In a case brought by the Wisconsin state government — with full cooperation from the federal government — a jury refused to convict Amish farmer Vernon Hershberger on all counts for distributing milk, cheese, and meat without a license. He did he end up with one conviction, for which he faces a year in jail, but that’s nothing compared with what might have happened.
Now, there are still many people who would read the above and say: Wait just a minute here. You mean to tell me that a farmer was hounded by bureaucrats for selling his own food to others who wanted to buy it?
Indeed. His farm was raided in 2010, and much of his milk and cheese was destroyed by the police. The conviction was based on Vernon’s desire to fulfill his commitments and distribute what remained.
The case is strange because everyone knows that the raid, the trial, and everything surrounding this case is related to raw milk and cheese. It has huge fans all over the country, people who claim that it is healthier than pasteurized milk and cheese. It is legal in 30 states to produce, buy, and sell. In Europe, no one thinks anything about it.
What Hershberger was technically charged with was operating without all the proper licenses. The judge actually banned any discussion of the merits or nonmerits of his products. The jurors were told that their only job was to decide if this one farmer filled out all the right paperwork and paid all the correct fees you have to pay to sell stuff.
But wait a minute. Could he receive those licenses? Of course not, because he was not willing to comply with the regulations. In fact, had he complied, he would have lost all of his customers, who themselves were not just regular customers. They were part-owners of the farm itself — a strategy that many small farmers use to get around these crazy restrictions.
The jurors were actually behaving quite courageously in thinking for themselves. They must have looked at this good farmer in Wisconsin and wondered why he was even on trial at all. He was only doing what farmers have done since ancient times: producing food for people to eat. His client base was ridiculously small. We are talking about a few dozen people here, and a net income for Vernon that in 2010 was only $45,000.
Why was the government wasting its time on such nonsense as prosecuting small farmers for selling stuff? That’s a really good question. The answer is that this is what government does these days. Its main agenda is to stop people from getting together and exchanging things to their mutual benefit.
When you look at the problem this way, you can see that this is not a left-versus-right issue. It affects absolutely everyone, whether we are talking about raw milk or marijuana or medications or home appliances. The government’s got its hand in everything.
The main result of such an impulse is not to improve the world we live in. It is to prevent people from doing things that they believe amount to improvements of their own lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment