Kudos to The Bovine for digging up this report and bringing it to the attention of Canadians. We on Salt Spring Island know how vicious and uncaring the Department of Agriculture stormtroopers can be as they endeavor to impose the will of their corporatist masters. As George Bush and Stephen Harper work to undermine our respective systems of government so as to impose their ideology's tyranny on ignorant and unsuspecting citizens, their underlings seek to impose unhealthy food on us and to destroy the infrastructure of a healthy and sustainable agriculture.

ODA “swats” Manna Storehouse Co-op
The Bovine Canada December 3, 2008

Apparently undaunted by past legal rebukes, the Ohio Department of Agriculture recently raided a food coop in La Grange that was providing grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured poultry and other Weston-Price-style foods. ... The Bovine learned about this incident from a comment on the Complete Patient blog by Don Neeper. Here’s part of what Don said:

“Manna Storehouse, a food co-op in La Grange, providing grass fed beef, lamb, pastured poultry and other Weston A. Price foods was raided yesterday [Monday, Dec. 1st] by SWAT, ODA officials, and local authorities. The family that runs the co-op tells me they were herded into the living room for 8 hours while the home and business was torn apart. They were not given reason, saying they were under investigation. All of their computers and phones, and customer information were taken, as well as $10,000 worth of beef. A ‘warrant’ which didn’t appear to be valid, showed the reason for investigation, was ‘beef’.

...

More on ODA’s Manna Storehouse raid
The Bovine Canada December 4, 2008

Our earlier post “ODA ’swats’ Manna Storehouse co-op” is proving to be tremendously popular. Following up some of the traffic sources and ping-backs I eventually found more details on the story, which is looking more and more bizarre. Here’s some of what Berit Kjos is saying about it over on the True Discernment blog. From the looks of things, somebody up there must think Amish farmers are more of a threat than those “terrorists” we hear so much about.

“On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family.

...

To date only one traditional newspaper (The Morning Journal serving Lorain, Erie, Huron and western Cuyahoga County) has reported on this raid. Here is the link to its December 3, 2008 story. We do note, however, the ultra-fundamentalist Christian Worldview Network ("your choice for understanding the times through a Christian worldview"), owned and operated by Creationist Brannon Howse, picked up the story. Here is the CWN's December 4 posting.

Saturday update: Katie Stower's husband was not present during the raid because he is presently overseas serving in the Iraq war theater.

Seems U.S. forgot to tell Navy Seabee Chad Stowers the real war is being fought here...and he’s the enemy
David E. Gumpert The Complete Patient USA December 5, 2008

When officers from the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio arrived last Monday at the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in LaGrange with weapons drawn and trained on Katie Stowers and her children, along with her in-laws, there was one member of the family missing. Katie’s husband, Chad, is a U.S. Navy Seabee, helping in construction projects in the midst of combat in Iraq. He’s been there, separated from his family, for the last five months, supposedly protecting our rights from abuse—the sort of abuse that appears to be taking place on an ever-more-frequent basis at farms and food outlets around the country.

I should point out that Katie didn’t broadcast the information about her husband to me—I inquired about it after she had to interrupt our telephone conversation to take a call from Chad in Iraq. Presumably, she was updating him about the raid he missed, in which sheriff’s deputies, together with food inspectors from the Lorain County Health Department and the Ohio Department of Agriculture, herded the family into a home living room, and kept them under the guard of armed officers for about seven hours, while they executed a search warrant, taking food, cell phones, three computers, and business records. I asked [Katie] if she was aware of the irony of her husband putting his life on the line in Iraq, while she was being held at gunpoint in her home by American law enforcement officials, and she said, “It occurred to me.” ...

The Bovine has added a Part 3 to their coverage today. It begins with a summation of events but then examines comments attached to The Morning Journal story we linked to above. And goes further. In The Bovine's story today there is a link leading to a news report of the murder of USDA and state inspectors in 2000 at a meat/sausage plant. That link points out why, due to that violence, it is no longer taken for granted by regulators that anyone is just a “peaceful farmer.” The Bovine then adds a link to a comment by a Dave Milano. Part of Milano's commentary reads:

“If Manna Storehouse is a private cooperative, then why should the government have any control at all (beyond demanding adherence to criminal statutes) over their transactions? Did the Stowers murder anyone? Assault anyone? Steal from anyone? If so, undoubtedly they would have been charged and arrested.

What is most likely happening here is that the food cooperative existed privately, and therefore did not involve themselves with government via permits, fees, inspections, and all the rest. That, in the mind of big brother, is an unforgivable sin, and warranted an armed raid.

The Community Alliance for Responsible Eco-farming (CARE), a private group of farmers and consumers in Pennsylvania, recently released a statement regarding the relationship between private citizens and constitutional government. Their position is basically that the government has a right to control and regulate what the government creates. If, for example, the government creates a corporation (essentially conferring “person” status to that entity) then it has every right, every duty even, to oversee it. But men are not artificial entities created by government. Men are natural, and when they act as private citizens, government must stay out of their way. In fact, government is supposed to protect citizens from the actions of any entity that might inhibit the free exercise of their natural rights. When government does otherwise it blurs the line between private and public, effectively deeming EVERYTHING public, and thus making constitutions irrelevant.

Here’s a bottom-line quote from CARE’s statement: “[...these agencies have] no constitutional authority to require a permit for direct private sales conducted anywhere by private individuals, involving private property, using private contracts.”

Good work on the part of The Bovine. Real food is a complex issue involving many narratives. But the bottom line in our opinion remains: Healthy and sustainable agriculture, not to mention our personal freedoms, are threatened to a greater extent every day.

Endnote:


"Sheep may safely graze?"

Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd (The lively hunt is all my heart's desire), BWV 208, also known as the Hunting Cantata, is a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. Aria 5, "Schafe können sicher weiden" (or "Sheep may safely graze"), is perhaps the most familiar part of this cantata. The cantata was composed in 1713 and a normal performance lasts for about forty minutes. Here's a four minute, 44 second instrumental performance of "Sheep may safely graze" by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner.

From Johann Sebastian Bach in Weissenfels: Sheep May Safely Graze by Tomoko Yamamoto.

At this point Pales sings the famous aria, "Sheep May Safely Graze." The original German text of this aria with a line-by-line translation of mine is as follows:

Schafe können sicher weiden, wo ein guter Hirte wacht,
Sheep can graze safely, where a good shepherd watches
Wo Regenten wohl regieren, kann man Ruh and Frieden spüren und was Länder glücklich macht.
Where Princes govern well, one senses peace and harmony and what makes the region (Duke's territories) happy.

The good shepherd who watches over the sheep is not Christ, but none other than Duke Christian. Here the sheep are the people (peasants) governed by Duke Christian, whose birthday is being celebrated. In the New Testament Bible, Jesus tells a parable of a good shepherd and a lost sheep. Probably the relationship of a good shepherd (lord) taking care of sheep, even one lost sheep, may have been transferred over to the relationship of people to their earthly lord as in this text. I surmise that later on this shepherd-sheep relationship in the aria comes to take on the original Christian meaning when the feudal system of a secular lord over vassals and peasants collapsed. I have seen the English text for a choral transcription of this aria, in which the latter part of the original text, which refers to an earthly lord, has been changed to an explicitly Christian type. ...

Discovered Monday December 8, 2008: Here is a rendition of the aria performed on period instruments with a vocal as well. Plus, as an added bonus, some of the most intelligent comments we have ever seen posted to You Tube (not saying much, we know, but some of them are very fine and funny). Of course (and frustratingly), this video has only 5,517 views.