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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] CNN.com - High court OKs personal property seizures- Jun 23, 2005

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  • From: "Robert Waldrop" <rmwj@soonernet.com>
  • To: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>, "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] CNN.com - High court OKs personal property seizures- Jun 23, 2005
  • Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:29:04 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
>
> So what was the outcome of your fight to retain
access to locally
> produced/slaughtered poultry for your coop?

We are presently in a stalemate. The Oklahoma
Dept of Agriculture claims their hands are tied by
federal regulations, and we have been advised by
our counsel that in fact this true, they have very
little wiggle room. There seems however to be a
considerable amount of evidence that the USDA has
multiple standards for poultry processing
depending on which state you are in, that is, they
do not have a uniform national standard for sales
of on farm processed poultry. We have found
several states with mobile poultry processing
units that have been authorized by the USDA.

Our Dept of Ag guys are having a "showdown
meeting" soon with USDA to find out why there are
different standards in different states, and find
out how we can get approved to create our own
mobile poultry processing unit. They have said
that if we (or somebody) build one for Oklahoma,
they will provide a state inspector for it free of
charge, which would make the birds processed in
the MPU legal for sale anywhere in the state.
That seems to be the best outcome that we can
expect at this point, but dealing with these
regulatory folks is excrutiatingly slow.

IMHO in the beginning they had no idea what they
were getting into when they came down on us, and I
think the letter writing campaign that we
organized was very successful. I have had several
meetings with the responsible people at the state
Dept of Ag, and if we can get the MPU approved by
the USDA, they seem to think they can find grant
or loan money to finance the construction.

I've been told btw by a high official of the food
safety dept of Oklahoma Dept of Ag that the
national poultry inspection program is in a state
of "crisis" because even though they have
implemented important food safety changes, the
problem with the food safety of commercial poultry
is "getting worse, not better".

So that's where we're at for now.

Robert Waldrop, OKC






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