Seed Libraries Outlawed In Pennsylvania !

[trichcycler]

 

 

Seed Libraries Outlawed in Pennsylvania: “Agri-Terrorism”

 

Jade Small | August 4, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Daisy Luther

 

It looks like Michigan is not the only state with a Department of Agriculture that is adamant about the best interests of their citizens. (see post below)

 

Residents in Pennsylvania can now breathe a little bit easier since an illegal enterprise has been shut down.

 

The Joseph T. Simpson Public Library in Mechanicsburg was participating in an activity that put the entire ecosystem of the state at risk.

 

In an astonishing act of hubris, they were running a seed library, right there amongst the books, in the very facility where small children go to have stories read to them.

 

I’m not making this up. A SEED LIBRARY.

 

If you aren’t sure what this is, it allows patrons to go in and get heirloom seeds, for free. The borrower plants the seeds, then at harvest time, saves seeds and returns them to the library.

 

The horror.

Apparently this violates the “Seed Act of 2004.” That’s right, there’s a Seed Act that makes this illegal.

 

Luckily for the Cumberland County Library System, the state D of A decided that SWAT was not necessary and instead sent a high-ranking official and a team of lawyers to shut down the seed library.

 

Jonelle Darr, the Executive Director of the CCLS, said that 60 residents had signed up to participate in the seed library. She said that continuing the project isn’t possible, due to the rigorous requirements of the D of A.

 

 

Darr explained that the Seed Act primarily focuses on the selling of seeds — which the library was not doing — but there is also a concern about seeds that may be mislabeled (purposefully or accidentally), the growth of invasive plant species, cross-pollination and poisonous plants.

 

 

 

 

 

The department told the library it could not have the seed library unless its staff tested each seed packet for germination and other information. Darr said that was clearly not something staff could handle. (source)

 

Gosh, this makes me wonder when they are going to crack down on all of those GMO fields, with their grave concerns about cross-pollination. Look out, Monsanto…oh, wait. This only applies to regular people growing vegetables. GMOs aren’t considered an invasive species. Sorry, I digress.

 

You see, no one is aware of the struggles of the Department of Agriculture. They only regulate you to help you. They, like the EPA (remember the woodstoves?) and the BLM (remember those poor turtles in the Bundy Ranch stand-off?) are intent saving the environment. The D of A is on a mission to crack down on seed libraries because even if they don’t know it, libraries and patrons could be participating in…are you sitting down? AGRI-TERRORISM.

 

AGRI-TERRORISM.

 

Yep, that is what some folks call gardening these days. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is taking this threat very seriously, and has vowed to crack down on seed libraries across the state.

 

Some of the Cumberland County Commissioners felt that this might not be the best use of time by the D of A, but one, Barbara Cross, has a higher understanding. Cross grasps the danger of gardeners run amok.

 

 

Some of the commissioners questioned whether that was the best use of the department’s time and money, but commissioner Barbara Cross noted that such seed libraries on a large scale could very well pose a danger.

 

 

“Agri-terrorism is a very, very real scenario,” she said. “Protecting and maintaining the food sources of America is an overwhelming challenge … so you’ve got agri-tourism on one side and agri-terrorism on the other.”

 

 

Cross said it made sense that the department would want to tackle the issue now while the efforts were small. (source)

 

Apparently, at this point, as long as the seeds do not pass through the hands of the library, area residents can get together and exchange seeds amongst themselves. So far, that’s still legal.

[trichcycler]

Michigan Dept of Agri Forces Farmer to Dump 248 Gallons of Organic Milk and Break 1200 Free Range Eggs

 

July 22, 2014

 

 

 

 

While Americans in the nearby city of Detroit face life in third world conditions, unable to even afford running water, the state of Michigan decided to direct its resources towards cracking down on a small food co-op in Standish for having the utter audacity to provide milk, butter, cream and eggs to people who bought shares in the organic dairy.

 

The Michigan Department of Agriculture must be so proud of their deeds, after they forced Joe and Brenda Golimbieski, the owners of Hill High Dairy and Jenny Samuelson, the owner of My Family Co-op, to dump out 248 gallons of milk, to break 100 dozen eggs, and to destroy an undisclosed amount of fresh cream, butter and cheese.

 

According to a post on the Hill High Dairy page on Facebook, the agents from the MDA stood over the family, watching as the food was destroyed.

 

 

100 dozen eggs… Each egg had to be broken. 248 gallons dumped in a sprayer that had to be witnessed by MDA being dumped and sprayed on the field.

 

.

 

 

According to the owners of the dairy, the MDA threatened to arrest the co-op owner, Jenny Samuelson, for “selling food without a license.” However, the farm is a co-op, where people must buy shares. The MDA, however, said that the co-op contracts were invalid, and therefore, instead of being shared, the food was being sold. 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. (Read the rest of Mr. Gumpert’s excellent essay on the subject)

 

The state of Michigan appears in the news again and again for infringing upon the liberty of its residents to choose what they wish to consume. Recently, they took away the “right to farm” from ordinary people, rescinding a law that had been on the books for years. Before that, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources destroyed a farmer’s heritage pigs, calling them an “invasive species.”

