The C-Ville Weekly covers the testimony of the officer in the Double H farmer case. I had a feeling the media was going overboard with this one. Not only are the farmers getting off with a slap on the wrist, the article explains the officer’s approach (which I think was just) towards these farmers:
“They were playing me for a fool,” he said on the stand, his voice nearly trembling, “by selling some of this meat.”
As the officer described the lead-up to their arrest, he protested his depiction by the media as an overzealous persecutor of the local food movement (“I begged the man to comply,” Lamneck said after the hearing of Bean), recounting the time he spotted the yellow Double H van parked outside Shebeen restaurant and then a body bag being carried inside. After Lamneck stopped in to take a look, he discovered a black market pig.
[Read the rest at The C-Ville Weekly]
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Did Shebeen actually serve the bleached meat? I’m gonna barf.
No it doesn’t say that. Just their usual pub food.
That yellow van is distinctive, if it’s the one I’m thinking of, at the farmer’s market. Looks like a milk van from an old toy set?
I’m not gonna barf because of Shebeen. I’m gonna barf at whoever decided it was best to pour bleach on meat.
Oh yeah, they did that, and the handcuffs, and taking them to the cop shop in separate cars, it all sounded pretty harsh. I’ve heard of mean grocery store managers pouring bleach in their dumpsters in the Southwestern USA.
Back to Double H it sounded like a vendetta for some other reason too, besides ruining the porkpies with color unsafe chlorine bleach. But maybe the perps are nuts?? Dontknow, but sure know that the very next week a zousand pounds of beef was recalled from an industrial producer, and just a week ago a zillion pounds was recalled, most of which had already been eaten by little Dick & Jane in their tottery red schoolhouse.
whoever decided it was best to pour bleach on meat.
The way I read that article, it was the state inspector, and it said the bleach was to “denature” the meat, which I presume is something like “disinfect before we throw this dead hog away.” It doesn’t sound like the meat was subsequently served.
It is to make it inedible, and the aggrieved inspector did it.
Some guy at the post office was telling me about eating fawn meat, it was surreal. I was like, you can’t eat Bambi, you have to eat Bambi’s mother! He was like, it got hit by a car. I was like, bumper tenderized? He was like, baby deer meat is unbelievably good. Enticing, even for a vegetarian, no?
We have the police for a reason. Media depictions like Cops and movies like The Departed scare me shitless, but the reality is that in Charlottesville, I have encountered some really unpleasant crimes (four cases come to mind) and officers have been NICE, fast, professional, and responsive.
I heard puppies are great too, colfer, and baby unicorns.
@7: I bet babies taste good too but that’s socially unacceptable.
@8: This isn’t a “Cops suck” post. I think the point is people crack down on nice local farmers for breaking governmental rules that still don’t prevent nasty shit from going on unpunished in slaughterhouses.
It’s okay. My post is in response to the media skepticism of police. And I might be sucking up to the mayor. I really liked it when Davis Norris himself showed up. But for real, good police officers.
Somehow the baby deer sounds most best, but I’ll drop it, um, carefully. Guy at the post office brought it up, not me.
I’ve noticed that liberal chicks really dig the current mayor. Just sayin’.
As far as Double H goes, I think surrounding the farm SWAT-team style was a bit excessive. This latest article only gives the officer’s comments, partly because the poor farmers have been cowed into submission, and aren’t likely to be saying much controversial.
I think the whole affair is really sad, because I don’t feel like they did anything wrong. I do think the laws are the problem however, since they are set up to promote and regulate an industrial food chain. There needs to be a way for non-industrial food to exist too. It’s generally safer and tastier.
In light of of such FDA blunders as the recent beef recall, I’d rather trust a local farmer to process my meat any day than an industrial processing plant the churns through more hogs a minute than Double H does in a year, regardless of a blue stamp taht says some faceless bureaucrat thinks this bacon is safe for me to eat. If all they have to do is put a warning label on cigarettes and alcohol about the potential hazards, and people can sell herbal remedies with no proof of efficacy, why can’t my npasturized apple cider and my FDA-less meat just say what they are, “buyer beware” and be done with it already? Ugh!
If you truly want to get angry about food policy in this country, read the following op ed in the New York Times regarding the way farm subsidies are preventing the spread of the local food movement. My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables).