Illegal Raw Milk

[2007]

[Attendee]

But he was just asking how many states can have the raw milk.

[Aajonus]

Well, there's only 15 states that actually outlawed outright. Most of the states where you can get it it's not available in stores, except in Connecticut and California. Otherwise, you can buy it at the farm.

So, that's the only way you can get it is buy it at the farm or have somebody who gets it from the farmer and distributes it. Now, that's what I created all over the United States is like we have the Rawsome club here. We've got branches of the Rawsome all over, just spelled differently. This Rawesome has an E after the R A W E S O M E, the other Rawsome clubs throughout the United States or R A W S O M E.

And what I do is we lease the herds or chickens or with flocks, whatever it is, the club leases the herd or flocks, whatever it is for milk or meat, the co-op the awesome club leases it so that they own the herd. They own all the product. So, the farmer works, for us by taking care of the cows, feeding the cows, housing them and, milking, bottling the milk and delivering it to wherever we need to deliver it or pick it up from them.

So, we pay them per bottle or per pound, whatever it is, whether it's meat or eggs or, dairy. We pay them per bottle for handling all that. So, that is a surefire way to- the Pennsylvania tried to- was the first one with the FDA who tried to shoot that down in court, and I wrote the legal documents for it. 67 page one and a 19 page one because they were going into court on the same day, these two farmers. So, I had my milk report attached, so that took up 53 pages of the 72 pages, and the rest was a declaration that we are not commercial. The FDA, the Health Department has jurisdiction over commercial dairy only. This is not commercial. This is private enterprise.

This club's members owned the dairy, they're not buying it. So, we can ship it across any state line we want, we can do anything with it., we don't have to label our milk. We put it on the contracts, each member has to sign a contract that says we want bacteria like E coli, salmonella, trichinosis, if you signed the Rawsome club, you've read what I wrote.

So, it completely takes you out of any jurisdiction that they can have. LA county came after Rawsome here to close them down, James and everybody just freaked out because they were intimidating. So, I called the health department and I said, "Listen, your guy trespassed. It says, no trespassing, except for members, your guy trespassed. He broke the law. We will not press charges, but you're gonna have to leave us alone because we are not commercial, we are private. You have jurisdiction over commerciality only. We don't wanna see you again. Thank you very much". That was the end of it. They haven't bugged us in three years.

So, I sent them a copy of the lease agreements that we have with our farmers that show that we own the milk and then the club member's agreement showing that we want everything out of the counties and states in federal regulation, because you're only allowed to have so much bacteria. We say we want all we can get. So, we don't want any kind of antiseptics, no Clorox, no bleach, no nothing near our food. We want bacteria. So, with that kind of a representation, they took it to their attorneys and they got back to me a week later and said, "kay, you're right:. We have no jurisdiction". And that was that.

And when we took it to the court, now I didn't even go with the farmers cuz I just wrote out the documents for them pro pre. So, they took their documents in there, and the judge said, "You sure you want to find this against you"?

And the health department said, "No, we don't". So they just dropped it. They dropped the charges for selling milk without certification and without permits. And I said, "We don't need permits. We're not selling it for the public". So, all my farmers that we contract with for all the different clubs, most of that dairy comes from Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania is supply even to my clubs in Florida.