Page 89 - Fall2010

CALIFORNIA
In what has been a year of increased raids and enforcement actions against raw milk producers and distributors around
the country, no action has been bigger nor received more attention than the raid on the Rawesome Food Club (Rawe-
some) in Venice. On June 30 federal, state and Los Angeles County officials executed a criminal search warrant against
Rawesome, a private food buying club whose store was not open to members of the general public. The officials were
accompanied by police who entered the store with guns drawn; this was captured on video and later viewed by thou-
sands on the internet.
According to Aajonus Vonderplanitz, president of Rawesome, the officials seized seventeen coolers of food, mostly raw
dairy products and honey—even though the search warrant only called for the officials to take food samples. The county
health department issued a notice that the store was now closed. Among the government agencies represented at the
raid were the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the California Department of
Food and Agriculture (CDFA), and the Los Angeles City District Attorney’s office.

Rawesome has many affiliated private food buying clubs around the country. Vonderplanitz has long stood up to any
federal, state or local government agency harassment of club members and the farmers providing them food. He stated
that the raid on the Venice store was most likely due to his recent actions to protect dairies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania
and Illinois that had been raided by state and federal agencies.

On the day Rawesome was raided, state and county government officials also executed a criminal search warrant
against Santa Paula farmer Sharon Palmer; it marked the third time a criminal search warrant had been executed against
Palmer in the past year and a half. Her suspected crime was boarding goats owned by Rawesome and providing raw
milk and raw milk products to its members. Shortly after the raid, Rawesome and Palmer mutually agreed to terminate
the boarding contract.

On July 1, an attorney for Rawesome along with store manager, James Stewart, appeared at a Los Angeles County ad-
ministrative hearing to address a violation cited against the club for operating their store without a permit. The attorney
challenged the jurisdiction of the county over the store; the county officials ignored the challenge and instead presented
statements admitting violations for Stewart and the attorney to sign. Both refused, with the attorney informing the of-
ficials that the store would be open to its members. On July 3, Rawesome reopened without incident.

The raid on Rawesome was widely criticized for its police state tactics; possibly for this reason none of the agencies
participating in the raid followed up with any further action against the buying club. Instead, the Los Angeles Depart-
ment of Building and Safety was the next to go after Rawesome, issuing a closure notice to the store on August 18 for
alleged building code violations. Rawesome is working with a building and safety engineer to establish that the property
did not violate building or zoning standards.

The fallout from the raid extended beyond California; some of the raw cheese confiscated during the raid was manufac-
tured by a farmstead cheese operation, Morningland Dairy of Mountain View, Missouri. When a sample of the dairy’s
cheese taken by CDFA tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, the Missouri State Milk Board and FDA pressured
the dairy to recall over 60,000 pounds of cheese. There had been no reports of anyone being ill from consuming the
Morningland Dairy cheese.

Vonderplanitz stated his intent to sue the government agencies and officials involved in the raid. In his words, “We have
a David and Goliath situation here. We must produce the funds to produce this raid in judicial and civil courts now
before we do not have another opportunity.”

IDAHO
House Bill 675 was signed into law on April 11. The new law requires any dairy farmer operating herdshare programs
to obtain a permit if that farmer has more than seven cows, fifteen sheep or fifteen goats in the herd. Under the new
law, the owner of a share may obtain raw milk and raw milk products if there is a written contract between the owner
and the farmer that provides written evidence of a bona fide ownership in the herd; the contract must also include
the boarding terms for the herd, a provision that the owner is entitled to receive a share of the milk or milk products
from the herd, and a notification that the milk or milk products are raw and not pasteurized. Any dairy farm operating

FALL 2010 Wise Traditions 89