Amish Farmer Amos Miller, hounded by USDA, receives favorable judgment
Amos Miller, if you remember my past article about him, has received wonderful news regarding his ability to continue serving his customers. Talk about a Christmas miracle.
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Big Agriculture and its private enforcement arm — the United States Department of Agriculture — has been dealt a blow in their fight against a food club owner who they threatened with 6-figure fines and jail time. Finally, we can chalk one up for the little guy.
Amos Miller, an Amish Farmer and namesake of his business, Amos Miller’s organic meat and dairy farm, along with his wife, was accused of selling ‘adulterated’ meat products and were ultimately rung up for refusing to change their methods to more ‘USDA-approved’ practices — aka adulterating their products with chemicals to render it unadulterated. Figure that one out.
Miller and his wife, Rebecca, were originally scheduled to appear in court on December 9th, but Judge Edward G. Smith deemed it unnecessary and instead Miller's new attorney, Robert E. Barnes, has filed a second consent decree that has resulted in a substantial reduction of the penalties to be paid.
Attorney Robert Barnes spoke of the favorable ruling for his client and stated that Miller was able to avoid spending Christmas in jail and will no longer be facing imminent bankruptcy due to the excessive fines, the majority of which he no longer has to pay.
The good news is that, with this ruling, Miller will be able to sell the meat still stored in his freezers so he can still conduct business as usual in order to facilitate his ability to pay the fines levied against him.
In the long-term sense, Barnes mentioned that the goal is to work out a ‘custom exception plan’ — presumably to account for allowing Miller to observe Amish customs in order to get around USDA edicts that violate his freedom of religion. I would call it freedom to eat healthy food, since it will effectively bypass the processes that would taint the food produced in the manner God intended. That is a bridge too far for the USDA, however.
Barnes also sees fit to drop some truth bombs that I agree with and have said some variant of in the past, myself.
“Here you have a case of people saying, ‘I don’t want food the way the USDA wants it,’ and ‘they’re saying nope, you can’t have it that way,'” Barnes said.
"If you’re shopping at Miller’s farm, you’re not doing it by accident. Amos Miller doesn’t sell food to anyone who doesn’t want it exactly how he’s making it,” he said in regard to the food club that Miller runs.
“The USDA wants to take what was supposed to be an interstate labeling law and use it to regulate what foods you can and cannot put into your own body," he continued. World Economic Forum methodology. Klaus Schwab warned us that they (the World Economic Forum) had infiltrated all levels of government, in all manner of governments, after all. But I digress.
“Look at any study of the Amish and you will find by almost any health metric, they are healthier than the people living off USDA-approved food. And the USDA, you know what they think is healthy? Bill Gates’ synthetic corn [and] his fake beef.” Barnes continued, ending off with the mic drop of the century, “This is about the USDA’s attempt to monopolize our food supply, and they targeted an Amish farmer to set the precedent.”
There’s the secret to all of it, really. A healthy population doesn’t suckle on the teat of big government.
Of course, the courts must still claim a pound of flesh for the infractions all the same.
The U.S. Appeals Court ruling rescinded the exorbitant fines levied against Mr. Miller that were in excess of $300,000 dollars, reducing the fines to $55,000 that is eligible to be paid over the course of the next 6 months, rather than immediately due. Miller’s contempt of court hearing has also been stayed, provided that the farmer makes the payments on his fine. So by all rights, Miller, upon fulfilling his end of the bargain from this ruling he can continue to run his business unimpeded. Mostly.
Miller must also pay a bit of extortion money to a private contractor to the tune of $30,000. George Lapsley, a ‘food safety advisor’ must be compensated for his time. Pretty nice business model, that — carving money off hard-working Americans trying to produce proper food.
“This sum will be used to reimburse: a) Mr.Lapsley’s fees and expenses to date; b) the U.S. Marshall’s Service’s fees/expenses for accompanying Mr. Lapsley on his March 17, 2022 farm site visit; and c) Mr. Lapsley’s ongoing fees and expenses in reporting on compliance with certain terms of this Second Consent Decree and the Second Contempt Sanctions Order.” the court documents state.
How we’ve made it this far with so many useless middlemen, I’ll never know. But I digress.
It seems the USDA will have to find another target to harass since Miller has received a favorable judgment allowing him to continue running his private food club business, which is a victory for his customers as well who rely on him to provide healthy, unadulterated to their families as nature intended.
So what did Miller do again, exactly?
The USDA, in a twist of logic that only a bureaucratic government agency could manage to achieve without seeing the idiocy in it, insisted that because Miller refused to treat and sterilize the meat reared and butchered on his farm with USDA-approved 'antibacterial chemicals' such as citric acid, lactic acid and the like, that it is considered to be adulterated. Gee, and here I thought adding things that don't naturally come in the product itself to be adulteration. There goes big government redefining words again. For a more in-depth look, I wrote about this case in another article below.
Here's my translation of the USDA's definition of adulteration: Anything that goes against the agenda to further erode the quality of food in our country in order to continue absolving Big Agriculture's staple companies like Perdue, Cargill, and Tyson of any wrongdoing for their filthy business practices. That's the only reason they demand that every other producer of meat and poultry in this country follow the same practices, so these massive factory farming operations ran by the aforementioned companies can continue to flout any conventions of sanitation or humane farming practices in favor of raw output to make sure no other, smaller - and better - farmers like Amos Miller can edge them out with a quality product that makes people healthier after eating it, not sicker.
Anke Meyn, Miller’s spokeswoman, had this to say on the chemicals in response to inquiry by the Return To Now blog, “The USDA processing plants require the meat to be treated with a chemical cocktail of citric acid, lactic acid and peracetic acid. It’s not citric acid from oranges or lactic acid from sauerkraut. It’s all created in a lab. It’s a synthetic sterilizer that causes many health problems.”
We're practically pickled in this country already with all the food additives and such we are forced to consume because there are very few viable alternatives that are often way beyond the budgets of the average person. Seeing the opportunity to get real, wholesome foods not dunked in a toxic waste spill or otherwise produced in a way that erodes its nutritional value would be a welcome change of pace.
Food as a weapon, eh, Kissinger?
Big government doesn't like to lose. Least of all, the USDA. You can bet they'll be formulating another scheme, if not against Miller then someone like him.