Let Them Eat Grass: A New Salvo in the Food Freedom Revolution

In June, 2011, Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger was targeted by the raw milk police, despite the fact that the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection gave his private buying club the “OK” back in 2003. There are also no raw milk licenses available in Wisconsin, which makes it impossible to comply with even a nonsensical mandate. After all, the private club is not the “dairy and food retail establishment” that DATCP claims it to be.

Hershberger, feeling that the DATCP made an arbitrary and illegal ruling, cut the tape they had used to shut down his property and continued distributing to the paying private buying club members. He is now facing 3 years in prison and $10,000 in fines for his resistance.

Hershberger’s declaration of food independence has drawn the attention of major activist groups, as well as lay citizens, who see a clear attack on one’s inherent human right to grow food and provide for themselves, their families and their communities without the bureaucracy of the State arbitrarily ruling otherwise. It is a direct attack on self-sufficiency that has very troubling historical parallels if not brought under control.

In March, people flew in from all over the country to attend a support rally prior to Hershberger’s first court appearance. Now, a full-length documentary, Let Them Eat Grass (trailer below) aims to build on the momentum started by cases like Hershberger’s. A new rally has also been announced ahead of Vernon’s rescheduled trial date set for the week of January 7, 2013. (map and directions)

While raw milk raids have attracted much attention, and there have been some key victories in the fight for food freedom, we are still reading an increasing number of stories about armed health raids and bureaucratic shutdowns of family businesses.

Here are just a couple of the latest:

Drakes Bay Oyster Co. An 80-year-old California family business with 30 full-time employees that drew 50,000 visitors per year was shut down based on provably false environmental data. The business was effectively shut down as of Nov. 30th when their lease was not renewed. You can read their story HERE.
A paramilitary raid of an Arkansas family-owned water bottling company, Mountain Pure Water, demonstrated the brutality of the federal health police. 40 to 50 tactical units shut down the bottling plant, detained all employees, and denied the most basic rights of jurisprudence. A report and re-enactment can be seen HERE.

The health activist group, Right to Choose Healthy Food, is calling to defeat “government actors, including judges, from depriving us of our Constitutional rights to grow, have and eat healthy foods with our informed and intelligent choices.”

Please watch the first 8 minutes of this new documentary featuring Vernon Hershberger as he discusses the importance of having a healthy cycle of growth from the grass-to-glass consumption of raw milk, as well as the other products his farm produces in partnership with 100 other families.

Right to Choose Healthy Food is correct that juries comprised of informed and moral citizens can nullify the corrupt nature of arbitrary bureaucratic laws.

Support the Hershbergers (and) your family’s rights to healthy food by coming to the trial at Baraboo Courthouse, Sauk County, Wisconsin the week of January 7, 2013. It is a jury trial in which the judge is a referee and not judge of the case. People like you and I on the jury will judge the case. No matter what the law codes state, jurors have the right to nullify bad laws. It is a right in our Constitution. It is time to take our government powers back and out of the grips of power- and money-hungry corporate and government stooges behaving like mild-mannered mafia-criminals.

As activist Karen Goeben stated:

I never dreamed that the US government would try to prevent citizens from choosing their food and where they get it, much less putting people in jail for doing so. I’ve seen first hand the destruction of one wonderful farm family and I won’t stand idly by while another family is persecuted.

Education leads to action. We must go on the offensive against any illegitimate source of power. For instance, in the Hershberger case, inspector Jackie Owens apparently has no sworn oath of office on file. Consequently, she is being sued for fraud and misrepresentation.

The type of people that tend to gravitate toward these positions of inflated authority believe they are immunized by the structure that employs them. This mentality leads to comments made by the agent in the above-linked raid of Mountain Pure Water who said, “We’re the federal government: we can do what we want, when we want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Or another agent in the same raid, “Why don’t you just touch me . . . I’ll show you what a federal officer can do to you.”

Anyone invoking authority with the reasoning that authority itself is the nature of the law needs to be personally sued. And anyone who would seek to deny the Constitutional right to consume healthy food is the enemy of America and should be treated as such.

These are the actions that cause peaceful revolutions. If you would like to become a part of the food freedom revolution, learn how private farm club memberships work. You can visit westonaprice.org to find chapter members who will help you locate and join a local club. Supporting local small farms and farmers markets (localharvest.org) are concrete ways that you can become active and help add momentum to an unstoppable force.

You can support this food-rights movement by donating to Right To Choose Healthy Food (RawMilk.org) and/or Farmer To Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Main source for this article:
http://www.foodfreedomusa.org/let-them-eat-grass.html

Additional Resource:
Timeline of FDA raids on raw milk farmers, dietary supplement makers and natural medicine practitioners

Facebook Support Page for Vernon Hershberger with rally details:
http://www.facebook.com/events/520533544628212/

The full documentary Let Them Eat Grass will be available on DVD soon – stay tuned for release date and purchase information

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