Amish Farmer, Amos Miller Being Prosecuted for Providing Pure Food. Court Rally in Support on Thursday.

From a legal brief submitted to the Court of Common Pleas in the city of Lancaster

There will be a rally at the court house on Thursday, Feb 29th at 11:30am. Link

INTRODUCTION

The PDA asks this court to do what no court in Pennsylvania has ever done: forbid a family farmer from distributing food from his own farm to his own members, his own family, or even his own animals. Indeed, no court in Pennsylvania has ever prohibited a farmer from producing, making, or distributing his own food to anyone.

The PDA must prove the food made by Amos Miller’s farm is unsafe for human consumption and not capable of being made safe for human consumption. They cannot. Two decades of history prove them wrong. Their own tests prove them wrong. That is why they do not even claim it now. No precedent exists for the power PDA now claims. There is a reason for that: the law doesn’t authorize it, nor could it constitutionally.

II. PROCEDURAL POSTURE AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Amos Miller is an Amish farmer with an 8th grade education in the heart of Amish country: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As a matter of tradition and religious belief, the Amish generally do not seek permits, licenses, or the involvement of the state in their lives or livelihoods. Amos Miller’s grandfather went to jail here in Lancaster County over the Amish right to educate their children in their own way until the Supreme Court affirmed their right to do so. Amos Miller makes food the same way generations of his family have made it before him for centuries in America and exactly the way his members want him to. Those who personally visit the farm are struck by its sanitary conditions, modernized equipment, beautiful landscape, well-taken care of animal stock, and dedication to organic farming methods consistent with their Amish tradition.

Amos Miller does not operate a retail store or restaurant, nor does he make his farm-made products available to any retail store or restaurant or open to the public. Amos Miller makes the food from his farm and neighboring Amish farmers available only to fellow private members of his farm, and only them. All members know Amos Miller’s farm is not a PDA-licensed or PDApermitted farm; in fact, that is precisely why they are members. They want food made the traditional Amish way; they do not want food the PDA way.

The members of Amos Miller’s farm consider their choices an expression of their religious faith, political beliefs, and medical need, protected by their rights under both the United States and Pennsylvania Constitution. In just weeks, hundreds poured in their sworn testimony in support of Amos Miller. Amos Miller also provides a pillar to the Amish community, and the deep ties between their land and their religious beliefs. The loss of Amos Miller’s farm will be devastating to his members and the Amish community.

There is a reason the members of Amos Miller’s farm choose the Amish way rather than the PDA way. Out of the millions of food product deliveries made by Amos Miller’s farming operation to over 10,000 Americans over the last quarter-century, no member of Amos Miller’s customer association has ever complained once about the safety of his food. Unlike the corporate food producers who monopolize America’s food’s supply, Amos Miller has never had any food recall order ever issued. To the contrary, many need food from Amos Miller’s farm for their medical needs and the medical needs of their family, including their children. Enjoining them from the chance to have that food endangers their health and the health of their loved ones. Perhaps there is a reason the Amish live longer, healthier and happier lives, and maybe it has something to do with their paramount livelihood: farming and eating the way their, and our, forefathers did.

By contrast, the PDA way has given us a food supply monopolized and corporatized, ultra-processed, made in factories not on farms, laced with additives, preservatives and chemicals foreign to food for most of human history, supervised by bureaucrats who’ve never farmed a day in their lives and often “retire” to work for the same big corporations they were supposed to govern. Their decades of control of our food supply produced a chronic health epidemic amongst the American people unlike we’ve ever seen. Why should the PDA get to shut down that Amish way of life and prohibit Americans from partaking by becoming members of Miller’s farm merely because the Amish way isn’t the PDA way?

Contrary to the claims of the PDA, other government agencies have resolved all concerns with Amos Miller’s operations. Since representation by counsel Robert Barnes, all disputes with the federal government concerning food were satisfactorily resolved, contempt orders lifted, fines eliminated, cases dismissed, and food delivery restored. During this time, the PDA were often invited to partake in conference calls with the federal court and given an opportunity to object to any aspect of Amos Miller’s operation and agreements with the federal government. The PDA never objected once. During this time, the PDA never reached out to either counsel or Miller to request registration, a permit, a license, inspection, or any other act of Amos Miller. During this time, the PDA never voiced any objection to any aspect of Amos Miller’s known operation. During this time, the PDA closely monitored all public aspects of the case, as an Open Records Act request revealed, but never contacted counsel or Amos Miller once. Then, the PDA, in January of this year, after the untimely death of the federal jurist presiding over these matters, suddenly arrived unannounced, with gun-bearing police, raiding Amos Miller’s family farm, and conducting a day long search at Amos Miller’s farm, seizing items for sampling, and preventing anyone from observing their conduct, including their sampling methodologies.

To read this legal brief in full