Pennsylvania allows raw milk sales, but requires a permit. Miller does not have one. Federal law requires that milk shipped between states be pasteurized.
On Jan. 24, the state Department of Agriculture sued Miller following a raid by agriculture department agents earlier that month spurred by reports linking two E. coli illnesses to Miller’s farm.
Challenging the legality of the raid on Miller’s farm, attorney Robert E. Barnes wrote in a court filing Friday that the agriculture department “materially misled the court with perjured affidavits based on events that occurred many years before.”
Part of the affidavit agriculture agents submitted to obtain the warrant, Barnes said, falsely claimed a person died in 2016 after drinking raw milk traced to Millers’ farm.
“The problem is: it never happened,” Barnes wrote. ”In fact, the elderly lady who died had advanced cancer, and never drank any raw milk product of Amos Miller’s, as her caretaker testified to under oath and a former Wall Street Journal reporter had already previously investigated and independently found.”
Barnes wrote that the agriculture department’s own testing on samples taken from Miller’s farm earlier this year “confirmed no listeria problem in many of the samples taken, and no problems found at all in most of the samples taken of any kind.”
Yet, Barnes wrote, the agriculture department hid the results from Millers’ attorneys and the court in seeking the injunction.
That caused “Miller’s farm to suffer extreme economic harm and the Amish community to suffer significantly, while members who desperately needed the food staples of the farm were denied access to it for more than a month,” Barnes wrote.
Miller’s attorneys also filed dozens of declarations from Miller’s customers from states all over the country.
One person wrote that Miller’s raw butter helped heal a chipped tooth. Others credited his raw milk with improving or healing a range of health conditions, from autism to restless leg syndrome to depression and infertility.
Many of the declarations accused the agriculture department of overreach and interfering with individuals’ right to eat what they want or conduct business with whomever they want.
“This attempt at controlling their farm is un-American. I am an educated adult making my own decisions about my body and my health and should get to decide what I purchase and what I consume,” one person wrote.
Rally planned
Meanwhile, a group called Patriots of PA (formerly Patriots of Lancaster County) is urging Miller supporters to rally outside the courthouse ahead of the hearing.
Appeals for donations to support Miller, either to offset business losses or cover legal fees, have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. The most recent appeal, created after the January raid, has raised nearly $250,000 as of Wednesday afternoon. More than 3,200 people donated, with one anonymous donor topping out at $7,777.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and conservative activist Scott Presler, among others, posted on social media about the rally.
The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department, city police and Lancaster County President Judge David Ashworth all said they are aware of the rally. Ashworth said the court system was taking it seriously.
Miller has a history of opposing state and federal food safety regulations dating back at least a half-dozen years. He has at times portrayed himself as a “sovereign citizen.”
Sovereign citizen adherents believe in the legally baseless assertion that individuals, and not courts or lawmakers, can decide what laws to follow.
Miller has also long maintained that he does not sell to the public, but rather, to members of his farm’s “private membership association” and is therefore exempt from government regulations.
The federal government sued Miller in 2019 in part over that erroneous contention. That case concerned federal meat inspection rules.
But the parties resolved the dispute by early 2023, with Miller paying fines and costs of about $85,000. The federal court docket for Miller’s case shows it was closed in August, though a consent decree remains in effect.
That decree requires him to follow state regulations.
