Posted: 12/04/2008
SWAT TEAM CONDUCTS FOOD RAID IN RURAL OHIO
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://steveandpaularunyan.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.westonaprice.org/>.
“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.”
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.unitedbuyingclubs.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
A Jack booted SWAT team to do all this?
__________________
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Off topic but as far as this article goes ... Semi-automatic rifles !? OMG !!! I can't stand how people write these articles. I couldn't even bother to read anymore after that. No **** they are semi-automatic rifles. Did the author think for a slight chance that the SWAT team was going to be raiding a house with muskets and cannons?
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Off topic but as far as this article goes ... Semi-automatic rifles !? OMG !!! I can't stand how people write these articles. I couldn't even bother to read anymore after that. No **** they are semi-automatic rifles. Did the author think for a slight chance that the SWAT team was going to be raiding a house with muskets and cannons?
Off topic but as far as this article goes ... Semi-automatic rifles !? OMG !!! I can't stand how people write these articles. I couldn't even bother to read anymore after that. No **** they are semi-automatic rifles. Did the author think for a slight chance that the SWAT team was going to be raiding a house with muskets and cannons?
not everyone is gun savvy. if the public will believe a semi-auto is an assault weapon, they may think SWAT uses flintlocks.
As AZ said, it's beside the point. look at the larger picture
Off topic but as far as this article goes ... Semi-automatic rifles !? OMG !!! I can't stand how people write these articles. I couldn't even bother to read anymore after that. No **** they are semi-automatic rifles. Did the author think for a slight chance that the SWAT team was going to be raiding a house with muskets and cannons?
What is the problem? They were semi-autos. I'd be miffed if they called them "assault rifles", as the media is so prone to do.
What is the problem? They were semi-autos. I'd be miffed if they called them "assault rifles", as the media is so prone to do.
Not a problem. It's just seems that every article that is written the author tries to portray weapons in a negative aspect, like this one. I guess it's just me, but it's not the end of the world. It was just a little side note. As far as calling them assault rifles, they were probably "assault" rifles, so essentially it's the same thing I'm talking about.
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What I thought the article would say is that the SWAT team raided the house armed with fully legal to law enforcement semi-automatic rifles and confiscated evil black assault rifles designed only to kill mass quantities of innocent citizens.
__________________ "When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour." -- George Washington
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -- Thomas Jefferson
Gun owner's prayer.... "Oh Lord, if I die, please don't let my wife sell my guns for what I told her they cost."
What I thought the article would say is that the SWAT team raided the house armed with fully legal to law enforcement semi-automatic rifles and confiscated evil black assault rifles designed only to kill mass quantities of innocent citizens.
Don't forget that after the evil, horrible LE did their raid of these poor people, they went on to seize everyone's guns, and take over the country !!!
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