Amish Farmer Gets Prison Sentence for Processing His Own Meat

Processing meat on your own property in the U.S. can now lead to jail time, as has been proven by an Amish man from Pennsylvania who has been threatened with a hefty prison sentence and issued a whopping $250,000 fine for doing just that.

Amos Miller says he is being persecuted by the Biden administration for practicing his religious freedom to raise and prepare food the way he believes God intended food to be raised and prepared.

Miller practices rotational grazing on his independently owned, holistically managed, century old farm in Bird-In-Hand Pennsylvania. His heritage-breed cows are raised on organic pastures.

Ourorganicwellness.com reports: Around 4000 customers of his private, members-only, food buying club are dependent on his meat, eggs and dairy products, as well as fermented fruits and veggies… and are willing to spend top dollar to get it shipped to them all over the country, as they don’t trust food from the grocery store.

But a couple of weeks ago, a federal judge told Miller to cease and desist all meat sales, and sent armed U.S. marshals to search his property, farm store and freezers. They took an inventory of all his meat to make sure he doesn’t sell any or slaughter anymore animals.

Last summer, the judge also ordered Miller to pay $250,000 for “contempt of court,” and said he will also have to pay the salaries of the USDA investigators assigned to his case, $50,000 of which was due last week as a “good faith” payment to avoid jail.

(The court’s next hearing on Miller’s case will be this Tuesday, April 12. Please show up if you can. Details below.)

So what exactly is Miller’s crime?

Slaughtering and processing the meat he raises on his own farm and selling it fresh-frozen to members of his private food buying club, who’ve all signed contracts stating they understand the meat is not processed in USDA-inspected plants, or treated with USDA-required chemical preservatives… because that’s how they want it, and the very reason they are willing to go to such great lengths to get it.

But the USDA thinks his customers are too stupid to think for themselves and need them to come in and protect them from themselves.

You probably don’t know (because I didn’t until Miller told me) that all USDA-licensed processing plants are required to treat ALL meat (even the local, grass-fed, organic variety) with synthetic preservatives.

“Often they use citric acid, which you’d think comes from oranges or lemons, but it’s a modified substance made from corn… and they don’t even have to label it on the meat,” Miller said.

“The USDA processing plants require the meat to be treated with a chemical cocktail of citric acid, lactic acid and peracetic acid,” said a customer who handles Miller’s website and other modern communications (because he’s Amish).

“The peracetic acid is toxic and the citric and lactic are GMO.”

“It’s not lactic acid coming from the fermentation of sauerkraut. It’s all created in a dish in a lab. It’s a synthetic sterilizer that causes many health problems,” Anke (who preferred not to use her last name) told me.

“Our members don’t want any of that,” Miller said. “They want fresh, raw meat, with no additives. Our members want it straight from the farm with no preservatives on it.”

“As a farmer, you could invest all your energy and money producing the most healthy, nourishing meat and at the end of the day, you are ruining your meat sending your animals to a USDA facility for slaughter,” Anke added.

Additionally, USDA-approved processing plants aren’t allowed to sell certain organ meats and glands for human consumption. “The very nutrient-dense organs, that seem to help people, they want to ban,” Miller said.

Even if the USDA didn’t require preservatives and allowed the sale of organ meats, it still would still be nearly impossible for Miller and other small farmers to make a profit with Big Meat processors acting as middlemen. And the cost of becoming licensed by the USDA to process their own meat is too steep.

“The rules and regulations are such that you have to get into debt $100,000 before you ever sell your first pound of meat, and the market’s not guaranteed,” Miller said. “There’s no option for farmers to start small and add on and buy...

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