Glenn Beck tonight continued his attacks against Cass Sunstein, an adviser to President Obama. Beck previously has claimed that Sunstein was “pushing for more regulation on food,” fearmongering that this would “drive the cost of food up” for Americans. Now Beck is claiming that Sunstein and the FDA are questioning “the rights of families to 'produce, obtain and consume the foods of their choice.' ” It turns out that Beck was misrepresenting a government legal brief defending longstanding regulations banning the interstate sale of raw milk, a product that the FDA had concluded was causing a “significant public health problem.”

Beck said:

BECK: Cass Sunstein and the FDA are now questioning the rights -- this will blow your mind -- the rights of families to, quote, “produce and obtain and consume the foods of their choice.” They go on to say, quote, “There is no deeply rooted historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kind. To the contrary, society's long history of food regulation stretches back to the dietary laws of biblical times.”

So, now, we have Cass Sunstein and the radicals in Washington actually quoting the Bible and suddenly finding Moses important. I can't write this stuff.

While Beck always tells his viewers to "do your own homework," it turns out that Beck was actually quoting a 2010 government brief in a court case brought by the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It does not appear that Sunstein had anything to do with the brief in question. But even if he did, there was nothing controversial about the comments.

The brief involves a defense of regulations initially promulgated in the 1980s prohibiting the “distribution after shipment in interstate commerce” of “milk or milk product in final package form for direct human consumption unless the product has been pasteurized or is made from dairy ingredients (milk or milk products) that have all been pasteurized.”

The FDA during the Reagan administration reportedly concluded that “consumption of raw milk 'presents a significant public health problem' ” and recommended a ban on raw milk that moved in interstate commerce (although it took a court order for the ban to be instituted).

One of the arguments in the brief is that there is no fundamental constitutional right to obtain “foods of [one's] own choice” as the plaintiffs had alleged. As the brief points out, governments have regulated food from time immemorial (hence the reference to biblical times) and, that the United States has been regulated food since colonial times. The brief points out that an 1873 Virginia statute made it illegal to sell or “bring to be manufactured” skim milk. In light of this history, the brief states, no court has ever recognized a fundamental right to obtain “food of [one's] own choice.”

As the brief states, the plaintiffs' position would also call into question almost all food safety laws, including the laws put into place in 1906 following the horrific exposé of the meat packing industry contained in Upton Sinclair's classic The Jungle.

Furthermore, the brief also states:

In fact, the government has neither brought nor threatened to bring a single enforcement action against consumers who purchase unpasteurized milk for personal consumption or retailers of such products who do not engage in interstate commerce.

Which means the government isn't even trying to punish individuals who obtain food banned by these regulations.

Chalk it up to yet another bogus attack against Sunstein.