Michigan Govt Arrests Milk Farmer, Trashes $7,000 in Food for Legal Cowshare

You would think that allowing people to board and milk cows on your property should be a fairly safe activity. After all, this has been practiced for millennia. In the state of Michigan this is not the case, and engaging in that activity can result in some significant expenses in terms of lost or damaged merchandise and legal fees — all at the hands of government authorities.

It’s not just organic, raw milk that gets Michigan health authorities upset. When some kids got sick after visiting a farm, the Michigan Department of Agriculture descended on a farm confiscating cookies and muffins even though there was no evidence to link the kids’ visit to the farm with their illnesses. And it’s not just in Michigan. An organic farm in Texas was raided by a SWAT team no less, and had its blueberries confiscated.

Continuing on this issue of the production and distribution of raw milk on a small farm:

“I knew I wanted to convert our conventional dairy to a cowshare,” Kris offered. “It was in 2005 when the Michigan State Police ran a sting operation against a cowshare farmer, arresting him and ruining $7,000 of food by having it abandoned on the side of the road. It was a legal cowshare operation.”
Kris and her husband own a dairy farm just outside of Cohoctah, Michigan. Kris farms by herself; her husband has a full-time job. She works harder than anyone you may likely know, and she’s feisty.

“I am the only one working the farm now,” she laughs, “but the cows make fantastic employees. They show up to work every single day.”

From Conventional Dairy to Cowshare

Kris’ conventional operation ran through the “Association,” the dairy monopoly that requires all milk created on premises be turned over to them.  The farmer’s family may consume it, but no milk may be sold apart from the association or the farmer is kicked out.

Kris decided she had enough of this coercion [by her local farmers’ association] in 2007 and converted her operation to a legal cowshare.  Cowshare means that other people own or lease cows and pay a boarding fee.  Kris maintains the animals’ care and uses her high tech milking equipment (the same used for the conventional operation).  Every family is assigned a day to collect their milk.

On the Unger’s farm, the 297 families often drive over an hour to get there.  They fill their own containers from the stainless steel holding tank, which keeps the milk at the perfect 34 degree temperature.  Although it is legal in Michigan to do delivery, Kris simply doesn’t have the time or the desire. “People need to have a connection to the farm and to their own animals,” she asserted.

So how could there be a problem with this?

For her, the trouble started when a dad, son, and an overnight friend got sick.

The mom made tacos “so they wouldn’t get food poisoning” at the Detroit Tigers game that evening.  The boys and Dad loaded up on food at home, and on all the goodies at the game (in spite of Mom’s concerns).  The dad and son didn’t feel well for a few days, but the overnight friend became very ill.  His first hospitalization was for e-coli, the second for complications from the previous hospitalization.  When the health board called, the family answered the raw milk question honestly, a question that always appears at the top of the list on the Health Department’s questionnaire.  No one remembered the guest having any raw milk.

Not one member of 296 other families became ill.  The only commonality to the sick boy (likely without the milk) and the father/son (likely with milk) is that those three attended a ballgame together.  Remember, Mom also ate tacos and did not get sick.

The so-called Health Department used some very unhealthy techniques in conducting its raid of Kris’ farm.

The inspector’s conducted their “collection” without hairnets or gloves, leaving machinery valves open as the security cameras in the barn later revealed.  The coup de grace that this was a “professional investigation” was when one inspector unprepared to vault himself to the bulk tank’s lid, opted to stand on Kris’s coffee table (until her objection) and insert his upper body (without gloves or hairnet) into a food storage vat.   An inspector from the Department of Agriculture needed to “check the cows”, but wouldn’t get closer than 20 feet away, never taking a manure sample.  Brilliantly, he declared, “They look okay.”

A lot of food wholly unconnected to E.coli (or to the “okay” cows) was disposed.  This food is legally produced and privately owned. All in all the toll was $360 of honey destroyed, 2 dozen eggs confiscated, sauerkraut dumped, $610 of butchered chicken absconded, and (in an effort to protect the general public) cookies and apple muffins were properly dealt with (read: “stolen) to uphold the law.

What we have here is simple government overreach. Such agencies go beyond their authority when leadership decides on its own that it opposed to certain practices that, while legal, they wish to stamp out. They then use their sizable budgets to engage in “investigations” that are really just harassment activities to run these people out of business. Typically they confiscate merchandise and equipment and cause the owners to suffer significant legal fees.

Faced with such extraordinary expenses, small operations such as Kris’ are often forced to close down without ever being charged with doing anything wrong. Instead, public outcry should demand the removal of such authorities, that the victims of their overreach be made whole, and that the agencies in question be revamped to prevent such outrages in the future.

The Pending Legal Battle

Kris continues to operate the farm but there are a lot of unknowns in her future.  She does have legal assistance from Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Kris is being sued for the cost of the food disposal.  She has pending court hearings and does not know what the outcome will be for her or for the 297 families that depend upon the milk from their own cows.

This much she does know, “We have a community here, a wonderful community.  The government could never understand that.”

Source: Pantry Paratus