The story of Amos Miller is the canary in the coal mine

But making sure we fight for food freedom in the most effective and lawful way is important

When my husband and I first moved to Virginia from California, we wanted to put up a small sign at the end of our long driveway, hinged to our mailbox, which stated the name of our farm. We saw them speckled all over the quaint countryside roads and thought the idea was charming. Come to find out, there’s quite a bit of paperwork you need to go through in our county to legally have a sign hanging, even when you live off the beaten path and only one or two people will see it a day (and that’s on a high traffic day.)

In general, I’m a bit of a, “better to ask forgiveness than permission” type of gal, but being new to the area, I didn’t want to start on the wrong foot. Five years later we still don’t have a sign. Laziness is really to be blamed for that, but I won’t ever forget how surprised I was about the level of involvement and intrusion from government entities regarding harmless personal choices (this sign would reside on our property, after all.)

There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think something along the lines of, “Government needs to get out of my business.” It can be triggered by homeschool requirements, paperwork I have to fill out to prove that I have a certain number of animals on our property or the money I have to pay every year for my dog to wear a tag saying he’s had his shots (even though he never encounters anyone aside from our family and close friends.) Needless to say, I’m a small government type of gal and we have anything but a small government.

That’s why I was initially attracted and drawn to the story of Amos Miller.

Who is Amos Miller?

Amos Miller is an Amish farmer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Living in the “Bird-in-Hand,” an unincorporated community, he is closely situated to the Amish and Mennonite communities in the surrounding area. His family runs Amos Miller Organic Farm and has since 2000. He sits squarely at the heart of a contentious debate on government regulations and food safety. How much is too much oversight? Where is the line to be drawn in regards to safety protocol and personal consent to consumption of a product? Why is everyone making such a big deal about raw milk (we won’t answer this question in this post but maybe soon!)

What did Miller do and what are the charges?

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), first took civil action against Miller’s Organic Farm and the Amish farmer himself in 2017. The threat of Amos Miller’s arrest stems from his failure to pay fines associated with how he prepared the food he was selling.

From this website:

In 2019, U.S. Attorney William McSwain said in a press release that the U.S. Department of Justice was filing “the first-ever suit of its kind where FSIS is seeking an injunction against a so-called ‘private membership association’ farm business to enforce food safety laws….my Office will not ignore efforts to evade federal food safety laws and to hinder agencies like FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Services) from carrying out their public safety missions. We will not allow commercial sellers to ignore the rule of law, make up their own sets of rules, and attempt to hide behind a private-membership-association structure in an effort to thwart federal laws.” In the wake of that announcement, the USDA would convince a judge to shut down Miller’s meat-production and fine Miller $250,000 for violating food safety laws (now up to $300,000). Miller has alternately hired local lawyers and served as his own lawyer to try to work out a compromise with the USDA that would allow his farm to gain an exemption permitted in the regulations.

Additionally:

The charges against Amos Miller are multiple and often disputed between farmers but here is what I can tell you. Some 4,000 members of Miller’s “private membership association” pay the fee to purchase his food, shipped nationwide. Unfortunately, Miller has violated multiple food distribution and food safety laws. It’s hard to sift through the timeline, but there now have been three separate occasions that Miller has tangled with regulators: once in 2016 when the CDC claimed to have traced Miller’s raw milk as the “likely source” of listeria poisoning that killed a woman in Florida; a long, drawn-out case in 2019 when the DOJ filed a civil lawsuit against Miller for selling meat and poultry to customers that was not processed in a USDA-inspected facility, and now earlier this January when the PA Department of Agriculture executed a search warrant of the farm following reports from public health offices in New York and Michigan of Shiga toxin-producing E.Coli in individuals who consumed raw eggnog and other dairy from Miller’s farm. 

For some more context on how Miller has decided to proceed with the allegations, this article was published in November of 2023 outlining what Miller has agreed to do concerning the federal charges.

What happened with the raid on his farm?

On January 4th of this year, Pennsylvania state agents conducted a raid on Miller’s farm. You can read more about the specifics here (this website is very sympathetic to Miller but also provides detailed information and video of the incident, and in the interest of showing all sides, I wanted to highlight this outlet.)

Here are two videos documenting that day (what he was permitted to film, that is):

As of January 19th, the state of Pennsylvania is demanding that Miller stop selling his dairy products to his PMA group. You can read more about that here and here (for an alternate viewpoint.)

What does Miller have to say?

According to a memorandum from the US District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania: “Amos Miller now understands that his reliance on the legal theory propounded by Karl Dahlstrom [that he could ‘contractually form a private membership association and operate in what he deemed the private domain free from government interference’] was misplaced and is now voluntarily ceasing to operate as he has in the past and will commit to provide federally-inspected-meat to his members while creating and implementing an operation under the custom slaughter exemption.”

Is there such a thing as “private food?”

“Private food” at least to my way of thinking, is regulation-free food distribution and purchasing power. In that sense, the only real “private food” would be eating and sharing (without charge) what you grow on your land and with your family/friends. Any other “selling” of food will require some sort of regulation by the local, state, or federal government on some level. The “Private Membership Association” setup can circumvent some rules, but in our country, you are beholden to at least some sort of local, state, and/or federal regulations unless you’re headed out to your vegetable patch and bringing it straight in and making a salad for you and the kids for dinner.

Is this about safety?

I suppose this question is where you will have the most divergent views. I think there are people of goodwill working in the USDA and other federal agencies who believe that having state and federal inspections and rules is keeping many in the public sphere (who are unrelated to their food preparation or acquisition) safe. With a majority of Americans unfamiliar with how their food is raised, farmed, processed, and butchered, these agencies are doing the work of assuring food is considered “safe” to most citizens. With that said, many on the other side of the aisle would argue that this is wrong for two specific reasons. Firstly, in the requirements that the FDA and USDA impose, food often has chemicals and preservatives added or used to “sterilize” or “clean” the products. Many people aren’t even familiar with what this all entails and some who are informed don’t want their food to include any of these additives. Secondly, some would argue that stiff laws and oversight are meant to create a food monopoly, effectively pushing out small farms and product producers that don’t tow the ideological line and work actively to create something different than the large-scale meat business (and other categories of foodstuffs.) Simply stated, it’s not at all about food safety, but rather about market access.

What is the state of food freedom in the United States?

In our country, we are free to go to the grocery store at any time and spend however much money we would like to on all manners of food. We are free (depending on where we live) to raise our animals and personally butcher them or use their eggs and enjoy them with our friends and family (so long as we don’t sell the butchered meat post-production.) If we want to move past that and begin selling locally, within our state, or nationally, that’s where the freedom becomes limited insomuch as we are willing to work within the bounds of state and federal law. At the heart of the Amos Miller case (and the loudest opinions about why we need to support him and this cause) is that he’s an American and the treatment of his product by the USDA/FDA is against his moral convictions/personal preferences and so it makes it acceptable to ignore (break) the law. Specifically when it comes to the “raw milk” debate we have a nation whose states all differ with the legality of procurement and/or sale of the liquid. Some states allow the sale and purchase within state lines with no problem. On the other hand, when I threw the question out to our community on Instagram, I heard from hundreds of people who live in a state where it’s illegal to consume or sell it. Most of these same people have found local farmers willing to give it to them. They feel the health benefits outweigh the risk and they are giving their informed consent when purchasing it. Still others live in a location where the raw milk has to be labeled for “animal consumption only.” Personally, I find the raw milk restrictions somewhat ridiculous when many of these same states have legalized marijuana, abortion, and pornography, not to mention large meat producers who frequently have E. coli scares and yet are still allowed to remain in business and sell their products.

Opinions from you….

When thinking about voices I would want to weigh in about this topic, I instantly thought of my good friend Anna. The picture below gives you an idea of what she was doing the other night: sitting in a freezing barn and pulling a breech baby lamb out of his mama while all of us were lying warmly in our beds catching zzzzzzs because that’s what she does.

She’s an independent farmer who lives about 7 minutes up the road from us and she cares very much about the land, sustainable living, and the proper care and husbandry of animals. When I approached her about this topic she didn’t have as staunch of a viewpoint as many of the other voices (who are defending Amos Miller unequivocally,) which is why I wanted to share her common-sense perspective:

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We’re conservatives! We drink raw milk and respect the rule of law! (I will never be on Tik Tok but this is the cute video I would make if I were).

The question of Miller’s Organic Farm boils down to whether he should be following the law like everyone else. The court has already said that forming a private membership association does not permit you to break federal law, a finding that Amos Miller himself agreed to in 2019. So after signing a consent decree stating that he would no longer break federal law when selling food to his private buyer’s club, it is understandable that regulators would be frustrated with his current violation – breaking federal law to sell raw milk across state lines.

We have food safety laws for a reason. Are they too restrictive? Absolutely, and they need to be improved. My own health has benefited greatly from drinking raw milk, which I get from our own herd of milk goats. My last toddler was weaned onto raw milk. I would love to be able to sell my raw goat cheese as easily as I can sell a dozen eggs. But I fully understand both the rewards and the risks, and I would never give my children raw milk to drink from a farm without having seen it first – the health of the animals, the cleanliness of their living situation, what disease testing has been done, and the sanitation process during milking and all equipment afterward. Official inspection can accomplish this for those who can’t personally visit the farm. 

Hopefully, this controversy brings attention to restrictive food laws and helps garner more motivation for change so people can more freely obtain the food they want from who they want. But for the time being, complying with the law is not unreasonable, since many other farms do it, and work hard to make a living selling well-raised meat, dairy, eggs, and produce. Maybe they’re not using a horse-drawn plow to prepare their fields, and maybe you’ll have to drive a little further to pick up your groceries. But this is not all or nothing. 

This is a country of laws. Too many, too restrictive, yes definitely. But that doesn’t mean we can pick and choose what we want to follow and what we don’t.

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I also solicited feedback from this community and heard back from many of you. Here is a viewpoint that I also thought would be helpful:

We started our raw milk journey nearly 15 years ago as we started to pay more attention to the impact our food choices had on our health. During that time, we’ve lived in 3 different states all of which had different regulations regarding the sales of raw milk. From going undercover in the middle of the night to buy from a rebel farmer who sold milk “for animal consumption only” to purchase from a family dairy farmer who was risking his livelihood for people who were in desperate need of his product, we’ve seen it all. Our current state has provisions for farm-to-consumer sales of raw milk which has been the easiest of the three by far. 

As a farming family ourselves, it’s maddening to try and jump through the hoops of selling directly to consumers and often deters us from taking the risk. Between government overreach and the ever-growing expectations of consumers, it’s a very tricky balance to bring a product to the market, especially dairy. The feed costs, animal husbandry, and processing expenses are great. We’ve followed many stories of farmers losing everything or facing the horrors of government scrutiny in light of their choices to provide their communities with real food. 

In a world that runs on preservatives, it’s wild to me that pure, unadulterated animal products are so heavily restricted in our country. In one quick “food” search on your streaming network, you’ll find documentary after documentary on the dangers of American food - none of which include anything that resembles a farm-to-table experience. Where there is a risk, there must be a choice. A choice that should certainly extend to our dietary needs or preferences. In a country that boasts freedom, we have become slaves to the alphabet soup agencies that just so happen to be funded by the working class they try so hard to regulate. 

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In the end, we must be willing to honestly acknowledge the laws that are in place and abide by them while working to promote understanding (if only on a small scale) about how we can better those rules. Nothing will be benefited, no matter how good the intentions, by ignoring regulations. Change will be made by speaking up and speaking out and thoughtfully and intentionally engaging in the legislative process laid out in front of us.

We don’t have to like it but if we start rebelling against every jot and title in the books using the mantra, “FREEDOM! I’M AN AMERICAN!" we are going to do more harm to the advancement of our cause and to those law-abiding citizens who are trying to enact change the old fashioned way - by putting voice to action and letting activism be your rebellion.