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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>, <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] SWAT TEAM FOOD RAIDS
  • Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 13:53:31 -0800

I contacted a person I know who lives in Ohio. I've removed identifying
characteristics but she is well known throughout the homeschool community,
nationwide. She certainly isn'ta conspriracy theorist. Here's her reply as
to whether this is a crock or real:

"Unfortunately, yes, I am all too aware of what happened earlier this
week because this is the food co-op that we belong to. We have been
buying grass fed beef from them for several years and just picked up
our latest last month.

I meant to share the story here with you all, but had forgotten to. I
read the report below and I thought it was 8 hours that they were held
at gunpoint, but I don't see much difference between 8 and 9. ::sigh::

The family is standing their ground and doing all they can to return
to somewhat normal for the many little ones in their home. They have
told us they are doing remarkably well."

Here's another article http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2008/12/03/news/mj309059.txt

Decide for yourself.

Lynda

----- Original Message ----- From: "bob ford" <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>


Hmmmm. Well I clicked on a bunch of the links. The first one (most
important one) wont come up "page not found". Are these sites legitimate
or are they conspiracy sites? I read a couple of the bloggers that
sounded reasonable and rational. Huh. I don't understand why I have yet
to see it on one of the larger Libertarian sites.

Well, let's say it is true. The why in the world would a sane person
won't these statist thugs running their health-care system? No wonder
Lynn is afraid to sell raw milk. I'll bet those 'raw milk' people wish
they had believed what their gov't had become, during the 90's when the
gestapo like feds murdered the Weavers and the poor fools at Waco.

People laugh at my ideas and say "well, If you are a good boy, you have
nothing to hide", "well, if you behave yourself , you have nothing to
hide"; "well, it's okay if the gov't invades your privacy because now they
are going to give you free stuff , like health-care and love". People
need to grow up, provide for themselves, and have an interesting enough
life that they don't want everyone to know of every detail of their life.

If true, the people who were behind this need to go to prison ...........

----------------------------------------------------------------------



--- On Fri, 12/5/08, Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net> wrote:

From: Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net>
Subject: [Homestead] SWAT TEAM FOOD RAIDS
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, December 5, 2008, 11:15 PM
Anyone heard about this?

Lynda

----- Original Message -----
> ~SPECIAL ALERT TO EVERYONE THAT EATS ~
> Swat Team Conducts "Food Raid" in Rural Ohio

The USDA just released their plans to put a law into action
that will put
all small farmers out of business. Animals for the sale of
meat or milk will
only be allowed in commercial farms. December 3, 2008


If you read nothing else today please make it this article
http://www.rwefree.com/swat. htm

http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/4287/Brannon-Howse/

By-John-Loeffler

SWAT TEAM CONDUCTS FOOD RAID IN RURAL OHIO

Posted: 12/04/2008

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic
rifles entered the
private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio,
herded the family onto
the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on
parents, children,
infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The
team was
aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite
traumatized. At some
point, the "bad cop" SWAT team was relieved by
another team, a "good cop"
team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family
has run a very
large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse
http://www.mannastorehouse.com on the western side of the
greater Cleveland
area for many years.

There were agents from the Department of Agriculture
present, one of them
identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly
supicious-looking
<http://steveandpaul arunyan.blogspot .com/>. Agents
began rifling through
all of the family's possessions, a task that lasted
hours and resulted in a
complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many
items were taken
that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was
not permitted a
phone call, and they were not told what crime they were
being charged with.
They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars
worth of food was
taken, including the family's personal stock of food
for the coming year.
All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were
taken, as well as
phone and contact records. The food cooperative was
virtually shut down.
There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for
this extreme
violation of Constitutional rights.

Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged
with running a
retail establishment without a license. Why then the
Gestapo-type
interrogation for a 3^rd degree misdemeanor charge? This
incident has raised
the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State
regulation and
enforcement over the nation's private food supply.

This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported
by those innocents
who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in
the 1990s. The
present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there
some rabid new
interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food
a controlled
substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is
there a previously
unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the
Homeland Security
measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an
out-of-control,
hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a
best-case scenario.
Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the
freedom to eat
unregulated and unmonitored food http://www.westonap
rice.org/.

One blogger
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/oda-swats-manna-storehouse-co-op/

familiar with the Ohio situation has reported
that:"Interestingly, I believe
they [Manna Storehouse] said a month or so ago, an
undercover ODA official
came to their little store and claimed to have a sick
father wanting to join
the co-op.

Both the owner and her daughter-in- law had a horrible
feeling about the
man, and decided not to allow him into the co-op and
notified him by
certified mail. He came back to the co-op demanding to be
part of it. They
refused and gave him names of other businesses and health
food stores closer
to his home. Not coincidentally, this man was there
yesterday as part of the
raid."

The same blog
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/oda-swats-manna-storehouse-co-op/

also noted that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been
chastised by the
courts in several previous instances for its aggression,
including trying to
entrap an Amish man in a raw milk "sale,"
http://familycow.proboards32.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=12013

which backfired when it became known that the Amish believe
in a literal
interpretation of "give to him that asketh thee, and
from him that would
borrow of thee turn not thou away" (Matthew 5:42)

The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of
non-institutional beef in
an Oberlin College food service freezer a year ago that was
tracked down by
a county sanitation official to Manna Storehouse. Oberlin
College's student
food coop is widely known for its strident ideological
stance about eating
organic foods. It seems that the Oberlin student food
cooperative had joined
the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to buy
organic foods in bulk
from the national organic food distributor United
http://www.unitedbu
yingclubs. com/, which services buying clubs across the
nation. The
sanitation official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the
Ohio Department of
Agriculture. After the first contact by state ODA
officials, Manna
Storehouse reportedly wrote them a letter requesting
assistance and
guidelines for complying with the law. This letter was
never answered.
Rather, the ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the
coop, as
described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team
showed up!

Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an active part
of the American
landscape for over a generation. In the 1970s, with the
rise of the organic
food industry (a direct outgrowth of the hippie
back-to-nature movement)
food coops started up all over the country. These were
groups of people who
freely associated for the purpose of combining their buying
power so that
they could order organic food items in bulk and case lots.
Anyone who was
part of these coops in the early era will remember the
messy breakdown of 35
pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!

These buying clubs have persisted and flourished over the
years due to their
ability to purchase high quality organic foods at reduced
prices in bulk
quantities. Most cooperatives have participated greatly in
the local
agrarian economies, supporting neighborhood organic farmers
with purchases
of produce, eggs, chickens, etc. The groups also purchase
food from a number
of different local, regional and national distributors,
many of them
family-based businesses who truck the food themselves. Some
of these food
cooperatives have become large enough to set up

mini-storefront operations where members can drop in and
purchase items
leftover from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had
established itself in
such a manner, using a small enclosed breezeway attached to
their home. It
was a folksy place with old wooden floors where coop
members stopped by to
chat and snack on bags of organic corn chips.

The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish
population in the country.
Many of the Amish live on acreages where they raise their
own food, not
unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the

extras to neighbors and church members. There is a sense of
foreboding that
this state crackdown on a longstanding, reputable food
cooperative operation
could adversely impact the peaceful agrarian way of life
not only for the
Amish, but homeschoolers and those families living off the
land on rural
acreages. It raises the disturbing possibility that it
could become a crime
to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the
road, or butcher
your own chickens for family and friends - bustling
activities that
routinely take place in backwater America. The freedom to
purchase food
directly form the source is increasingly under attack. For
those who have
food allergies and chemical intolerances, or who are on
special medical
diets, this is becoming a serious health issue. Will
Americans retain the
right to purchase food that is uncontaminated by
pesticides, herbicides,
allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG, GMOs,
radiation, etc.? The
melamine scare from China underscores the increasingly
inferior and suspect
quality of modern processed institutional foods. One blog,
commenting on the
bizarre and troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed
that:

"No one is saying exactly why. At the same time the
FDA says it it safe to
eat the 40% of tainted beef found in Costco's and
Sam's all over the nation.
These farm raids are very common now. Every farmer needs to
fully eqiped
[sic] for the possibility of it happening to them. The
Farmer To Consumer
Legal Defense Fund http://www.ftcldf. org/ was created just
for this
purpose. The USDA just released their plans to put a law
into action that
will put all small farmers out of business. Animals for the
sale of meat or
milk will only be allowed in commercial farms, even the
organic ones."
December 3, 2008 7:09 PM file://localhost/comment.g

John Loeffler

Western Bureau Chief

Steel on Steel Radio

Program

IRN/USA Radio News

P.O. Box 3358

Hayden Id 83835-3358

Tel: 208-765-8337

Fax: 208-765-2033

Email: john AT steelonsteel.com

Web: www.steelonsteel.com

Distributed by: www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com

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