Health department raids community picnic and destroys all food with bleach

Video: Swat Teams Raid US Farms, Destroy Food with Bleach and kill Livestock

We were told our food was unfit for consumption and demanded that we call off the event...

Quail Farm

The evening was everything I had dreamed and hoped it would be. The weather was perfect, the farm was filled with friends and guests roaming around talking about organic, sustainable farming practices. Our guests were excited to spend an evening together. The food was prepared exquisitely. The long dinner table, under the direction of dear friends, was absolutely stunningly beautiful. The music was superb. The stars were bright and life was really good. And then, …for a few moments, it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us and my wonderful world came crashing down. As guests were mingling, finishing tours of the farm, and while the first course of the meal was being prepared and ready to be sent out, a Southern Nevada Health District employee came for an inspection.

Community Dinner at Quail Farm

Because this was a gathering of people invited to our farm for dinner, I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved. I received a phone call from them two days before the event informing me that because this was a “public event” (I would like to know what is the definition of “public” and “private”) we would be required to apply for a “special use permit.” If we did not do so immediately, we would be charged a ridiculous fine. Stunned, we immediately complied.

We were in the middle of our harvest day for our CSA shares, a very busy time for us, but Monte immediately left to comply with the demand and filled out the required paper work and paid for the fee. (Did I mention that we live in Overton, nowhere near a Health Department office?) Paper work now in order, he was informed that we would not actually be given the permit until an inspector came to check it all out. She came literally while our guests were arriving! In order to overcome any trouble with the Health Department of cooking on the premises, most of the food was prepared in a certified kitchen in Las Vegas; and to further remove any doubt, we rented a certified kitchen trailer to be here on the farm for the preparation of the meals.

The inspector, Mary Oaks, clearly not the one in charge of the inspection as she was constantly on the phone with her superior Susan somebody who was calling all the shots from who knows where.

We were told our food was unfit for consumption and demanded that we call off the event because:

EH Specialist II Mary Oakes

1. Some of the prepared food packages did not have labels on them. (The code actually allows for this if it is to be consumed within 72 hours.)
2. Some of the meat was not USDA certified. (Did I mention that this was a farm to fork meal?)
3. Some of the food that was prepared in advance was not up to temperature at the time of inspection. (It was being prepared to be brought to proper temperature for serving when the inspection occurred.)
4. Even the vegetables prepared in advance had to be thrown out because they were cut and were then considered a “bio-hazard”.
5. We did not have receipts for our food. (Reminder! This food came from farms not from the supermarket! I have talked with several chefs who have said that in all their years cooking they have never been asked for receipts.)

At this time Monte, trying to reason with Susan to find a possible solution for the problem, suggested turning this event from a “public” event to a “private” event by allowing the guests to become part of our farm club, thus eliminating any jurisdiction or responsibility on their part. This idea infuriated Susan and threatened that if we did not comply the police would be called and personally escort our guests off the property. This is not the vision of the evening we had in mind! So regretfully, again we complied.

The only way to keep our guests on the property was to destroy the food

Bleach is poured on organic food

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can. Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food. We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

Farm food is destroyed

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.) Again, a call to Susan and another negative response. Okay, so let me get this right. So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?! Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.

Food Lined up to Be Destroyed by Health Department

Now the food is also unfit for compost as I would be negligent to allow any little critters to nibble on it while it was composting and ingest that bleach resulting in a horrible death. Literally hundreds of pounds of food was good for nothing but adding to our ever increasing land fill! At some point in all of this turmoil Monte reminded me that I had the emergency phone number for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) on our refrigerator. I put it there never really believing that I would ever have to use it. We became members of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund several years ago as a protection for us, but mostly to add support to other farmers battling against the oppressive legal actions taken against the small farmers trying to produce good wholesome food without government intrusion. The local, sustainable food battle is being waged all across America! May I mention that not one battle has been brought on because of any illness to the patrons of these farms! The battles are started by government officials swooping down on farms and farmers like SWAT teams confiscating not only the wholesome food items produced but even their farm equipment! Some of them actually wearing HAZMAT suits as if they were walking into a nuclear meltdown! I have personally listened to some of their heart wrenching stories and have continued to follow them through the FTCLDF’s updates.

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Source: A Distinctive World ^  - Thursday, March 15, 2012 7:06:09 PM · by Sopater – h/t to AJ

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Judge Rules Against Organic Farmers in Monsanto Case; Infowars Nightly News

Looming Before Us: Corporate Threats to Your Food Supply

Dr. Shiv Chopra was a drug company insider, and also worked for what is now Health Canada -- the Canadian equivalent of the FDA. He’s acquired an enormous amount of expertise about vaccines, which you can hear in the first part of our interview below, and also about the food supply.

In this second interview, Dr. Chopra shares his knowledge about food issues that affect every single one of us.

I am very excited to share this second interview with all of you. Dr. Chopra is an insider; he was hired by the drug companies and worked with vaccine development in Europe. He has also worked for the Canadian government, in the equivalent of the FDA. He was a senior scientific advisor for what is now Health Canada for 20 years, working primarily in vaccines and antibiotics.

However, Dr. Chopra is also very knowledgeable and passionate about the issues threatening the food supply, and his sentiments echo my own very closely.

