The Michigan Dept. of Agriculture last year forced Joe and Brenda Golimbieski, the owners of Hill High Dairy and Jenny Samuelson, the owner of My Family Co-op, to dump 248 gallons of organic milk and destroy 100 dozen eggs along with fresh cream, butter and cheese after accusing them of “selling food without a license.”
Their farm is a co-op, however, where people must buy shares to obtain food. The MDA stated that their contracts were invalid so the food wasn’t ‘shared’, but ‘sold’.
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more proof the states are taking Obamas lead in destroying what MADE this country great.. Small Business…
and thousands of people go hungry , way to go congress
This is not new. /the government took over the farms a long time ago. I think all the surplus should help feed the homeless and poor.
Blue State !!!!!
Hold it folks .Who is going to pay to give food away ?
The Michigan Dept. of Agriculture earlier this year forced Joe and Brenda Golimbieski, the owners of Hill High Dairy and Jenny Samuelson, the owner of My Family Co-op, to dump 248 gallons of organic milk and destroy 100 dozen eggs along with fresh cream, butter and cheese after accusing them of “selling food without a license.” America as we used to know her is gone. This is nothing but big corporate agriculture beating up on actual farmers in order to squeeze out the ‘competition’. Because our government is completely sold out on a federal and local level the corporate giants simply use politicians like their own private hit men that create laws that have nothing to do with public interest, but serve to function more like mafioso.
The is fascism, the merger of corporate and state powers.
There were all kinds of other ways for the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to have handled any problems they saw with My Family Co-Op. They could have warned Jenny Samuelson, the co-op’s owner that she was possibly violating a 2013 policy statement on herdshares. They could have given her a citation, listed the charges against her, held a hearing where she and the owners of the food could have attempted to answer the charges, and then levied a fine if she was found to be in violation. (Actually, the fine and such can still happen, since the seizure order placed on the food last week carries possible penalties, at the MDARD’s discretion.)
But those kinds of civilized steps would have forced the state to be businesslike and law-abiding. Collective punishment isn’t about being businesslike and law-abiding. It isn’t about presenting charges and letting the accused respond. It is about brute force and complete control. It is about sending a message about who is in charge, and what happens if you cut into corporate profits.
The big problem with collective punishment is that, while it may deal with the immediate problem at hand (an unwanted competitor), longer term it breeds alienation among the people who are being penalized and humiliated. I naively thought that possibly such actions were being curtailed or eliminated as officials got the message that it is dangerous to mess with such fundamental rights as the right to obtain food from farm animals you have ownership of.
We can expect more such examples of collective punishment. Dean Foods and its henchmen are losing big bucks in the precipitous decline of pasteurized milk sales. (Dean Foods is understood to control as much as 90% of the milk market in Michigan.) Like the Mafia, oligarchs don’t take well to losing money. Their modus operandi is control and bullying, so they don’t take the customary business steps of trying to find ways to compete. No, they pay big money to the politicians who control the hacks at places like the MDARD, and they demand action. Yesterday, they got it.
As I mentioned previously, but feel it worth mentioning again, club’s need to not allow things to get to this point. You just can’t get black balled by bullies. The state was wrong, someone should have led members to get their milk and private property day it happened. We need to find and train people to engage in winsome, won’t back down, we will have our rights actions so that they and their supporters are ready when it happens.
We need more William Wallace and William Wilburforce, and less Barney Rubble and Britney Spears…
Because co-op members had paid for their shares, technically the MDA stole food that belonged not just to the Golimbieski family, but to every single member of that co-op.
One member wrote angrily:
This is such a shame! I paid for these products and this is what happened!!!! They are all criminals!!! Government stealing all our food! I paid just so that Jenny and the farmers didn’t have to carry the burden all on their own!!!! A crying shame. Shame on Michigans Department of Agriculture! Criminals everyone on u!!!!
Looking at the website and Facebook page, all I see are happy, well-treated animals, actually roaming around in fields. How is it that Michigan approves of the horrific conditions in its state’s factory farms, where animals are tortured, drugged, and crammed into cages for the entirety of their miserable lives, but raising animals humanely and naturally is considered “dangerous”?
What is wrong with the world when REAL farming is treated like a crime and fresh food is treated like the crystal meth?
I’ll tell you what’s wrong – big corporations do not want us to have options. They want a monopoly and they are working hard to destroy our other choices. Big Agri clearly has many good friends in the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Clearly the “Department of Agriculture” really means the “Department of Big Agri”. They aren’t there to support small farmers or people who wish to be self-sufficient. They are there to lock down the market for corporate farms. (Like Dean Foods, who also owns Horizon Organics – read more about the way this company does business – they own up to 90% of the corporate milk business in the state, according to an article on The Complete Patient )
David Gumpert, a raw milk advocate and owner of the site The Complete Patient wrote:
The government-sponsored dump of nearly $5,000 of milk, eggs, butter, and cream from Michigan’s My Family Co-Op yesterday carried a very clear and powerful political message to all Americans: We control your food and we don’t like you buying your food outside the corporate food system. Every now and then, we are going to remind you of what bad children you are being by taking your food and throwing it in the garbage. In fact, we are going to do more than remind you, we are going to completely humiliate you by preventing you from even feeding it to farm animals and instead forcing it to be disposed of in a landfill or dumpster…
…If you think I am exaggerating the intent of what is going on here, ask yourself this question: When was the last time you saw government agents seize and condemn food from a place like Foster Farms or Taco Bell or Del Monte or Kellogg’s or Trade Joe’s when their food has been found to contain pathogens, or made people sick? There’s been not even a suggestion that food at My Family Co-Op contained pathogens or made anyone sick
Their farm is a co-op, however, where people must buy shares to obtain food. The MDA stated that their contracts were invalid so the food wasn’t ‘shared’, but ‘sold’.
sickening, such a waste!!!!
Organizations who serve meals to the poor need proof of shall we say poordom ? People with money like free meals too. Count on it they will be first in line if not turned away .Remember the Greed Syndrome ?
Something sinister going on in Michigan with the farmers products, too many farmers having to dump their products. What the hell is happening in this country?
It should be a sin to do this, it is a waste of good food that could benefit the poor or something. What are those guys thinking with children in America going hungry?