The public has been failed by the media that government raids against farmers are not being covered and especially that the connection between the vested corporate interests in eliminating these farmers is not looked into. Independent farmers who refuse to use corporations as middlemen are the only ones being attacked.
The article below was published first in Counterpunch in April of 2008. It was reporting on the second raid against a Pennsylvania dairy farmer. Since then, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has raided this same man for a third time.
The second two raids have been led by a man who previously worked for Hersheys and Dean Foods, giant corporations with a vested interest in dairy farmers receiving little for their milk and in stopping the growing public move to NON-corporate, local, independent, straight to consumer sale of milk.
And what was the dairy farmer selling? Unprocessed, plain milk, which the USDA is working state to state to make illegal, using "food safety' as the argument and treating real milk as though it were a major threat to US public health.
Yet the reality is that raw milk greatly supports local farming and sustainable agriculture and is produced in ways consistent with reducing global warming and its growing popularity stems from people learning that it is especially healthy.
It contains real vitamin D which is critical to health
but which the industry removes and substitutes with a synthetic that doesn't work.
Raw milk is also rich in bacteria that Yale University has shown to be protective against type 1 diabetes.
These bacteria are absent in corporate milk because they are killed through pasteurization. (In certain cases some bacteria are retained or extracted and then sold separately as a "special" aid to digestion under the corporately invented name "L-casei immunitas.")
Welcome to
The Criminalization of Raw Milk
A Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away
Jonas Stoltzfus, a friend, fellow farmer, and Church of the Brethen, was asked by Mr. Nolt to speak for him, and said of the raid yesterday - "Six state troopers and a man with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trespassed onto his property, and stole $20-25,000 of his product and equipment."
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