Raw Food Police: When Government Won’t Even Let You Choose What’s For Dinner
This is the ultimate unacceptable act by a nanny state+police state gone awry.
Police Begin “Guns Drawn” Raids on Organic Food Stores in California
LA Times: Raw-food raid (features actual surveillance video of the police storming an organic grocery store, pointing guns at unarmed food workers, demanding to confiscate food property)
Raw Milk Controversy: Raids and Regulations
At issue is raw milk and other unprocessed dairy products. This is why members of the FDA, USDA, California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office invaded the private property of the aforementioned Venice Beach grocery store, Rawesome Foods, and confiscated jugs of raw goat and cow milk, blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese, and yogurt.
Despite the fact that Rawesome Foods has always had a big sign by the front door stating that this is a private membership buyer’s club (ala Sam’s Club) and only members may enter, and states that members take responsibility for their own health choices–all those caveats up front!–the peaceful property was still raided, commando-style. Yelling commands at unarmed citizens while pointing guns at them implies strongly that you’re ready to shoot any uncooperative people! ALL OVER UNPROCESSED MILK!! Unprocessed milk that no one has argued has hurt consumers; they just argue that it lacks government permission.
This has gone way too far into jackboot thug territory for me.
All-organic grocery stores are available here in NYC, so I’m a recent convert to organic eating (though I am not vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination). I’ve become to strongly believe in the power of free enterprise to drastically improve our health (and taste!) choices, plus, through competition, begin to change the awful, immoral and terribly unhealthy practices that are so pervasive in the food industry. The dominant factory farms are chafing from rising competition; their PR hacks have spread dubious “safety concerns” for years (meanwhile their products get repeatedly recalled after hard evidence of salmonella and e. coli). Word has it that the factory farm industry leaned on the FDA and USDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture to begin raiding organic grocery stores. Now they have gotten their wish: the government is taking down competitors FOR THEM.
But my objections go deeper. This is about the ongoing debate over what America IS. Is America supposed to be more and more like a gigantic, continent-sized open air prison? the guards make most of our choices, we have little freedom except to be human batteries (Matrix-style) for the state. Is that what the Founding Fathers wanted for us?
We can’t even choose what’s for dinner anymore? This is so unAmerican. The above articles say it is illegal to buy milk direct from the animal (just like our Founding Fathers did, by the way) in 39 states–ironically, California is one of the 11 states that normally allows it.
People should be free to be put whatever they want into their bodies, from raw eggs and milk, to hard drugs or whatever… even if you argue that certain things cause self-harm and (as do I) advocate strong moral codes, the state still has no sensible reason to interfere with self-harm because self-harm poses no threat to the well-being or freedom of other citizens, and, therefore, the state must be barred from interfering. The role of the police must be to protect us from the interference of others who would diminish our well-being or freedom, and those freedoms include the right to choose. That means that the police should be arresting someone who swipes your beer in public, not doing the swiping themselves (43 states enforce ridiculous open container laws.
How do we end this nanny state+police state tag team that has crushed more of its peoples’ basic civil liberties and human rights than most other developed countries? This IS NOT what the Founding Fathers wanted for us.
Nick