Raw Milk on Trial Again – Vancouver BC
September 10th, 2010 | Food Security, Our Food, BC, Canada, cowshare, Dairy, health, herdshare, milk, raw milk, realmilk
After getting typhoid in Burma/Myanmar in 2006 we lived in the Catskills in New York where we were able to get raw goats milk right from the farm. My digestive system had been so damaged by the typhoid and a wicked New Zealand mold and I really needed the fresh raw milk to help to heal.
Any time I have to eat food from industrial dairies and factory farms, my digestive health gets worse resultin in me getting severe migraines with cyclical vomiting every ten days or so.
The following is an article is reposted from the website The Bovine.
Raw Milk in B.C. Court September 14th
Prosecution of Farmer for Contempt of Court
Four months after getting a Supreme Court Order that I “cease and desist packaging and distributing raw milk for human consumption” officials from Fraser Health Authority visited our farm to obtain evidence with which to charge me for breaching it. The trial for civil contempt of court is set for 10 am September 14th 2010 at the Law Courts in New Westminster BC (please join us if you can). Guy McDannold of Staples McDannold Stewart will prosecute. File 124618 New West. Registry.
The charge arises from the B.C. Public Health Act Transition Regulation section 7, which is officialdom’s attempt to outlaw sale of raw milk intended for human consumption on the basis that it’s hazardous to the Public Health. We find it suspicious this regulation took effect 2 years after I started caring for other people’s cows, i.e. their PRIVATE property. Obviously, there’s no good reasons other than to abuse the court process to shut down our private cowshare.
Part of Fraser Health’s strategy was trying to convince the public that someone became ill from drinking milk from our dairy, even though there it didn’t happen. Fraser Health stooped so low as to tamper with the milk they sampled so the fabricated results could be put out and mis-lead the public into thinking our milk was bad. Ironically, even after they’d been instructed by Nick Losito, head of Vancouver Coastal Health, how to take a proper sample, they disregarded the protocol spelled-out in the Milk Industry Act — why?
On July 9 2010 Health Inspectors George Rice and Emily McGuire entered the property, walking past several sharemembers working on our farm, and past the ‘Private Property – No Trespassing’ sign. They entered in order to determine if a health hazard was happening but without the requisite warrant to search. They took a picture of a jar of milk labelled ‘Not for Human Consumption’ and NOT FOR SALE, as well as a picture of a notice on the fridge outlining to all members of the cowshare why their property = our milk = is not for human consumption.
Inspector Rice asked if I was aware of the order, and I told him that I was not only aware of it, but obeyed it in its entirety. I will be representing myself in the trial and will be supported by many people outside the Court.
Alice Jongerden
Please join us at the court on Tuesday morning if you are in Vancouver. I am going to be there with a sign of some sort. I will surely be very annoyed if my raw milk gets taken from me after having to wait so long to get it again. Even Mishka, our cat loves the raw milk. If we don’t have it for her in the morning, she gets annoyed and scratches at our toes.
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[…] B.C. cowshare member tells her story Jump to Comments Home on the Range cowshare member is facing the possibility of life without raw milk when Alice Jongerden goes to court in Vancouver Tuesday September 14th — from her Hella D blog: […]