gold and silver, they've crossed the line.
Hell, they've infringed so much on so many rights that it's perfectly rational to say that they've ALREADY crossed A line. The question each person has to ask themselves is, did they cross THE line?
"verify what went down"
Simple: it's called "theft".
Yeah, I've been watching it. Crazy, but not unexpected. You can't have rainwater collection systems. The government would have gone around collecting manna.
I'm just a bit confused on WTF happened and hope that they have loads of money (to pay the court for the chance) to argue how many of their rights were violated.
From what I'm hearing they held children and babies at aiming gun point from morning to evening. They even had a SWAT shift change during this time. OK kids we are going to change out the goons holding full auto guns at you and mommy's head. Please hold still while we do this for your own safety.
I passed this on to David, to see if he can make any sense out of it. We should be hearing more on this event.
State investigates LaGrange organic food business
The fact that the business deals in organic food “has no significance at all” in the investigation, Serazin said.
“This is just about getting a license. It’s a question of, ‘have they met the criteria required of everybody else in Lorain County who sells eggs and meat and other perishable items?’ If they have no regulations on them at all, the results can be very serious.”
Serazin said the business owners, John and Jackie Stowers, maintained they were exempt from having to be licensed.
[...]
According to an account posted Dec. 5 at www.digitaljournal.com, “SWAT police, armed (with) riot control weapons (and) packing automatic rifles … stormed a family food cooperative in Ohio.”
“I saw that Digital Journal story,” Resendez said. “It was absurd. All we did was secure the residence and the Department of Agriculture did the rest.”
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That's what happened.
If you think there should be no licensing for people who grow food for sale and provide it to larger numbers of individuals — e.g., enough such that it begins showing up in institutional kitchens, like in this case — then that's a fundamental difference in views.
This isn't a case of needing a "permit" to "grow our own food". It's needing to be licensed for the safety of everyone who consumes it when you start to have a large operation. You can have a garden and give your neighbor some tomatoes. Jeez.
If you want to make this out to be some conspiracy by Big Agriculture or the Government to "come after you" for "growing your own food", you're doing yourself and the issue a disservice, because you're ignoring real debates about whether or not and when food growing operations which provide food to large numbers of people or institutional customers should be licensed, whether law enforcement entities should have standardized equipment and techniques for ALL responses which include surprise warrants, why this family allegedly claimed they were exempt from licensing, why they claim they got no help from the Agriculture offices when it's very easy for anyone to call or walk in and get any answer desired about the licensing process, etc.
But if instead you want to think it's a conspiracy to attack people with backyard gardens so that we can be stuffed with fast food and processed grocery store fare, while instead ignoring any real debate on what happened, be my guest.
Yeah, cuz we all know government papers and permits are worth killing over, right?
Fact of the matter is this family ran a Co-op and wasn't selling anything on the open market. If friends do not have a right to trade food that they grow without SWAT teams holding guns to their heads, we live in a commie nation.
Fact of the matter is, farmers do not need to be anything to grow food. So the reseller of that food have a license, do they really know anything about how this food was grown that they got through a brokers? They do not, in fact know anything or we would not have seen government trying to track down a bug in tomatoes this summer costing farmers ten's of millions in lost crops that went to waste.
As times get worse and they are by leaps and bounds. If friends in the hood who have limited backyards to grow food. All get together and each one grows one kind of crop. At harvest they trade off so everyone has what they need. That is a co-op and every one of those families is subject to having SWAT teams pointing full auto firearms at their children's heads. Make no mistakes about his, we have a huge problem, and that means all Americans.
hey das (das Lügner?)
It's the big companies pushing the animal ID scheme to shut down the little guy. Taxing, constant paperwork, reporting to the .gov aholes.
This, along with unkkkle's crap about the economy is bothering me today.
Is there ANYWHERE in the world where I can go to actually be free to do my thing? No zoning, no permits, no papers, no licenses, no gestapo, no taxes, no government.
This is about friends helping friends feed each other. If you don't get it you never will.
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