As Small Farms Disappear, the Food System is Crumbling

Most “farming” today is nothing like the small farming of our ancestors. Food production on a massive, corporate level has taken over the natural farming practices that thrived for hundreds of years. As Dr. Chopra said:

“Look at our food supply in Canada and the United States since they were established 200-300 years ago until they started to turn into this intensive industrial farming.

Until then, they were the happiest lands anywhere on earth because food was pristine, pure and it was doing well -- and there was a lot of land and water. Everything was good.

And then came the mechanization -- the chemicalization -- and now it’s come to the elimination of the family farm. How has it happened? This last thing that I’m talking about: we now no longer have family farms left, very few and very far in between.”

Those of you who are new to the natural health scene may find it surprising that the modern food system is in danger of collapsing. The food system began its dramatic decline the second the world turned away from the farming practices of our ancestors, and began to attempt to outdo nature with technology.

Now, producing food on a massive scale at the lowest price possible has taken precedence over obeying the laws of nature. The system is pushing natural systems and organisms to their limit, forcing living creatures to function as machines.

Of course, “whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience,” Michael Pollan pointed out in Our Decrepit Food Factories.

Animals Pumped Full of Hormones and Fed Unnatural Diets

As you might suspect, food that is raised using unnatural processes often leads to unnatural responses in those who eat it. Now we are facing the reality of meat and dairy products laced with cancer-causing hormones, super-bug-creating antibiotics and new manifestations like mad cow disease.

Dr. Chopra expands:

“It first started with chemical fertilizers, and then pesticides, and then they moved on. From the pesticides, they said, “We can feed animals back to animals because only half the animal is meat and then the rest of the animal has to be wasted.”

So they picked up slaughterhouse waste and they ground it up. They picked up dogs and cats -- road kill as well -- and ground it all up. They start to feed animals back to animals that we people eat. All the animals that people ate were herbivores. We didn’t eat carnivore animals. We didn’t eat birds that prey on other birds.

So they’ve been grinding all these up and they were feeding it back to the animals until it turned into a big business. It started in Germany and spread to the UK, and then there’s mad cow disease.

Next came hormones. Hormones are also used for industrial farming for all animals to be impregnated on the same day. Then came along the bovine growth hormone (BGH) to increase milk production. That, unfortunately or fortunately, landed on my desk in 1988, and I started to ask questions. I said, “What’s this? Why are you doing that? Have you done any studies?” Monsanto, of course, had not done any studies.

Meanwhile, they passed other hormones for beef production. These hormones are sex hormones -- like a large birth control pill -- that are implanted behind the ears of cattle and left there for life. People eat that beef. Some of those hormones are synthetic and have been proven to be complete carcinogens.”

Further, raising animals in this way -- away from their natural environments and diets -- actually increases their risk of passing on a dangerous bug to you. For instance, most cows are fed grains, when their natural diet is grass. Grain diets create a much higher level of acidity in the animal’s stomach, which E. coli bacteria need to survive.

Making Food Safer With the “Five Pillars of Food Safety”

Dr. Chopra has a very interesting point, and that is if you remove the dangerous aspects of food production, it automatically makes for a much safer food supply. In essence, if you return to natural farming practices, there is no need for “organic” regulations because all food would be safe and natural.

This is how it was in the past … all food was essentially organic as a matter of course.

As Dr. Chopra explains, five of the most offending substances in the food supply are antibiotics, hormones, GMOs, pesticides and slaughterhouse waste. He says:

“If we demand to take these five substances out of the food system automatically, all food becomes natural. We don’t have to fight for it as organic; we don’t have to label. We don’t have to do anything. I call them in my book, which is called Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower, the five pillars of food safety.

Three of those five are already banned in the European Union. The fourth, GMOs, have not yet been approved. With the fifth, Sweden has already banned some 80 pesticides. And so they’re on their way to do that.

Why would Canada and the United States not do the same thing?

Because otherwise, by loading all safety standards for food or even vaccines, we are going to import these things from China, India, Mexico, Brazil and we will be responsible.

Now we’re lowering the standards because the companies know that we don’t have the labor to produce food, drugs or anything here. It’s all going to come from those developing countries.

We have no standards -- like we know happened with melamine from China -- and we’re trying to set a standard on how much melamine can be safe. That’s ridiculous. Why should melamine be there in the first place or anything which is abnormal in the food system?

So we should be saying, “These are our standards: our food can be exported, bad food cannot be imported.”

And the whole world will begin to clean itself. Water, climate: it’s all food-dependent. If we clean up the food system, automatically everything cleans up.

Imagine, if the food and water are cleaned up, health improves!”

Tips for Safer Food, Now

The real solution to creating healthier, safer foods lies most certainly in returning farming to a small-scale basis.

This is going to take some time on the grand scale, but you can start right now by making it a point to only buy food from a source you know and trust. This will do your health a major favor and support the small family farms in your area.

You’ll receive nutritious food from a source that you can trust, and you’ll be supporting the honest work of a real family farm instead of an agri-business corporation.

While I realize that not everyone has access to small farmers, food from local sources is increasing in popularity and is becoming much easier to come by. For an excellent list of sustainable agricultural groups in your area, please see Promoting Sustainable Agriculture -- this page is filled with resources for high-quality produce, meats and other foods in your area.

<a href="http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/23/Looming-Before-Us-Corporate-Threats-to-Your-Food-Supply.aspx" target="_blank">Dr. Mercola</a>