Last Stand on Food Rights: Why Private Food Groups Must Refuse to Obey Cease-and-Desist Orders

by David Gumpert
The Complete Patient

If we lose the right to organize private organizations to share food, then the food rights war war will be over sooner than you can say “raw milk.”

Why? Because the food regulators and politicians have full control of the public realm, and are gaining more with each passing day–the Food Safety Modernization Act gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration absolute power over much of the food supply. (As we know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.)

Without a private realm, there is nowhere else to turn. Oh, wait, there is one last realm they can go after: the right to raise your own food. They might leave that alone, as if to be able to argue that they respect private rights. But then again, they may not. If the food bullies are able to bowl over herdshares and food clubs, they may decide that they’re having too much fun. If no one stops them on herdshares, why should anyone stop them from going after people consuming milk or meat from their own animals. They can park a few drones around individual farms, and easily keep tabs on who is obeying the law. (Yes, there is the black market, but in that realm, you’re always a criminal in the eyes of the law.)

It’s important to appreciate that private food-related organizations are springing up around the country. People are, pardon the pun, starved for access to real food, nutritious food, creatively-prepared food, and increasingly, they don’t want the government telling them what is permissible and what isn’t. This article does a nice job of explaining the wide variation in food rights options.

One telling example from that article: San Francisco’s Underground Market originally gained approval from city health authorities as a private organization; then, when it became hugely popular, authorities sent the organizer a cease-and-desist…and he obeyed it. In a statement explaining his thinking, the founder, Iso Rabins, comes across as eminently reasonable and compromising.

What he doesn’t appreciate is that the people he’s dealing with aren’t similarly inclined. Want to take bets on whether the market re-opens?

Tim Wightman says it well in a comment following my previous post when he explains how foreign the private approach is. “Share arrangement is the first brush with community we have been denied from building for the past 60 years given the consumer economy that was to rule the world.

“Well we learned that was a failed experiment, but we cannot be too hard on producers and their partners if they have taken a step toward health but have yet to realize they are changing how we relate to one another and have been given an opportunity to take responsibility.”

Shareholders are going to have to understand a whole new set of rules that will enable them to withstand the effort already well under way to crush this movement. The article I linked to lists a number of court cases and criteria that help private groups qualify for protection from the bureaucrats.

As I said recently in connection with the Morningland Dairy case, organizers of private food groups are going to have to learn to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

Mark McAfee makes an important point that people are timid. That’s why they are so quickly rolling over in the face of the cease-and-desist orders. But as Tim Wightman and others suggest, this is partly a matter of education. Most people don’t understand that the cease-and-desist orders have no legal validity. People don’t understand that by obeying the orders, they are surrendering key rights, possibly forever.

Moreover, people don’t understand that the authorities are engaged in one of the oldest tricks in the world–divide and conquer. Perhaps most important, they don’t appreciate how desperate the authorities are, how risky their intimidation strategy is.

Here’s the deal: A cease-and-desist is just a piece of paper. If the targeted groups simply ignore them, then the authorities have to go through a tough process to fight back:

* They have to get a prosecutor to seek court action. Since district attorneys are usually elected, the smart ones quickly realize that going after large groups of peaceful highly motivated voters isn’t the way to win re-election.

* They have to convince a judge that the organization isn’t private.

* They have to be able to withstand appeals that can go up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which historically has had a fair amount of respect for private organizations.

Shawna Barr makes a convincing case following my previous post that the California dairy laws do, in fact, allow herdshares. In fact, lawyer Gary Cox made a similar argument in challenging Ohio’s ban on herdshares in back in 2006…and won. (Ahd herdshares remain legal in Ohio as a result.)

I would take issue with one point she makes, though: “If I were a share owner, and the government ordered the herd share manager who I had hired to care for the my animals NOT to care for them, and to deny me the product that I already own, I believe that my right to own property would be violated. I think I might have to sue them.”

Maybe you sue them or make them sue you, but by all means, you don’t obey their cease-and-desist orders. I’d say that lesson number one in the food rights war is this: Defy all cease-and-desist orders. Ignore their threats of huge fines and jail time–it’s empty rhetoric. Stand up and fight. Victory may be closer than we realize. Besides, there isn’t any other choice.

Read the Full Article here: http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2011/7/9/last-stand-on-food-rights-why-private-food-groups-cant-cut-a.html

The Raw Milk Revolution
Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
by David E. Gumpert