Raw-food raid highlights a hunger

[sharingwisdom]

https://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-raw-food-raid-20100725,0,4350641,full.story
With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities — the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths. On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are " healthy food" consumers [who] seek food in its most pure form. "This is about control and profit, not our health," said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. "How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?" Demand for all manner of raw foods — including honey, nuts and meat — has been growing, spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has pressed the government to act.

Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.

[pnicholson]

scary about the raw dairy since it is not healthful when it is processed. this kind of story - organic food or raw dairy concerns being raided, especially at gun point, is so outrageous that i can barely sit still.

what to do.

[lynn]

Now they are going after the nuts!...

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Raw almond producers fight fed rules

"FRESNO, Calif. – Glenn Anderson decided to make a change when he followed in his father's footsteps by growing almonds near the Central Valley town of Hilmar — he stopped using pesticides and pasteurizing the nuts. He said it's paid off in happy customers and sold-out harvests, but Anderson, 76, said he fears federal regulations could ruin his business selling raw, organic almonds. He's hopeful an effort by a dozen California almond growers and retailers to challenge the U.S. Department of Agriculture over its rules will succeed.

The USDA adopted the regulations requiring that nuts be steamed or treated with a chemical in response to salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 blamed on raw almonds that left some sickened.
Anderson, who isn't among the plaintiffs, called the USDA rules misguided.
"We are as clean as or cleaner than a pasteurized product," said Anderson. "My customers are willing to take that risk."

Those challenging the USDA scored a legal victory last week when a U.S. Court of Appeals judge ruled they could proceed with a lawsuit challenging the regulations.
The almond producers, not all of whom are organic, said the rules have sabotaged their businesses by not allowing them to compete with foreign-produced raw almonds.
They also objected to requirements that they steam the nuts or spray them with propylene oxide, which is widely used but concerns some farmers because it has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a probable carcinogen. The EPA allows the use of PPO, as it is known, in small amounts not believed to harm human health.

Michael Jarvis, a spokesman for the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Services, said the federal government is reviewing the Aug. 3 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Jarvis declined to comment further.

The Modesto-based Almond Board, the trade group that recommended the rules, defended the regulations.
"The food quality and safety program, including pasteurization, went into effect in 2007, and was developed after an extended, transparent process involving all segments of the almond industry," the board said in a statement.
Anderson said he is able to continue producing his almonds naturally — for now — because he is a small business and often sells directly to consumers. But other farmers said the rule has hurt them and left many customers agitated.

"Yes, people are incensed," said Jesse Schwartz, whose Berkeley, Calif.-based Living Tree Community Foods makes organic almond butter. "People want their almonds back."...

(Can't link sites from this computer, sorry - AP story)