Over the weekend, a second farm was searched by Minnesota state officials in its raw milk investigations. Reporter Mark Stiel has been all over this for Minnesota Public Radio:
The Minnesota Agriculture Department has searched a second farm that has allegedly sold raw milk. The investigations began after E. coli traced to unpasteurized products sickened eight people. The southern Minnesota farm blamed for the E. coli outbreak has been searched twice.
A search warrant [pdf] dated June 21 says state investigators believed a crime had been committed on the Schlangen Family Farm near Freeport in central Minnesota.
At least two state investigators and two county sheriff’s deputies went to the farm. Agriculture Department spokesman Michael Schommer said they were looking for evidence that the Schlangen’s were making illegal food sales.
“The investigation is looking into alleged unlawful sale of farm products, potentially including raw milk and adulterated or misbranded food,” Schommer said.
There are a number of potential allegations here, according to MPR, such as selling fruit without a license (did you know you needed a license to sell fruit?) and selling unlicensed meat.
The farmer at the center of this investigation is Alvin Schlangen of Schalngen Family Farm (I’ve purchased eggs and other items routinely from Alvin at Midtown Farmers Market here in Minneapolis). Fair Food Fight reported that an email from Traditional Foods Minnesota Warehouse (TFMW) said investigators who came to that operation were especially interested in “Alvin’s milk.” (TFMW has said that they do not sell raw milk there.)
From MPR:
The owner of the farm, Alvin Schlangen, says the main business of his farm is producing and selling eggs. He refused to do a recorded interview, but did respond by email to MPR’s questions.
Schlangen says during the search the state embargoed most of the food inventory on the farm. He says investigators seized his computerized management records.
When asked if he sells unpasteurized milk, Schlangen’s replied, ‘we have acted as an agent’ for that product.
From the outside looking in, this is going to be a touchier case for the Department of Agriculture than the raw milk investigation of Hartmann Dairy. In the Hartman case, eight people were sickened with a variety of E. coli never before found in Minnesota, and that germ was supposedly found at the Hartmann farm (though not specifically in their milk). The Schlangen case is not tied to an outbreak at all; it seems, instead, to be about how Schlangen sold his milk — whether it was away from the farm (probably the main issue), whether he advertisied that he sold raw milk, how it was labeled, if it was labeled, et cetera. In short, it’s about the farmer’s right to do business, not specifically about public health and safety.
The Minnesota State Constitution has a passage that states, “Any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him without obtaining a license therefor.” Both of Hartmann Dairy and Schalngen Family Farm will probably put that passage to the test.
But, with no Department of Health investigation against it (yet), Schlangen Family Farm seems in the better position to argue that point.
