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Friday, January 28, 2011

California Raw Food Buyers Club Illegally Raided by Government

(NaturalNews) Rawsome Foods, part of The Right to Choose Healthy Foods buyers` club association in Venice, California, was raided by several agencies. Federal officers, representatives of the State of California, Los Angeles County Health officials and Los Angeles police officers arrived with guns drawn. Although the volunteer workers at the food club had committed no crime, the government agents forced them to remain on the property for the entire 5 hours while they seized 17 huge coolers of high quality food; their warrant, however, explicitly stated that they could only take sample vials of food. The agents threatened and coerced club members who wanted to film the trespass and confiscation of property. The authorities stole thousands of dollars of the club members` raw milk and honey.

The club was found to be in violation of a misdemeanor (minor accounts of law), Illegal Food Facility (CAL Code 114381) and the county law of business without a public health license (Title 8 LA County Code 8.04.932), but the warrant was issued on claims of felony violations. Even though Rawesome is operating illegally, these alleged infractions of the law come with extremely minor penalties. In other words, the violations would be something on the level of forgetting to pay your car registration. So why didn`t the government simply write a letter or pay a non-threatening visit asking the food club to produce a license?

The Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF) is a not-for-profit trust association formed to protect individuals` rights to obtain and consume healthy food. The club members are well-educated and intelligent, who daily choose to reject standard toxic governmental food restrictions, preparations and packaging for natural God-given healthy food. RTCHF contracts with farmers to lease their animals and/or fields and owns the produce of those animals and fields. Therefore, all members of all clubs own the produce, not the farmer. The farmer does not sell people anything but gets paid for his services to cultivate, grow, harvest, and board and care for animals, as well as collect, package and ship the produce owned by club members.

In the USA and Canada, we have the right to ownership. As it states in statutes of law, government agencies, including the USDA, have jurisdiction over commerce. Commerce is the open exchange of goods to the public. Since RTCHF and its clubs are private closed-to-the-public associations, the government has no jurisdiction. This government raid is equivalent to a government agent entering your private home and telling you what foods you can have in your home.

In order to obtain the warrant for the food club raid, government agents had to lie about the mentioned laws and claim that operating a business without a license is a felony, even when it is a misdemeanor.

As more and more people realize the health benefits of raw milk, they are turning away from factory farmed milk. We don`t want animals that are treated in inhumane ways, kept alive on antibiotics, and forced to eat genetically modified soy and corn to be providing our milk, cheese, and butter. Yet here the government is acting to protect big dairy interests and stamp out the growing small farm suppliers.

Private buying clubs like RTCHF acquire food directly from farmers, insuring that small farms can make a living producing humanely cared for dairy foods, and insuring consumers get the healthy food we deserve. In these actions, the Federal, State and even local authorities have violated our sovereignty, our boundaries, and our personal freedom.