From Food Renegade
Sedgwick, Maine has done what no other town in the United States has done. The town unanimously passed an ordinance giving its citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” This includes raw milk, locally slaughtered meats, and just about anything else you can imagine. It’s also a decided bucking of state and federal laws.
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8 comments:
That is great, need to move there! Maybe NH will follow...
WTG Maine! Now the rest of us need to get on-board.
I think this is a great and inspiring move! My hat's off to those brave folks for standing up in such a vocal way!
What an inspiration for more people to earn additional income,get educated about where food comes from and how dependant we are on outside sources. Also it will encourage a neigborhood network system like no other. This has so much potential for great success.
How completely & totally INSANE is it that a county feels as if it has to make a "law" allowing people to grow and eat their own food? I understand the apparent need because of the morons at the Federal and State level making it unlawful for you to do just about anything nowadays.
But it also starts a slippery slope. If we feel that we must be granted permission by a government agency (no matter what level) to do something as natural as growing / eating our own food, what OTHER things are we going to assume government has to grant us permission to do?
Will it one day be a law "allowing" us to use up the oxygen in the air by breathing? Will we be able to sleep more than 8 hours a day unless given "permission" to do so by the local authorities?
I think the point of the law is to cover all basis that the FDA is trying make illegal, such as gardens and raw milk. The FDA has said in legal documents that we "Have no natural right to food." But the law this town has passed is about selling unregulated food stuff.
I think the ordinance in Sedgwick was in response to the recently passed "Federal Food Safety Act", which gives a great deal of control over our food to the federal government, and this little town just wanted to tell the Federal government that it has no right to make any attempts to limit Sedgwick's citizens from growing their own food.
The concern is that the food safety act is written in broad enough language that it could, actually, lead to that, and Sedgwick was just attempting to "catch the bull by the horns", as it were.
There's also a law in Maine that allows women to breastfeed in public, and while it's sad that the law has to exist, the fact is that there are those who would try to limit our freedoms under the guise of keeping us "safe." The lawmakers in Sedgwick just felt that the law allowing something that should just be a given prevents anyone from taking away that right.
Never fails to make me smile/giggle each time I visit & see your man's bottom atop that sheep. lol. GREAT article. Thank you for sharing that. I shared it with friends and hope to follow more of how things work out for them. Maybe with time, I can present the idea to our small country/farming town. {Oh how grand that would be!}
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