 

This horrible visual of a farmer destroying fresh food while an “agent” stands over him to make certain that it’s inedible will stick with me. It’s like a scene from a movie, where the vanquishing enemy goes “scorched earth” on the denizens of the area they have conquered, ruining their crops, stealing their food stores, and most of all, making certain that they know they’ve been defeated.

 

Except it’s not a movie. It’s life in America. The barbarians are members of the government, and it is our own farms that are under siege

[Herb Cannabis]

I don't know if I should feel good about this because the "govm't" is picking on someone other than MMJ patients/caregivers and that we are not alone in a struggle or if I should feel shame and outrage for the way the government is attacking us, it's the latter.

 

The author is spot on with the notion that the D of A works for the corporate farms, these are the people who are buying up our government.  It would be nice if we could just be a nation of the people, by the people and for the people.  No more corporate monies financing a political campaign of any kind, corporations are NOT people in any stretch of the immagination unless you are a SCOTUS judge. 

 

I know, it is just crazy thinking.  Thank you for the post grassmatch, now I'm going to have to medicate, I'm feeling nauseated.

[Wild Bill]

The corporations who own and operate the government of the United States want nothing less than complete control over every aspect of your life. You will buy their products, work for their companies and do only what makes money for them. If you don't go along they send armed thugs to your house.

 

Soon you'll be buying their standardized GMO cannabis and anything you might grow will be illegal, just like those other dangerous homegrown products, eggs and milk.

[trichcycler]

I don't know if I should feel good about this because the "govm't" is picking on someone other than MMJ patients/caregivers and that we are not alone in a struggle or if I should feel shame and outrage for the way the government is attacking us, it's the latter.

 

The author is spot on with the notion that the D of A works for the corporate farms, these are the people who are buying up our government.  It would be nice if we could just be a nation of the people, by the people and for the people.  No more corporate monies financing a political campaign of any kind, corporations are NOT people in any stretch of the immagination unless you are a SCOTUS judge. 

 

I know, it is just crazy thinking.  Thank you for the post grassmatch, now I'm going to have to medicate, I'm feeling nauseated.

 

Your welcome. I think if we're not nauseated when reading of our govern mental actions, then we must be sleeping. None of this will ever end until WE end it. Like wars will not end until people refuse to fight in them.

[knucklehead bob]

The corporations who own and operate the government of the United States want nothing less than complete control over every aspect of your life. You will buy their products, work for their companies and do only what makes money for them. If you don't go along they send armed thugs to your house.

 

Soon you'll be buying their standardized GMO cannabis and anything you might grow will be illegal, just like those other dangerous homegrown products, eggs and milk.

 

The Limited Liability Corporations of America are a for profit entity ! ! ! 

 

[solabeirtan]

This being the '69th' Anniversary of that fateful moment of Aug 6, 1945 (69 years ago today) when FDRs VP succedded him upon his fateful demise. Then President for a total of 116 days, less than 4 months, he unleashed upon the world a plague of epic proportions. Not to mention absconding from academia their research on Nuclear Energy and Militarizing it.

Oh, and another tie in to Agri_Culture, see: Henry Wallace who lost the primary election to H S(tupid donkey) Truman. 

 

 

They dropped the bomb in '45 to end the world war, 
No-one had ever seen such a terrible sight before, 
The world looked on with eyes wide to see where it might lead, 
The politics of power, they passed around to see, 
It was a time to remember, we never can forget, 
They were playin' Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette. 
They arose like the saviours of our modern human race, 
With radiation haloes, that hung about their face, 
With the key to the sure-cure, the treatment of our ills, 
A hot-shot of cobalt, and a pocket-full of pills, 
Speaking always of the enemy, who lurked across the sea, 
While they crept in among us like a carrier disease. 
Deep down inside the bunkers of the concrete and the lead, 
Einstein's disciples working steadily ahead, 
Making heavy metal power-plants to fire the city lights, 
All you can hear in the underground is the humming through the night, 
And the walls of tight security, circle all around, 
Where they spill out their poison and bury it in the ground. 
Holed up in the harbours hidden secretly away, 
War-heads and submarines await to make their play, 
The military masterminds improve on their design, 
The soldiers get all doped up and stumble through the lines, 
While the spills into the rivers get carried out by the tide, 
They call this security but we're not satisfied. 
Our statesmen and leaders and politicians pay, 
Quick to heed the hand that feeds, they're careful what they say, 
They call out experts to assure us, to wave their magic wands, 
This is the power of the future, And the future marches on, 
And they call in their favours, all their political gains, 
While the spills fill the rivers and settle in the plains. 
They've caused the death of millions, that's their stock and trade, 
They will be afflicted by the fallout that they've made, 
They've sealed their own inevitable doom, it must surely come, 
Not even the moons of Jupiter will be far enough away to run, 
When this earth that they've assaulted, begins to turn around, 
And the unavoidable gravity, sucks them to the ground. 
I know the minds behind them, they are riddled full of holes, 
Not to be trusted with their hands at the controls, 
Their eyesight it is twisted by the glory of their careers, 
The heaped praise and flattery is music to their ears, 
To listen to them talk about how it hasn't happened, 
Yet's like playing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette.

[t-pain]

maybe it should have been a seed library 'for novelty purposes only'....