Petition To UpholdAntinovich MOTION, without Amendment
Agenda item #7 of December 19, 2000
TO:
LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
c/o MICHAEL ANTONOVICH
869 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Admin., 500 W Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA
90012
Presented
for the Public Record and File by Petitioners: Mr. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Mr. Walker Kehrer (10 years old),
Mr. Ami Adini, Mr. Gene Marcus, Ms. Anita Alvarez, Dr. Paul Fleiss, M.D., Dr.
James Privitera, M.D.; all of the people who called and wrote the Board, and
the 73 people who filed Request to Address forms at the Board of
Supervisors’ meeting, December 19, 2000; and Legal Representatives: Arlene
Binder, and Roger Noorthoek, Attorneys at Law.
We hereby request the following exhibits be entered into the Public
Record and Public File for the Agenda, Item 7 of the December 19, 2000 meeting
before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors concerning raw milk
legislation, as follows:
1)
EXHIBIT
A:
Letter from Dr. James Privitera, MD, former
Commissioner of Los Angeles (“LA”) County Medical Milk Commission (“LACMMC”),endorsing and recommending that
State-approved raw milk be made available in LA County as safe, healthful
and nutritional food for consumption based on 30 years of experience.
2)
EXHIBIT
B:
A letter from Dr. Paul Fleiss, MD, incumbent President of the American
Association of Medical Milk Commission and former chairperson for the LACMMC
for many years, endorsing and recommending State-approved Raw Milk products as
a safe food for consumption based on 30+ years of experience.
3)
EXHIBIT
C:
A letter from Dr. Earl D. Smith, D.V.M., retired veterinarian endorsing
raw milk.
4)
EXHIBIT D: A
letter from Dr. David J. Noorthoek, M.D., supporting the public consumption of
California State regulated raw milk.
5)
EXHIBIT E: A statement,
Raw Milk Is Good For You, from Dr. Thomas Cowan, M.D., advocating that any raw
milk from a healthy cow, without testing of the milk, is beneficial to health.
6)
EXHIBIT F:
A
statement, More About Raw Milk, from published nutritional author and
Washington, DC nutritional researcher Sally Fallon.
Exhibits
A through F should be held as written reports by Expert Witnesses officially
submitted into the Public Record and File.
Exhibit A was read aloud to the Board by Aajonus Vonderplanitz and
Exhibit B was read aloud by
attorney
Arlene Binder, at the meeting before the Board. Each Supervisor was given a copy of Exhibits A, B, and C at
the Board meeting.
Furthermore, we request that all of the 67 Request To Address forms
submitted at the meeting be entered into the Public Record and File as Exhibit G as formal petitions in support for Supervisor
Antonovich’ unanimously passed motion to allow “Grade A” and
“Guaranteed” as two other categories for raw milk, thus aligning and
conforming LA County code with the State of California code, without the
Yaroslavsky Amendment. Note that only 6 of the 86 Los Angeles County residents
present, of which 67 requested to address the Board, were permitted to speak
in favor of Agenda, Item 7. All faxes and letters received by the Supervisors
prior to the Board meeting in favor and in support of this motion without
amendment also are to be included in The Public File and Record as Exhibit
H.
The
Petitioners’ Appeal andDeclaration Of Protest,
against the Yaroslavsky Amendment, with its Summary of Merits to allow Grade A
and Guaranteed raw milk is submitted herein and is to be entered into the
Public Record and File as Exhibit
J.
Facts
The
Board unanimously passed the motion to allow for Grade A and Guaranteed
categories but provided an amendment for a Recommendation Report from the
Director of Health Services to be submitted to the Board.
ARGUMENTS
We
hereby provide Exhibits A through J as our official response.
We declare that the report, provided within the 30-day timeline by the
Director of Health Services, should only be held as a matter of record and not
to be used as influencing contradictory outcome to the vote already passed, or
to hold up the immediate implementation for Grade A and Guaranteed categories
once the 30-day period has lapsed. As publicly stated by all of those who
filed Request To Address forms at the meeting:
1) we are Americans who are informed of our rights, 2) warned of any
possible danger by the Government Warning on raw milk bottles, 3) aware that
clearly the current LA County certification is a violation of our Equal
Protection rights and Right to Choose, and 4) aware that the placement of the
unreasonable hardship to meet the LA County certification-for-raw-milk
requirements creates an unlawful favored
status for all residents of California who live outside of LA
County who have access to Raw Milk products under State code requirements.
Expanding
the current LA County code to include Grade A and Guaranteed ctegories does
not lower the standards of the production and distribution of raw milk, as the
amendment proposes, but rather it actually removes unreasonable and
unnecessary precautionary principles for risk management. As quoted in
Scientific American, January issue 2001: “The precautionary principle is no
longer an academic debate. It is in the hands of the people.”¾Lawyer
Raffensperger, as stated at the Harvard conference on Precautionary Principles
and Science towards food production. Cities and counties of the state of
California such as Pasadena, Orange County, Ventura County, San Diego, San
Francisco, Palo Alto, etc., have successfully used Grade A and Guaranteed code
requirements to monitor Raw Milk products as being safe for consumption,
thereby providing statistical and demographic proof that these categories are
sufficient and should therefore be sufficient for LA County code requirements.
CONCLUSION
We
respectfully request that the Board uphold the unanimously passed motion,
without amendment, aligning the LA County Code with California State code
allowing the sale of Grade A and Guaranteed raw milk.
At the end of 10 days, please notify in writing the representative
petitioners in care of one of their legal representatives as follows:
Arlene
Binder, Attorney at Law
16161 Ventura Boulevard
Encino, CA 91436
We
request this letter be held as documentation for the Public Record and Public
File.
DATED:
January 6, 2001
Respectfully,
Arlene
Binder, Attorney at Law (on
behalf of all listed above and those in the public record)
16161
Ventura Boulevard
Encino, CA 91436
Petition
and Attached Exhibits transmitted VIA FAX and US Certified Mail.
CC:
Supervisor Brathwaite Burke
Supervisor Molina
Supervisor Yaroslavsky
Supervisor Knabe