Maine’s Developing Fight for Local Food Sovereignty

Towns in Massachusetts, Vermont, and California have all repli­cated these exper­i­ments, which in Vermont have all been based on a sin­gle tem­plate [PDF]. And while the main­stream media is refer­ring to the ordi­nances as “sym­bolic,” it is yet to be seen how the courts will rule.

These votes are the result of work by activists in the food sov­er­eignty moment, who see the ordi­nances as a response to an ever more intensely reg­u­lated food sys­tem. On the fed­eral level, the recent Food Safety Modernization Act could require small food pro­duc­ers to com­plete a sophis­ti­cated haz­ard analy­sis crit­i­cal con­trol point (HACCP) plan, which would be both costly and tedious. Meanwhile there has also been an increase in local health depart­ment enforce­ment around the coun­try, in places like school bake sales and kids’ lemon­ade stands.

Activists see food sov­er­eignty ordi­nances as a com­pro­mise of sorts over the thorny issue of pri­vate food dis­tri­b­u­tion. And although many food safety mea­sures and reg­u­la­tions were devel­oped along­side indus­trial food production—and have a place in pro­tect­ing consumers—many activists now believe they’ve been used to tar­get small busi­nesses. Food sov­er­eignty activists feel that peo­ple have a right to acquire food—such as raw dairy products—privately through membership-based food clubs, out­side the para­me­ters of long-standing reg­u­la­tions that require retail, dairy, and other permits.

In a recent AP arti­cle, Maine’s state agri­cul­ture offi­cials said the ordi­nances “don’t hold legal muster.” But the state’s so-called “local rule” laws could con­tra­dict this view. Via its con­sti­tu­tion and leg­is­la­tion, Maine con­fers sig­nif­i­cant power on munic­i­pal­i­ties to enact ordi­nances that are local in nature, and aren’t denied by state law, like con­trol­ling town growth or ban­ning her­bi­cide spray­ing. “Maine has long been con­sid­ered a strong ‘home rule’ state,” says the Maine Municipal Association. (Here’s a list of these hyper-local laws.)

While every­one who voted to pass Maine’s food sov­er­eignty ordi­nances knew they were risk­ing con­flict with state and fed­eral author­i­ties, they hadn’t imag­ined the objec­tions would be as swift, or intense, as they have turned out to be.

“Farmers know whether the milk is bad”

Just months after the first six towns passed the ordi­nances, the state filed a law­suit [PDF] against a farmer named Dan Brown of Blue Hill, Maine, for sell­ing unpas­teur­ized milk with­out a state per­mit. Brown says los­ing the suit could put him out of busi­ness, since com­ply­ing with state per­mit require­ments would be so costly as to not jus­tify oper­at­ing his two-cow dairy. He owns the cows pri­mar­ily so that he can pro­vide milk for his fam­ily, and he sells what’s left. (Activists set up a Facebook page in sup­port of Brown called We Are All Farmer Brown.)

“I have never had any ques­tions from cus­tomers say­ing there was any prob­lem with my milk,” Brown told the Bangor Daily News. “This has been done this way for hun­dreds of years. Farmers, when they milk a cow, know whether the milk is bad or not.”

Brown says the state has devoted sig­nif­i­cant inves­tiga­tive resources to mak­ing the case against him, and he has led sev­eral demon­stra­tions, includ­ing one at the cap­i­tal in Augusta, demand­ing that the state drop the suit.

While there’s no men­tion of the food sov­er­eignty ordi­nances in the suit, and state offi­cials have denied a con­nec­tion, Brown’s defense lawyers obtained email cor­re­spon­dence that sug­gest oth­er­wise. For instance, a Maine Dept. of Agriculture pro­gram man­ager sent an email in June 2011—two months after Blue Hill’s food sov­er­eignty ordi­nance was enacted—about Brown allegedly sell­ing food at a local farmer’s mar­ket with­out a license. “Sounds like we have our first test case,” he wrote.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at Grist.org.