Outlawing Dangerous Goat Cheese
For years, my wife and I have been buying goat cheese from a couple of local farmers who never recovered from the-back-to-the-land movement of 1960s at our town's Saturday City Market. It's delicious and if they want to work that hard, it's OK by me. However, zealous legislators eager to protect consumers from eating dangerous goat cheese have been trying to put Satyrfield Farm out of business. How? By requiring these two small farmers to buy expensive equipment and maintain extensive records, just as though they were Kraft Foods.
Now the savvy entrepreneurs have found a way to foil temporarily our solons in Richmond–they no longer sell their cheese, they give it away and accept donations. As the local paper reports they "give away nearly 80 pounds of chevre at the market, and bring home somewhere between $500 and $600, about $200 more than when they sold it."
It's heartening to see residents of the People's Republic of Charlottesville rallying around these two small scale farmers. Perhaps the Institute for Justice which is already battling Virginia's idiotic wine distribution laws could offer them a helping hand?