Guns drawn, a SWAT team kicks in the door of a private business. Are the cops there for drug dealers? Mafia mobsters? Terrorists?
No, the long arm of the law is out for the real dangerous contraband: raw milk and grass-fed chickens.
Nick Gillespie sits down with Kristin Canty, director of Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Farms, a new documentary about small farms and co-ops that have been raided by the Food & Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and state-level agencies and have had their products seized and destroyed. One particularly gruesome case involved a flock of sheep being killed because of the non-existent threat of the sheep acquiring Mad Cow Disease.
Farmageddon does more than document government overreach; the movie also takes issue with FDA claims that raw milk and other products popular with foodies are unsafe and filled with dangerous bacteria. In a country where more and more folks are embracing small-scale and organic agriculture, the government is on a collision course with a growing subculture.
Canty says this is only film she intends to make. She aspires to open a farm-to-table restaurant in Massachusetts, a venture that will be made all the more difficult by onerous and misguided regulations.
Shot by Meredith Bragg and Josh Swain. Edited by Anthony L. Fisher.
Approximately 5.28 minutes.
Go to http://reason.tv for downloadable iPod, HD and audio versions of this and all our videos.