Posts Tagged Fresh Milk

FDA Raids Amish Farmer Dan Allgyer

FDA Raids Amish Farmer Dan Allgyer
Please take action (see ACTION at end of notice)

Kinzers, PA-At 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday April 20, Amish farmer Dan Allgyer went outside to begin milking his small herd of dairy cows.  On the normally quiet Kinzer Road in front of his farm, just a few miles from the Nickel Mines Amish massacre of 2006, several unfamiliar vehicles drove slowly past.  Two months prior, on February 4, FDA agents had trespassed on Allgyer’s farm, claiming to be conducting an “investigation.”  Allgyer had suspected they would be back at some point, because many other small dairy farms around the country have been similarly treated by the FDA. Following is Dan’s account of Tuesday morning’s events:

I became aware of the cars as soon as I walked out on the sidewalk as part of my morning routine around 4:30 a.m. and immediately said to myself something is going on, there is too much traffic on Kinzer Road.  I was watching and noticed three cars were cruising down Kinzer Road right behind each other, and immediately thought, hey, that looks like trouble. I watched and pretty soon one car came back and parked on my neighbor’s farm, on private property, just as the FDA agents had when they came on my property in February; it was exactly the same place.

A couple minutes later, the other two cars pulled up and joined the first on my neighbor’s property, where the occupants appeared to be in conference with one another. Shortly after that, they turned their headlights on and drove in my lane – this would have been at about 5:00.

I stood back in the dark barn to see what they were going to do. They drove past my two Private Property signs, up to where my coolers were, with their headlights shining right on them. They all got out of their vehicles – five men all together – with big bright flashlights they were shining all around. My wife and family were still asleep. When they couldn’t find anybody, they prepared to knock on the door of my darkened house. Just before they got to the house I stepped out of the barn and hollered at them, then they came up to me and introduced themselves. Two were from the FDA, agent Joshua C. Schafer who had been there in February and another. They showed me identification, but I was too flustered to ask for their cards. I remember being told that two were deputy U.S. Marshals and one a state trooper. They started asking me questions right away.  They handed me a paper and I didn’t realize what it was. Agent Joshua C. Schafer told me they were there to do a “routine inspection.” At 5:00 in the morning, I wondered to myself? “Do you have a warrant?” I asked, and one of them, a marshal or the state policeman, said, “You’ve got in your hand buddy.” I asked, “What is the warrant about?” Schafer responded, “We have credible evidence that you are involved in interstate commerce.”

They wanted me to answer some questions, my name, middle initial, last name, wanted to know how many cows we have on the farm. I answered those questions and some more. Finally, I got over my initial shock and said I would not be answering any more questions. They said O.K., we’ll get on with the “inspection.”

I went to go talk to my wife. As I walked away, they held a quick excited conversation and I heard one of them say, “I’ll take care of him.” At that point, apparently, they had designated one of the marshals to stick close to me and dog my footsteps. He followed me as I walked toward the house. I went in the house quickly and told my wife a few words to let her know the situation, then immediately came back out of the house before the marshal had time to follow me in. When I came back out, they were inspecting all the coolers sitting out. They spent about a half hour digging through the packed coolers filled with milk and other food – all private property – taking pictures.

At one point during the cooler inspection the state trooper said to me, “You have a nice farm.” I responded, “We’re trying to be sustainable, but they don’t want to let us.”

While they inspected the coolers, I read the warrant. Among other things it said that any search was to be conducted “at reasonable times during ordinary business hours.” When I exclaimed, “Ordinary business hours!” and pointed this out to the marshal who was dogging me, he said, “Ordinary business hours for agriculture start at 5:00 a.m.” I challenged him that the warrant does not say agriculture hours, it said ordinary hours. He replied, “That’s what the government told us.”

Then they started looking around, as though in search of something in particular. They went up to one door that had a clear No Trespassing sign on it, specifically including government agents, and they did not go in the room, though they shone their flashlights around in it. Then they asked me, “What is on the other side of the door in that [same] room?” Agent Joshua Schafer asked this. I looked him in the eye and did not answer. When they saw I was not going to answer, the other FDA agent said, “Okay, come on,” to agent Schafer, and they went into the room and through the closed door on the opposite side. I had another one of those signs on my walk-in cooler adjacent to my freezer, so they went through that door also. They spent probably another half hour rooting around, like a couple of pigs, in the freezer and cooler area and took many pictures.

When they came out, they asked me where I keep my containers and jugs for milk, and I refused to tell them. I figured they could look for themselves. Then they were walking all over the farm, checking everything out, everything except the house. Agent Joshua Schafer even opened my dumpster and inspected inside it, as though he thought I was hiding something in it. At that point I went and started milking my cows – it was way past milking time.

When I was just about done milking, Schafer and the other agent came in the barn and wanted me to answer some more questions. I told them I would not. The second agent said, “Are you gong to deliver those coolers to Bethesda and Bowie Maryland?” I just looked at him. Then Schafer made a gesture and said, “The stickers with those towns names are on the coolers,” as through to say, you might as well tell me.

