Raw Milk Case Update

UPDATE: Minnesota Farmer Victorious in Court!, Posted on March 12, 2015 Written by nourishingliberty.com

Judge Clears Raw Milk Farm­ers of Con­tempt Charges for sell­ing their products

In the story of David and Heidi Berglund from last week, was a glimpse into the over reg­u­la­tory nature of the Min­nesota Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (MDA). The MDA threat­ened a peace­ful fam­ily with $500 per day fines for feed­ing their community.

On March 9, 2015, 175–200 com­mu­nity mem­bers sat qui­etly in the court­room in sup­port of the Berglund family.

Accord­ing to Greg Gentz, who attended the hear­ing and reported on it, “Judge Cuzzo stated that he was “stay­ing the order of inspec­tion” that had pre­vi­ously been issued by him in his court due to the issues that were pre­sented at today’s hear­ing. He fur­ther clar­i­fied to Mid­den­dorf that the pre­vi­ous order of inspec­tion could not be used, at this time, by the MDA to inspect Lake View Nat­ural Dairy. He said that he is going to take up to 90 days (he com­mented that he hoped to not take that long) to review the argu­ments pre­sented to deter­mine the juris­dic­tional valid­ity of the order (whether the MDA has the right to make the inspec­tion in the first place). Judge Cuzzo will issue his rul­ing in writing.”

While this is a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment in the case, it is cer­tainly not over yet. If the judge’s final rul­ing is in favor of the farm, it is likely that that MDA will pur­sue an appeal. The ulti­mate deci­sion here will set a prece­dent not only for Min­nesota, but one that other states could fol­low. The rul­ing, expected in 90 days, will deter­mine, in large part, the level of aggres­sion the gov­ern­ment uses to per­se­cute farm­ers (and con­sumers) who seek to engage in peace­ful vol­un­tary exchanges for food.

Please sup­port the fam­ily in any way you can. They have sig­nif­i­cant legal fees to pay as well as other expenses related to time in court.

To fol­low the case closely, as writ­ten by one of the farm’s long-term sup­port­ers, go here.

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• Min­nesota aims to fine fam­ily farm­ers $500 per day
  Filed Under: Agriculture, Property Rights
  http://agenda21news.com/2015/03/update-minnesota-farmer-victorious-in-court/
  Comments
  Abuse of farmers and ranchers by federal and state agencies should prompt state legislatures to take corrective action with Bills to support free markets. Producers need unfettered access to sell whatever they produce without government interference.  We won’t truly have a free market system until bartering is allowed to take place without government interference. Yes, they would dodge taxes by avoiding cash transactions that would land on their income taxes, but so what ?  Governments should not be able to ban livestock based on its type or feeding method.
  Fines by government for non-compliance of arbitrary laws need to be reviewed, reduced, removed and ended. Citizens should not be required to suffer crippling legal expenses to be free.
  Dairy operations should be able to sell raw milk to anybody. In this case, their customers can have the producer pasteurize it or pasteurize it themselves. It should make no difference.  Otherwise, dairy products will continue to be controlled by large processors only.  They do not need this monopoly power and state legislatures should remove it.
  Food safety can be assured best where local consumers buy from local producers. Producers just need to label it.  If foreign food exporting countries don’t like it, that’s too bad.
  Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader