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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] SWAT takes down OH farming family
  • Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 21:14:14 -0800 (PST)

That article Lynda first posted, and then Lynn found some information is
starting to hit the other sites

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Swat Team conducts food raid in rural Ohio


December 4, 2008


"Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply
intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement
has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement. The
1980s and 1990s have seen marked changes in the number of state and local
paramilitary units, in their mission and deployment, and in their tactical
armament." --Cato Institute (more below)

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national
security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national
security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
--Barack Obama, "Obama's Civilian National Security Force"

"At the World Food Programme we have recognized what a valuable tool food aid
can be in changing behaviour. In so many poorer countries food is money, food
is power....." --Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food
Program, "The UN Plan for Food and Land"


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 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
suspicious-looking. 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 3rd 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.

One blogger 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 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,” 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, 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 is 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 equipped
[sic] for the possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer To Consumer
Legal Defense Fund 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

Note: "The police paramilitary units also conduct training exercises with
active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. State and local police departments
are increasingly accepting the military as a model for their behavior and
outlook.... The problem is that the mindset of the soldier is simply not
appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an
'enemy' but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing
the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and
unintended consequences...." (Diane Cecilia Weber, Cato Institute, "Warrior
Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in Police Departments")



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