Modern Farmer
“Food sovereignty” activists received a big boost last week in a small-town Wisconsin courtroom, where dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger went on trial in connection with four criminal misdemeanor charges associated with failing to have the requisite permits for selling raw milk to about 200 members of a private food club.
A jury of six men and six women decided the case after hearing five days of testimony from about twenty witnesses, including state agriculture investigators and bureaucrats, members of Hershberger’s Grazin’ Acres food club, and members of Hershberger’s family. The jurors took less than four hours to acquit him of all the licensing charges, finding him guilty only of violating a state holding order on food sales, which he had admitted to.
The charges stemmed from a lengthy and intensive investigation conducted during 2009 and 2010 by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP). The investigation was capped by a raid on Hershberger’s Grazin’ Acres farm by DATCP agents, accompanied by armed sheriffs, on June 2, 2010, during which DATCP issued a holding order barring Hershberger from even moving any of the food in his small farm store in Loganville, WI.
