Get involved...save small farms and dairy producers

A post from the wonderful Nourished Kitchen blog about taking action to stop crimes against small farms and our way of life:

"Morningland Dairy, Estrella Creamery: these two artisanal producers, and countless others over the past few years, have been subject to raids and seizure of their products, often without cause.  An increase in the crackdown against small producers and beneath the looming  vote on senate bill 510, more and more producers of traditional foods – small farms, grass-fed creameries, and artisanal cheesemakers will continue to operate under consistent fear that their farms, their ranches and their dairies may be the next to be raided – and their family the next to lose their livelihood.

As for you?  Your inherent right to consume the foods of your choice is at risk.  Learn more about taking action and what you should do next.

Morningland Dairy

This June, police raided a private buying club with guns drawn, confiscating raw milk, yogurts and cheeses and other foods – Morningland Dairy, was an unfortunate victim of the raid.  A small grass-based creamery nestled in the Missouri Ozarks, Morningland Dairy received a letter from the FDA and several memorandums from the Missouri Milk Board ordering the destruction of  $250,00 in raw, artisan cheese.  Their cheese sickened no one.  Despite inaccurately performed tests, the FDA insisted that their cheese posed “an acute, life-threatening hazard to health.”   As a result, the operators of Morningland Dairy – the Dixon family – are now fighting an uphill battle to preserve their farm, their customer base, their product, their rights and their way of life.

Estrella Family Creamery

Just a few weeks after Morningland Dairy received the order to destroy their cheese, three cars pulled up to the Estrella Family Creamery and federal marshalls and representatives of the FDA filed out – frightening the family’s children and posting an order that did far worse: a seizure of the creamery’s entire stock of cheeses. While an unannounced inspection by the FDA in August yielded a few stray environmental and cheese samples that tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, Estrella Family Creamery had sickened no one.   Indeed Listeria monocytogenesis a fairly common strain of bacteria, not all of which are harmful to human health.   For a creamery as small as Estrella or Morningland, just one seizure, one forced recall can put the entire family out of business for good.

Senate Bill 510

As I write this post, the senate is voting on a motion to proceed to the bill for S510.  Ostensibly designed to provide greater controls for food safety, S510 has met with wide support from the agribusiness industry.   Yet, should it pass, the bill would provide the FDA with greater control over the ability to execute raids, product seizures and force recalls on small producers – providing competitive advantage to industrial food producers, the very corporations responsible for sickening so many people each year.  According to the Farm-to-consumer Legal Defense Fund, the  bill can be used to strategically drive small producers out of business for reasons that have nothing to do with food safety; this has been shown by the experience of the meat industry. In that industry, USDA overwhelmed small plants with paperwork requirements, most of which had no connection to safe food; small plants were targeted for a higher number of enforcement actions while there was lax regulation of big plants.

Taking Action

Unless we, as consumers and as voters, take action to change the system, small farmers, dairies and creameries will continue to be imperiled by the actions of the government while industrial agriculture thrives, relatively unfettered.  While contacting your legislators, spreading the word through social media like facebook and twitter can provide enormous help in illuminating the growing issue of small farm raids, it cannot provide immediate assistance for the hurting families and businesses that have been subject to raids and unwarranted seizure.

Real food bloggers, like Nourished Kitchen, Kelly the Kitchen Kop, Cheeseslave, Hartke is Online, the Healthy Home Economist and countless others are banding together in recognition of this growing attack on small producers and in support of the families who have had their livelihoods imperiled by the unwarranted actions of the FDA.  What we ask is simple: make the commitment to donating at least $5 to raided farms so that these families can pay for expenses resultant from the raids.

Nourished Kitchen, reaches over 60,000 individuals each month including more than 10,500 newsletter subscribers, 7,000 RSS subscribers and 11,500 fans on facebook.  If our facebook fans alone made the commitment to support raided farms with just five dollars, those farmers would earn over $50,000 to cover resulting expenses.  If some subscribers and fans contributed more – $10, $15, $50 – they could help to contribute for those readers for whom even a five dollar donation is too much.

So sign up here, to commit to helping small farms that have been subject to raids.  When a new farm has been raided, you’ll receive a notice in your inbox with information about the farm, the raid and instructions for donating.  We do not take or process your donations; rather, we simply alert you by email every time there’s a need.

Your Next Steps

1. Sign up for farm raid fund alerts.
2. Make the commitment to donate at least $5 to each raided farmer.  (You can donate to Estrella and Morninglandhere).
3. Tweet this post.
4. Share this post on facebook.
5.  Email this post to a friend."