I replied, “I told you I won’t answer any questions.” After that they said, “We are done for today. You’ll be hearing back from headquarters.”

Then they got in their car and left. The state trooper and the marshals had left already.

They came in the dark, shining bright flashlights while my family was asleep, keeping me from milking my cows, from my family, from breakfast with my family and from our morning devotions, and alarming my children enough so that they first question they asked my wife was, “Is Daddy going to jail?”

THE NEXT MORNING Allgyer received an overnight, extremely urgent Letter of Warning from the FDA stating that “Failure to make prompt corrections could result in regulatory action without further notice. Possible actions include seizure and/or injunction.”

ACTION: Please call and write the number and address below. Express yourself. Tell them that you support Dan Allgyer. If you drink fresh, unpastuerized milk tell them that. Tell them that more people every day are drinking fresh milk and this is going to increase. It’s not going to stop no matter how many farmers they persecute. Tell them the government has no place between individuals and the farmers from whom they get their food.

Philadelphia District Office
Serves Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Food and Drug Administration
U.S. Customhouse
Second and Chestnut Streets, Room 900
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 597-4390 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (Eastern time)

Yours for real food freedom,
Deborah Stockton, Executive Director
National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NICFA)
nicfa@earthlink.net
http://www.nicfa.com

Our purpose is to promote and preserve unregulated direct farmer-to-consumer trade
that fosters availability of locally grown or home-produced food products.
NICFA opposes any government funded or managed National Animal Identification System.

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Even the Amish people and farms are impacted by our Orwellian government

Originally Published on March 11th, 2008

Libertarians just want to be left alone to do their own thing. The Amish just want to be left alone to do likewise. Our government was initially designed so we could all be left alone and just do our own thing. Now what we have is government by the elite which is not about to leave us alone to do our own thing. Control is the operant word.

From nolanchart.com by Jake Morphonios entitled “Ron Paul’s Meeting with Rogue Farmers“:

AmishI spent Saturday morning at the local farmer’s market talking with some folks from our Amish community. One particular Amish farm family provides my family with homemade butter, cheese and milk. It is against the law in most states for a farmer to sell farm-fresh raw milk items without first having met extensive FDA guidelines. Because of the tyranny of Big Brother, we are compelled to never refer to these items by name. To protect ourselves from potential fines or incarceration for the dastardly act of selling and buying non-FDA approved milk, we make sure to speak in hushed whispers and use code words for the “product”. My Amish friends make sure to deliver the product to me in large mason jars with the words “FOR PET USE ONLY” written on top. Rather than giving my payment directly to them, I put my cash in an unguarded cigar box. The whole scene plays out like an illegal drug deal on a shadowy street corner. Welcome to America.

After our last nefarious exchange on Saturday morning, we began discussing the government’s invasive, Orwellian attacks on family farmers and how honest citizens have been made to fear the brutality of the empire. We talked about the new laws requiring farmers to digitally tag all livestock and report any transport of their animals off their farms to the federal government. We discussed RFID chips and the future of the government implanting tracking devices in humans.

As we talked about the truth of global schemes, the Federal Reserve and Alex Jones type “conspiracy theories”, I looked at my Amish friends in wonderment. They had no running water or electricity in their homes, they dressed in the most simple, unembellished garb that could be assembled, they eschewed the ways of the modern world and sought to remain separate and apart from it – yet here they stood, expressing deep regret that the federal government had found its way into the heart of their community and was tearing it apart.

To my surprise, my long-bearded friend pulled out some photos that had been given to him earlier in the week. He and his family (which includes his wife and ten children), along with other concerned family farmers, had been to Washington DC and cooked lunch for Ron Paul with their “illegal” food products (a shining example of civil disobedience) and shared their concerns about the invasion of the federal government into their lives. The pictures were beautiful: Ron Paul standing with my friend and members of his family.

Seeing the extent to which the most honest, innocent and harmless members of our society were being driven to plead for government to leave them alone, I felt ashamed – ashamed of my government and ashamed of myself for not having done more to protect the erosion of American liberty.

Now, more than ever, the Ron Paul Revolution must roll forward in force. It doesn’t matter if Ron Paul can win the White House or not. What does matter is that we don’t give up the fight against tyranny. The global elite have manipulated our lives for a century. Their schemes to destroy our currency, eliminate civil liberties, enslave us and our children, and spill our blood in the process are all clear and present dangers which must be resisted to our last ounce of strength. We must resist, or we must inevitably perish.

For my Amish friends, for my family, and for my country I commit myself to the noble cause of freedom. Now is not the time to vacillate or shrink from duty. Now is the time to rise and fight.

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The image used in this post was obtained from HERE and is basically unaltered. This article, excluding the material cited or the material which is included herein but written by other authors or material covered by other copyrights, is copyright © 2008, by Gary Shumway. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.redpills.org is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved.
Gary Shumway is the author of Winging Through America and SCUBA Scoop.

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