Cowing Family Farms

Federal marshals arrived at the doorstep of Amish farmer Amos Miller on June 24, 2021. For violating U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, they placed his whole meat, poultry, and pork inventory on hold.

It wasn’t the first time Miller had dealt with federal marshals and the USDA, and it wouldn’t be the last. It was just the latest piece in a six year dispute between his association of small farmers, Miller’s Organic Farm, in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, and the federal government, over whether he has the right to process and sell meat without abiding the presence and proscriptions of a federal inspector. It’s a dispute that continues today.

A members-only association of several small farms in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania area, Miller’s Organic Farm has been selling non-GMO, grass-fed, unbleached meat and dairy products since 2000. For Amos Miller’s family, however, farming goes back a lot further: more than 100 years.

Miller calls his product “nutrient-dense” and “raw”, meaning that it is untreated with any preservatives. Miller’s Organic Farm also offers pig, poultry and cow products, from local farmers. In order to shop from the farm, interested customers have to apply to become a member of the association, which includes signing a contract agreeing to take on themselves the risk of eating the raw products, which are not regulated by the USDA. The association has approximately 4,000 members.

In 2017, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) brought a subpoena against Miller after he denied the federal agency access to his records and meat and poultry facilities, beginning the ongoing dispute. One month before the marshals arrested his meat in 2021, the U.S. district court in eastern Pennsylvania had ruled that Miller’s Organic Farm had violated the court’s injunction order and consent decree, and could no longer sell fresh or newly slaughtered meat, meat food products, poultry, or poultry food products, until it liquidated its existing inventory. The order also required the association to post a public notice, in agency-approved language, to its 4,000 members to let them know they could not purchase meat for the foreseeable future. Miller refused to alter his business model, and continued processing his meat in spite of being inspected by federal officials. This led to marshals visiting. His punishment was cancellation of his livelihood, a handful of fines amounting to over $250,000, and the threat of jail time.

For Miller it boils down simply to providing quality meat in the same hands-off manner that his family has done for more than a century. This is why thousands have purchased from Miller’s Organic Farm.

“The customers want to take their health in their own hands,” Miller told The American Conservative. They don’t trust government because preserved meat can be put on by farmers to add bleach or citric acid to it. This is not like orange juice and lime, but they can also use manufactured citric acids from corn. It doesn’t need to be on meat for sale. Customers trust us more than USDA labels at the store .”

The Miller’s Organic Farm’s members have been unable to agree on the use of bleaching agents and citric acid. This is a difficult issue because most federally-inspected plants use chemicals that the members want to avoid.

A two-hour drive from Bird-in-Hand takes you to Chambersburg in Pennsylvania. Chambersburg is a town where an Apple Cider Vinegar solution was used to clean the pork and meat carcasses. This compromise Miller stated most of his family members would accept, though not all. There, he has transported his meat and pork to be processed since 2019. It was more challenging for poultry. According to Amos, the only federally-inspected facility that could offer a natural bleaching option is Romulus in New York. Even they don’t promise any, Amos says.

The meat is then returned to Miller’s Organic Farm before being shipped out throughout rural Pennsylvania and the United States. It did until June, when the fed marshals arrived. Miller now claims he has stopped all processing. Miller says his freezers are slowly emptying. A solution is still far away.

” It’s difficult to comply with all of the regulations and rules that are put into place, so that’s why many farmers don’t do it,” Miller stated. Our members prefer to have small amounts of bacteria on meat than bleach. They claim that it’s worse.

In the 20 years of operation of Miller’s Organic Farm, there has never been a single complaint from the USDA of an individual suffering from ill health as a result of Miller’s Organic Farm products. The members, eager to protect their source for raw food and inspired by Weston Price’s food philosophy, have repeatedly crowd-funded Amos’s legal fees, even though as an Amish man he cannot ask them for money. Miller remains stuck until Miller can come up with a compromise that meets both his health and the government’s requirements. Applying for his own federal license could cost between $200,000 and $300,000, a heavy load for a small farm with small margins.

The precise cause that led the USDA to come after Miller’s Organic Farm, while others remain untouched, is unclear, but the close kinship between the dominant meatpacking firms and the USDA has been well-documented.

What Miller and his farmers have learned is the reality of what happens to small farms when they stand up against the federal government. Like the non-profits targeted by the IRS in the 2010s, even when the backlash is both severe and public, even when there is clear abuse of power, it is never the government agency that suffers the damages.

In this instance, damages go beyond a lack of regulations. These damages aren’t just for the small guy. Small farms will continue to disappear from the landscape, either due to the invisibility of the market which favours large players or the heavy hand government which favours conformity. The result will be less variety both in the food available and where they can be bought.

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Even in the Amish community, small-scale farming has become largely unsustainable in the past 15 years due to just such regulatory agencies, according to Miller. Miller said that many have been forced to close their doors.

” My goal is to get senators and congressmen in Congress to make changes so future generations are able to continue being farmers because that’s what people love to do,” Miller stated. Miller said that the current state of affairs means the next generation won’t have the opportunity to become farmers. It is very hard .”

This article was supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This publication is solely under the author’s responsibility.