Hershberger Victory For Private Food Rights Sends Message That People Can, And Will, Fight Overbearing Regulators

Make no mistake, Vernon Hershberger won a huge victory in today’s early morning hours in Baraboo, WI. “It’s a beautiful day,” Hershberger told me this morning, after a few hours of sleep following the 1 a.m. jury decision that acquitted him of three of four criminal misdemeanor charges. Yes, it was a beautiful day, for farming and for food rights.
The State threw everything it had at this humble father of ten children, and when it was over, its guys in the dark suits scampered out of the courtroom in the darkness of the night after a jury of twelve ordinary Americans handed them their heads on a platter. After less than four hours of consideration, those Americans told the hot-shot lawyers that their thousands of pages of legal documents and computer forensic experts and five days of arguing had failed miserably to convince a single one of them that Hershberger should be required to have any of three retail and dairy licenses insisted upon by the State.
Hershberger has already heard through the grapevine that the jurors didn’t give a moment’s thought to going with the state’s charges. “They tried their best to set me free,” he said.
The jurors convicted Hershberger only of something he publicly admitted to before and during the trial – that he had cut the regulators’ tape placed on his coolers and food shelves June 2, 2010 so as to keep his food from rotting and to feed his 200 food club members – in other words, violated a holding order.

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