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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] FOWL POLICE PLUCK FOOD COOPERATIVE
  • Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 10:29:05 -0700


FOWL POLICE PLUCK FOOD COOPERATIVE
From: Robert Waldrop

There we were, minding our bidness, having fun at
the February Delivery Day of the Oklahoma Food
Cooperative, when in walks three nice looking
fellows from the State Department of Agriculture,
Food, and Foresty meat inspection compliance
department, in search of FELONIOUS chickens. That
is, chickens raised by humane and natural methods
and processed on the farm by our producer members.

They had copies of a new law, which they say was
passed by the last session of the Legislature,
which amended the laws about on farm poultry sales
to specifically exclude "third parties" in such
transactions, and they say we are a "third party".
They were there to do their job, which was enforce
the law. They were polite, and we responded in
kind. I did not put on my John the Baptist hat
and preach them a sermon, although I was sorely
tempted, hehehe. Kim Barker, our vice president
for producers, and I spoke with them a bit before
bringing them into our sorting area, which is a
large hallway by the Family Life Gymnasium of
Epiphany of our Lord Church. We told them that we
thought this new rule was not about food safety,
but rather market access. They replied, "We
really don't think the Legislature would have
passed this if they didn't think it was a matter
of food safety." What the law now says is that a
farmer can process a chicken on the farm and sell
it to a customer, IF the producer physically hands
the chicken to the customer. The producer can
drive here to Oklahoma City and deliver it to
customers. But he can't drive to OKC, give the
cooperative the chickens so that we can deliver
them to the customers. There is of course no
rational difference between those two acts, but
that is the way the law now reads.

There is also the question about whether the
cooperative is really a "third party", in that
both producers and customers are members, the
transactions are ONLY between members, the
cooperative does not buy wholesale and sell
retail, the cooperative never has title to the
products, they are always at all times owner by
either the producer or the customer.

So our felonious chickens were officially
detained, and then released into our custody to be
returned to their point of origin. So sad.
Charles Horn's chickens are just beautiful, they
are a delightful shade of pink. They are not
slimy and do not have that foul order so common in
supermarket fowl. And the taste, well, I am sure
the fried chicken in heaven tastes just like those
birds.

Tysons et al of course are completely free to sell
their filthy, slimy, fat, yellow, foul-smelling
fowl in any supermarket in the state. Those are
the ones that spend their lives in tiny cages, so
miserable they have to burn off their beaks lest
they peck themselves to death, so full of disease
they have to lace their feed with antibiotics or
nothing would ever get to market. Such is the
wizdumb of the State.

On the other hand, we can sell all the quail we
want to. Go figure: Tysons et al don't sell
quail, so they don't care about that. As the
afternoon wore on we started making jokes about
re-labelling the chickens as "Jumbo Quail", but we
figured the state would not be amused. We also
started inventing headlines, and the one in the
subject line is, I think, the best we came up
with.

I think they are going to let us off with a
"letter warning" this time, and we will of course
scrupulously obey their law until it is changed.
I am not interested at all in rousing anger or any
other kind of negative response against the state
department of agriculture. We know for a fact
that we have many friends there, and many people
there understand the importance of small farmers
and direct sales. Indeed, if people at the state
department of agriculture had not been encouraging
to me when this was all just a crazy idea floating
around in my brain, we might never have gotten off
the ground. They have to enforce the law, though,
and I don't want to hassle them for that. Causing
them grief will not do us any good. We are,
however, I think going immediately to the
legislature to see if we can get a legislative
remedy this session, because this new law is the
proximate cause of our problem, as well as
entering into a dialogue with the regulators about
the definition of 'third party'. My inbox is
packed with messages from cooperative members "up
in arms" about this, ready to go to work. Our
attorney is out of town but I have spoken with him
by phone. He is going to try to negotiate a
method of compliance for us, failing that we would
consider a lawsuit, but that is a last resort. A
legislative remedy in this session would be a
better solution, and best of all would be
convincing the regulators that we are not a "third
party" under that clause of the law..

This experience also teaches us, the hard way,
that we have to have somebody to watch the
legislature. This was sneaked through right under
our noses in our first months of organization. We
were so busy figuring out how to do this we didn't
pay proper attention to what was happening on
Capitol Hill.

They were fine with the rest of our operations,
all of our other meats are processed in inspected
facilities, they were fine with our superinsulated
ice chests and food grade dry ice. They also said
the poultry producers could book sales through the
cooperative, we could collect the payments and
etc., but the producer has to do the delivery or
the customer has to come to their farm. But
because there is no USDA inspected facility in
Oklahoma for processing small amounts of poultry,
we can deliver no chickens until we can get the
law changed.

Bottom line, this is a "blessing in disguise" for
our cooperative. It has energized our
cooperative's membership -- and we are spread all
over the state, nearly every legislative district
has at least one co-op member in it. We now know
where we stand, and what specifically has to be
done to defend our producers' "freedom to farm"
and our customers "economic, political, and
religious rights" to buy food directly from
Oklahoma farmers and thus do our part for economic
development in rural Oklahoma..

As the inspectors left, I gave them each an info
packet with a copy of our Better Times Almanac of
Useful Information (
www.bettertimesinfo.org/2004index.htm ) AND a copy
of Joel Salatin's book, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.
Hopefully they will learn something. I bet Joel
gets a kick out of that, hehehe.

Stay tuned for further developments, no film at
10, but this morning I do have some mighty fine
strawberry jam made from Oklahoma strawberries by
David and Michelle Worley of Paradise Valley
Organics in Adair County, to put on my pancakes
made from certified organic Oklahoma wheat flour
ground by Seth Callen of Springhill Farm in Kiowa
County, and certified organic eggs from Charles
Horn of Cordell, scrambled on the side. Living
well indeed is the best response to such
government finagling as we are presently
experiencing.

Robert Waldrop, proud to be president of the
Oklahoma Food Cooperative
www.oklahomafood.coop







  • [Livingontheland] FOWL POLICE PLUCK FOOD COOPERATIVE, Tradingpost, 02/18/2005

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