When the approximately twenty agents arrived at her farmhouse door at 7 a.m. last Wednesday--from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture--Sharon Palmer didn't know what to say. She had just the previous day pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of mislabeling goat's milk cheese that took more than a year to materialize from two previous raids in late 2008 and 2009, pushed by CDFA. She thought that at the least the authorities would leave her alone until that case was resolved, since she had made no attempt to get back into her original business of selling raw goat's milk and cheese. But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn't the least bit tongue-tied. "She started back-talking to them," recalls Palmer. "She said, 'If you take my computer again, I can't do my homework.' This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven't gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids." Alas, the agents took nearly six hours to conduct their "search," and took the replacement computer, along with goat's milk Palmer feeds her chickens and pigs, since she can't sell it--"The chickens get the curd and the pigs get the whey," she told me. The raid last Wednesday on Sharon Palmer's farm was carried out on the same day as a raid on Rawesome Foods, the Venice, CA, buying club run by nutritionist and raw-food advocate Aajonus Vonderplanitz. The main difference seems to be that her raiding party didn't include agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Canada, as did the Rawesome raid. Because the CDFA had previously suspended her dairy license, in late 2008, Palmer says she had worked hard to survive without selling dairy products, instead selling beef, pork, chickens, and eggs she raises on the farm. "They nearly forced me out of business with the previous raids," she says. She and her three children "are barely surviving."...more
Monday, July 19, 2010
Agents raid farm...again
When the approximately twenty agents arrived at her farmhouse door at 7 a.m. last Wednesday--from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture--Sharon Palmer didn't know what to say. She had just the previous day pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of mislabeling goat's milk cheese that took more than a year to materialize from two previous raids in late 2008 and 2009, pushed by CDFA. She thought that at the least the authorities would leave her alone until that case was resolved, since she had made no attempt to get back into her original business of selling raw goat's milk and cheese. But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn't the least bit tongue-tied. "She started back-talking to them," recalls Palmer. "She said, 'If you take my computer again, I can't do my homework.' This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven't gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids." Alas, the agents took nearly six hours to conduct their "search," and took the replacement computer, along with goat's milk Palmer feeds her chickens and pigs, since she can't sell it--"The chickens get the curd and the pigs get the whey," she told me. The raid last Wednesday on Sharon Palmer's farm was carried out on the same day as a raid on Rawesome Foods, the Venice, CA, buying club run by nutritionist and raw-food advocate Aajonus Vonderplanitz. The main difference seems to be that her raiding party didn't include agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Canada, as did the Rawesome raid. Because the CDFA had previously suspended her dairy license, in late 2008, Palmer says she had worked hard to survive without selling dairy products, instead selling beef, pork, chickens, and eggs she raises on the farm. "They nearly forced me out of business with the previous raids," she says. She and her three children "are barely surviving."...more
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