The FDA has thrown an Amish father in jail without bail almost two months ago in Kentucky and they are pushing to lock him away for 68 years.
57 year old Samuel Girod mislabeled some of his homemade Amish herbal salves and the FDA found out and it has gone absolutely insane!
When they arrested Sam, they took his wife and little children into the yard and guarded them by an agent with a semi-automatic rifle. It is being reported that his children are still having nightmares from the ordeal.
One product at the center of the lengthy indictment is Girod’s Chickweed salve. It’s ingredients include rosemary, beeswax, olive oil.
WKYT CBS reports that a federal jury handed down guilty verdicts for the Amish farmer last week. A judge will sentence Girod on June 6 at 10 a.m.
Here is the story:
Sam and Elizabeth Girod and their 12 children are Amish farmers in Kentucky. For the last 16 years they have made homemade herbal salves as a family. They sold it from their farm and at a few small stores near them. The family makes three products: A chickweed salve, a bloodroot salve called To-Mor-Gone and an essential oil blend called Sine-Eze.
Their main salve is the one Sam called “Chickweed Healing Salve.” It’s made with wild-harvested herbs like chickweed, rosemary, comfrey, peppermint, eucalyptus and lavender essential oils as ingredients blended with olive oil and beeswax to stiffen it.
The salve making is not rocket science. Any of you could make these products in your kitchen. In fact many people do. If you Google it, you’ll find recipes online like this one. But like so many other areas of life, moms are busy, salve making is messy, and so folks are quite happy to pay Sam and his family to make the salves for them. And so they do.
So the $64,000 question is: What in the world went wrong? How did this peace-loving, quiet, minding-his-own-business, Amish family farmer, father of twelve and loyal American citizen end up in jail for making herbal salves? How is it possible that this simple, God-fearing father, who would, any other year, be out working his fields with his horses getting ready for spring planting, be now sitting behind jail bars… considered a dangerous criminal?
These questions seem to defy answers. But let me show you how easy it actually is to make an innocent man look criminal. Then maybe you’ll understand.
Innocent Labeling Misstep
Sam’s nightmare started over twelve years ago. Their family was still new in the salve business and he had quite honestly and transparently labeled his one salve as ‘Chickweed Healing Salve’ and had healing testimonial claims on the label.
He also did not have the familiar FDA disclaimer that looks like this: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
Sam, in his simple, disconnected-from-the-world Amish way of life may not have realized that healing claims coupled with the disclaimer omission amounted to a cardinal sin in the eyes of the FDA. Or maybe Sam just didn’t feel the disclaimer was truthful or even right to use. Maybe Sam felt it was dishonest to say that his salve was not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease when, of course, that is exactly what his salve is for.
Federal overreach at its finest!
The FDA has no business involving itself in this! It has big drug money written all over it! The entire criminalization of this Amish father is based on the FDA’s official public position that ONLY a drug can “diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
That is STUPIDITY at it’s finest!
Has there been no mature adult throughout this process with any common sense?
Samuel Girod and his Amish family have been making and selling 3 all-natural herbal products for nearly 20 years. No one has ever been harmed by the products, the Girods have pages of testimonials and scores of repeat customers. In all those years, one woman had a bad reaction to a salve (which Sam made right and the woman was fine).
Here is more info on the insane situation along with background going back to 2001. It includes Sam’s efforts to cooperate fully with the overreaching FDA:
Throughout the accusations, the FDA often took up an issue with the labeling of the products.
“It said ‘Chickweed Salve’ up top. Then on down said ‘Cures Cancer.’ Which for some people it did, but he can’t say that. So he changed it to say ‘Healing Chickweed,’ but they said no you can’t say healing. So now it just says ‘Original Chickweed’,”
The post UNBELIEVABLE! The FDA is Pushing to Imprison Amish Father for Life for Homemade Remedy! appeared first on I Have The Truth.
via IFTTT