U.S. Appeals Court says Amos Miller won’t be spending Christmas in jail after all, drops $300,000 fine, and allows him to sell meat again, so he doesn’t go bankrupt while a long-term solution is negotiated!
In what feels like a Christmas Miracle, a major food freedom case took a turn for the best.
The Amish typically shy away from publicity, as a part of their humble religion, but Pennsylvania farmer Amos Miller decided the USDA’s war against him and other small, organic farmers is the hill he will die on and is prepared to take his battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
The USDA (aka Big Ag) has been harassing Miller for years – first for his sale of raw milk, and now for his sale of truly raw meat.
Many of us have become aware of the difference between raw, grass-fed milk straight from the farm, and the pasteurized garbage approved by the FDA… but not many of us realize that the expensive, grass-fed, “raw” beef we are buying at the grocery store isn’t really raw.
If it’s USDA-approved, it’s been treated with antibiotic chemicals, which are not accurately labeled as such.
“The USDA processing plants require the meat to be treated with a chemical cocktail of citric acid, lactic acid and peracetic acid,” Miller’s spokeswoman Anke Meyn told us on a phone call last April. “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.”
Ironically, because Miller does NOT use antibacterial chemicals to sterilize his meat, the USDA considers it “adulterated,” and convinced a federal judge to force him stop selling it several months ago.
The judge also sentenced him to jail for “contempt of court,” starting December 16, and was going to shut down his farm if he did not immediately pay over $300,000 in fines.
But thanks to mainstream media coverage (shortly after we picked up the story), and public outcry, Miller has been able to raise enough money for a high-profile lawyer, who’s already striking home-runs in the U.S. Court of Appeals!
“Amos Miller will not spending Christmas in jail and is no longer facing imminent bankruptcy,” said his attorney, Robert Barnes, in a video interview.
Barnes also negotiated away a $300,000 judgement that was due immediately, leaving $55,000 in fines due over the next six months. Miller’s “contempt of court” hearing has been cancelled, and the case has been put in stay and abeyance,
Barnes convinced the court to allow Miller to sell meat that’s been locked up in his freezers in the meantime, “so his farm can survive economically while a longer-term solution is negotiated.”
“The long-term solution is to enact a ‘custom exception plan’ that allows people to get the food they want, and farmers to make it the way they want, without the government overseeing it.”
“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 in an earlier interview.
“If you’re shopping at Miller’s farm, you’re not doing it by accident,” Barnes noted about the members of Miller’s private, farm-share-buying-club. “Amos Miller doesn’t sell food to anyone who doesn’t want it exactly how he’s making it.”
“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.”
“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,” he noted. “And the USDA, you know what they thing is healthy? Bill Gates’ synthetic corn … his fake beef.”
“This is about the USDA’s attempt to monopolize our food supply, and they targeted an Amish farmer to set the precedent.”
You can help Amos continue to fight the good fight for food and health freedom by donating here or here. If he loses, we all lose.
www.westernjournal.com
www.rebelnews.com
www.thegatewaypundit.com
www.zerohedge.com
